My goodness, I leave town for a few days for the Dadant celebration, and look what happens to the thread I started! :gh:
Ok, what I've gleaned so far, which pretty much