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Winter losses vs. Summer gains

180K views 644 replies 60 participants last post by  Oldtimer 
#1 ·
From time to time, there are complaints that there is too much bickering and arguing and people aren't getting to talk about what they want. Well, I can't do anything about that, people are people.

But what I can do and what I like to do is answer questions. So I want to give everybody the free and explicit opportunity to ask serious questions. If you want to be treatment-free, or if you are weighing your options, ask away. I want to help you. I'm not going to be answering challenges or defending my methods or viewpoint. I want to help you if you want to be helped. I want to tell you what you want to know, not what you want to hear. I had tons of questions and many of them will be the same ones you are asking now. You can even go back to 2003 and see them for yourself in the archives.

So ask away. You have my ear.
 
#580 ·
Re: Ask Questions Here!

Rader Sidetrack Thats very cool how you can get those different quotes in their own boxs and even have little blue arrows pointing to the original post.

Thanks for doing the multiple quote thingy I dont know how to do that and it has made what I've tried to say more understandable in the scheme of things :)

cheers
 
#581 ·
Re: Ask Questions Here!

Thanks for doing the multiple quote thingy I dont know how to do that and it has made what I've tried to say more understandable in the scheme of things :)
Quick tutorial: What you want to click the "reply with quote" button or the "("+)" button and then "Reply to thread." It will give you the quote inside what are called tags, they have brackets around the word "QUOTE=frazzledfozzle;986471" and "/QUOTE". I can't actually put the brackets in or it would turn it into a quote.

To make multiple quotes, simply separate out the lines you would like to respond to, and put the "QUOTE=frazzledfozzle;986471" tag in front, including brackets and the "/QUOTE" tag at the end. Those are forum speak for open quote and close quote. By changing the phrase after the = sign, you can quote from somewhere else.

Thomas Jefferson said:
The trouble with internet quotes is you never know if they're legitimate.
But it must have the brackets for the forum to read it right.

[/quote] And there must be an open quote and close quote tag in the right order or it won't work. For instance, this is quoted backwards.
 
#584 ·
Re: Ask Questions Here!

>>"The only way to have a sustainable system of beekeeping is to stop treating.

>Michael, I've stripped the nuance from your quote, because the opening sentence is what new beekeepers invariably hear. (including some of the most vociferous types on this thread).

I have no problem with that distillation in general.

>I maintain asking backyard beekeepers to sustain the massive, predictable losses that their implementation of this idea invariably results in is wasteful and counterproductive.

I am not asking them to sustain "massive predictable losses". Nor am I advising them to. I had no "massive predictable losses" when not treating once I had natural comb. I had "massive" losses both when treating and not treating on large cell comb.

The feral bees have already taken any genetic losses necessary and they are the genetic population I would expect a backyard beekeeper to leverage by raising their own queens and not treating.

>I maintain that rationalized and directed selection has been the system with which early modern agriculture has adopted to novel parasites. Directed selection requires 1) indentification of desirable traits, 2) amplification of these traits, 3) and backcrosses to mix with other selected traits.

That method is a system that requires constant and continuous control over both sides of the genetic equation, something that is impractical with bees in the large picture.

>For bees (like most other out-crossing species), isolation and saturation are essential to creating local races.

But the local feral bees are already saturating your gene pool...

>There is enormous inertia in species, they revert to type in unbounded outcrossing populations.

Exactly. That's why all of these complex, energy intensive breeding systems for particular traits will fail in the long run.

> Moving the whole genome en bloc and en mass is enormously difficult and wasteful.

Ah, but nature has already done it for us.

> We can also anticipate (viz. AHB) that local racial adaptation fixes very undesirable traits.

Which you can breed back out as we beekeepers have been doing for thousands of years. But I have not had an issue with that. People I know of in AHB areas only occasionally have a hive too hot to work.

>If small beekeepers want to participate in genetic selection, they should confederate as part of a larger program.

The "larger program" is already being done by nature but could certainly benefit greatly if people would stop bringing in outside stock that is genetically incapable of surviving on its own. The best way to participate is to stop weakening the gene pool with bees from different climates that can't survive on their own.

>Mike will correct me if I am wrong but I believe he states that he lost all of his bees when he was treating and (possibly)

I lost all of them to Varroa when treating on large cell, yes. I lost all of them to Varroa when not treating on large cell, yes. I now have winter losses, but no more losses to Varroa since regressing to natural comb.

> once since which he attributes to being away from the country for most of a year.

Actually I was gone 3 years/winters and with them swarming to the trees and winter losses and no management whatsoever, there were still about 30% of them doing great.

>Pretty sure he has said that he repopulated with packages.

Unfortunately, yes.

>I asked once if they were from a tf producer and never got a reply.

I don't remember seeing the question, sorry. I had no source of TF bees. My intention had been to requeen them all with my own queens. My schedule prevented that. Most of those put away huge amounts of honey and didn't make it through the winter. The ones that were my local stock did.
 
#589 ·
Hi Mike,

what a "successful" treatment free beekeeper is, has been discussed before. And the discussion showed, that it is not easy to define.

Personally I don't think an apiary with untreated hives which "has bees", is successful. Because if you replace losses year after year with swarms, cutouts, splits and packages - that is not sustainable and never enhances the local stock.

The oldtimers here say, if you loose more than 3 % of your hives during winter, you do a poor job as a beekeeper. That was pre-varroa, though. Today up to 10 % loss every winter is considered normal. Most beekeepers here have much less losses each year. 0-5 %.

Also a bunch of hives that are in a poor state, fleshless, starving and generally weak, can't be seriously called a success. See the other thread thriving vs. treatment free. If I look into nature I see strong creatures with a good health. What have been showed me by some treatment free beekeepers was far away from it. I see the videos an Dee's hives and they do seem to be fairly strong. But where are the videos of your hives? And I would also be interested in videos and pictures of Michael Bush's hives. Just to get a feeling how hives do in other treatment free projects.

I also asked Michael, how many hives in total were killed in his project so far, excuse: let die. :) It would be nice to get an answer.

It also would be good to compare the number of hives available and those habitated. If you have 1,000 hives and just about 200 are habitated each year, that won't be a success in my eyes. Far from it.

I want people going treatment free successfully, meaning: do the transition more slowly. Take more time. Have much less or zero losses. Have strong and healthy colonies. In my experience the sturdiest colonies are very strong colonies.

From what I distilled from successful full-stop treatment free beekeepers, is, that they usually start with a high number of hives. Minimum 100, mostly 500-1,000 colonies. This is another start going treatment free, because the probability that there is a colony that adapts, is much higher than starting with one or two hives. Numbers do matter. Also most of them are experienced beekeepers, very experienced beekeepers. Bees don't die from beekeeper faults in their hands.

Bottom line. For beginners with a couple of hives it is more difficult if not impossible to go treatment free from now to tomorrow. Full stop. It is advisable for them to use slow approach. No haste, take your time. Beekeeping itself is difficult, learn bees first. Than go treatment free, slowly. It may need 50-100 years to get there, so there is no reason to run.

It would be good, if the big names in the treatment free world also would advise beginners to take the slow route. Full stop is not the only way, it is one way. And there are prerequisites to it: experience in beekeeping, high number of hives.

Not every beekeeper wants to keep 100 and more hives. But those beekeepers could found a local treatment free beekeeping association. 5 beekeepers with 10 hives, properly cared for, make 100 hives, too. Also (practical) experience is gained much better through local sharing.
 
#591 ·
I want people going treatment free successfully, meaning: do the transition more slowly. Take more time. Have much less or zero losses. Have strong and healthy colonies.

...It is advisable for them to use slow approach.

No haste, take your time.

Than go treatment free, slowly. It may need 50-100 years to get there, so there is no reason to run.

It would be good, if the big names in the treatment free world also would advise beginners to take the slow route.
I keep asking, who has gone the slow route and succeeded?



Minimum 100, mostly 500-1,000 colonies. This is another start going treatment free, because the probability that there is a colony that adapts, is much higher than starting with one or two hives. Numbers do matter. Also most of them are experienced beekeepers, very experienced beekeepers. Bees don't die from beekeeper faults in their hands.

And there are prerequisites to it: experience in beekeeping, high number of hives.
Again I ask, who are you talking about?
 
#592 ·
A good example for a 'successful' slow approach is Eric Österlund from Sweden. He has to treat about 70 % of his hives, but about 30 % are continiously untreated. From those he breeds. I met him personally last year on a small cell conference in Germany. Where I got the numbers above from.

Dee Lusby may be a good example for a beekeeper starting with a big number of hives. I also have followed a presentation of another commercial beekeeper with 2,500 hives going treatment free. I see, if I can find the reference for you.
 
#595 ·
>I also asked Michael, how many hives in total were killed in his project so far, excuse: let die. It would be nice to get an answer.

How many died because they were not treated, once I was on natural cell and small cell? As far as I'm concerned, none. None died from Varroa. None died from brood diseases. Have any died over winter? Of course. And all were examined for evidence of mites and brood diseases of which there were none.
 
#605 ·
>Ok. Not a single loss from varroa/diseaes then. How many died through the last ten years in total? (Not from varroa.) It also would be nice to get an average percentage of colony losses each year.

I did not keep a specific tally. An apiary is a kind of super-superorganism. Splits make up losses (which would otherwise be swarms). Most of my losses were during the time I was not here to manage them at all and in a winter where it was -27 F (-33 C) every night for several weeks.

Winter losses are all over the place. Fall flows play into it as it gives you young bees. Sometimes there is no fall flow. When I'm here, if that happens, I give them some pollen and maybe feed syrup. We also get winters that vary greatly. Some winters are -27 F (-33 C) every night for several weeks. Some never get much below 0 F (-18 C). On rare occasions there is not a flying day from October to April. Usually there is some flying days somewhere in the middle of winter. So some winters losses run maybe 5-10%. Some winters more like 30%. I consider 10% typical with a typical winter. I have seen the first killing frost as early as September and as late as Christmas. The last killing frost could be as early as April or as late as May. This last year it was May. A typical winter is a winter following at least a little bit of a fall flow where we have a couple of weeks of -10 F (-23 C) and a few days somewhere in the middle of winter for the bees to take cleansing flights. With a strong fall flow, some flying time in winter and nothing below 0 F losses are at about 2%.
 
#609 ·
Sasha, these are excellent websites and exactly what I was looking for.

It was interesting to read some of the details, the Wallner case focusing on clean (if I understand that term correctly) wax.

The Lunden case was interesting one as well but needs some parsing. First, it was admitted that the Bond style apiary was kept in a way which disadvantaged the bees in overwintering. And while there were other issues involved, they all died ultimately. The second thing I wanted to explore was the nature of the treatment. The treatment was as you say, less each winter. That's kinda like putting the wall closer to the edge of the cliff until the animal learns how to fly, which is more or less Bond Lite in my view.

Thank you for these links Sasha, very educational.
 
#613 ·
They eventually learned how to fly...
http://www.saunalahti.fi/lunden/varroakertomus.html

Don´t ask how many mites there are, I do not know, only some 10 powder sugar tests from breeders were made and showded about 2-5% infestation in adult bees in early June.

The next 12 years will be spent breeding them to gather as much honey as they used to. But as in all other animal and plant breeding, resistance comes with a price, the varroa resistant bees will never gather as much as the normal ones. Honey production is the only valid measure for varroa resistance.

The picture from this week, feeders were removed.
Bee Honeybee Beehive Insect Membrane-winged insect
 
#610 ·
The balance is not disturbed within the hive only. I learned from Dean: No bee is an island. Neither is a beehive. No colony is an island. It is embedded into an environment. And this environment is out of balance, badly! At least here where I live.

You can't save a colony that is embedded within a bad environment. Just a thought that I want to share.

For this reason there are no ferals here. I found a bee tree, but this tree looses it's colonies each winter. Every year a swarm moves in. Every winter it dies out. This goes quite some time. Year after year.







It's the environment here that may be a factor to consider, too. Nothing really thrives in an environment out of balance.
 
#612 ·
Not sure you understand Tim. We were talking about large mite family uncapping vs small mite family uncapping, which I doubt you are seeing. But if you are seeing it, at what ratio?

I think you didn't quite read what I said properly, and are just talking about VSH uncapping in general, which many of us me included see all the time too.

To se what I was referring to earlier, requires a microscope and a lot of research time.
 
#616 ·
>What's the point of resistant bees that don't produce honey?

Not much, I guess pollination. But where is the evidence that is true? I think that may be the result of aggressive breeding for just resistance, but if you select for productive, healthy, gentle bees then you can select the combinations of many traits, that give you that.
 
#621 ·
:) You took the bait, Oldtimer.

If you make honey bees that do not make honey, they aren't honey bees anymore. Better preserve bumble bees or so. Yes, those are endangered, too, as other wild pollinators. Must be bad husbandry, I suppose...

Anti-honeybee-husbandry: not knowing what a honeybee is.

Mella fluunt tibi.
(Latin for: The honey may flow for you. Émile Warré, father of the people's hive.)
 
#623 ·
If you make honey bees that do not make honey, they aren't honey bees anymore.
It's funny how some people don't do greyscale. No one is talking about raising bees that make no honey, Bernhard, that would just be daft. The conversation is about whether using honey production as a key selective measure about all other considerations is the best way to go about tf beekeeping. Or something of that sort. Do try and get with the program will you?

Mike (UK)
 
#630 ·
OK, here is my response to your first question ...
Question for you Graham: what measures, what assays, do you use to select for mite resistance?
Since you are looking for techniques in treatment free beekeeping, Michael Bush has put a lot of effort into developing a comprehensive website dedicated to just that:

http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm

I don't see how anything I might write here could be more useful to you in your quest. :gh:


P.S. You could also buy his book .... :D
 
#632 · (Edited)
Since you are looking for techniques in treatment free beekeeping, Michael Bush has put a lot of effort into developing a comprehensive website dedicated to just that:http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm
I've been aware of Michael's website for about some time. In fact there has been a link to it from my own website for several years. http://www.suttonjoinery.co.uk/CCD/selected links.htm

What I really wanted was to hear your own thoughts, because that would help me evaluate your remarks and might supply insights into your motivations for belittling my own efforts, and generally obstructing conversation.

Do you actually practice tf beekeeping at all? If so, how do you go about it?

Mike (UK)
 
#631 ·
Mike let's be fair, it's not reasonable to regularly change your position to whatever will win an argument at the time, but if challenged put it down to "learning". I don't think you learned anything just changed your position to whatever was convenient.

The above is a very minor example but it is something you and WLC do a lot, (you not as much as WLC), and in the end stifles any attempt at sensible discussion.

I don't see much learning happening in these types of discussions anyway, where the idea often seems to be to promote a hypothesis, often just assumed, as convincingly as possible, arguing with all comers. But if cornered, sneakily change position, or the subject. Learning comes from working with bees. The other learning that happens on Beesource is when someone often a newbee has a problem and asks for a solution and is given one and can use it.

But a lot of the above discussions turn into over intellectualised claptrap.
 
#633 · (Edited)
Mike let's be fair, it's not reasonable to regularly change your position to whatever will win an argument at the time, but if challenged put it down to "learning". I don't think you learned anything just changed your position to whatever was convenient.
You're not much good at arguing OT are you. A (constructive) argument is a series of exchanges during which inconsistencies between the interlocutors are worked out through a process of question and response. Either one, or both participants learn something in the process - and find either a way to resolve their differences, or perhaps a crystalisation of the reasons they can't.

In that context: whenever you discover something new it entails that the understanding you had before was incomplete. That might not cause a wholesale revision in the way you view things - but it might too.

I'm not going to stop learning just so you can treat my writing over time as 100% consistent.

(As I recall, there was a post a few months back in which you expressed admiration of my 'courage' - or something like that - for changing my position in the light of new information. And now, here you are condemning me for doing exactly the same - perfectly normal - thing! Rather demonstrates what you're up to doesn't it - your usual tricks - anything but the conversation; work to damage the reputation of anyone who challenges your own position.)

As for your accusation that this is something I do often: examples please. On another thread. I'll respond. For the record, that's the first time I've invoked learning as a reason to change my position. Its so obvious I've never felt the need before - frankly I'm astonished to find people who need this stuff to be explained to them.

Lets try the topic with you: how would you evaluate mite resistance in the hypothetical situation that you were trying to raise the (faintly ludicrous) trait of non-honey storing?

If I get a sensible answer to that I'll fall off my chair. Promise. Then I'll make a sensible and polite response to it.

If you continue to block the conversation here I'll push my ignore button. You have a history; one chance to change.

Mike (UK)
 
#638 ·
Mike, actually yes. At least as far as I have seen reported. somewhere around 50% hygenic behavior it begins to cost to much in honey or other production. Not only does honey production fall off but some behaviors actually cost in hive population as well such as brood removal.
 
#639 · (Edited)
I've seen the same thing 'reported' endlessly Daniel. What I'm asking is: what is the scientific status of that claim. Its simple enough. What's the proper evidence?

Again, bear in mind, Dr. Marla Spivak, who's worked in this field for donkey's years, has stated unequivically that there is no loss in productivity due to internal mite management.

There are plenty of people who have an interest in promulgating 'reasons' that support a preference for treating. (Chemical manufacturers and their supply chains chiefly, who stand to lose significant amounts of money should tf catch on in a widespread way, and who'd be stupid not to try to defend their interest in a determined manner), but also ordinary especially commercial beekeepers who don't want to risk/can't be bothered/don't see a benefit in working to raise resistance... and seek to justify their position).

Its my view that this particular piece of 'information' is a self-serving myth constantly promulgated by a loose coalition of invested parties. Convince me otherwise.

Mike
 
#640 ·
Straight up, I know of no properly done study on it, apart from Spivaks work. So if you want me to convince you Mike sorry won't happen but would never expect to do that anyway. There's a few issues around existing work though, some of which are how hygienic were the bees being at the time, what were the mite levels in the hygienic hives, and what were the mite levels in the non hygienic hives.

Bees that are actually very productive, can have their productivity severely curtailed if they have a heavy mite load, so if they are bees with a mite load that need treating, that can be a bigger issue than hygiene practises.
 
#641 ·
Mike, I cannot recall where I saw it but it was in an article and referencing actually several researchers all basically saying that yes hygienic behavior can bee over done. I do not recall exactly where I saw the article and have no idea in what papers it would actually be claimed. I do know it was not the run of the mill beekeeper conversation. It may have been on vsh.org that I first ran across it. I do know there are more reliable claims so it might be worth the time to search.
 
#642 ·
Mike, I cannot recall where I saw it but it was in an article and referencing actually several researchers all basically saying that yes hygienic behavior can be over done.
I wouldn't quarrel with that. I thought what you were saying was, in agreement with Oldtimer, that mite resistance invariably entailed significant production costs.

Mike (UK)
 
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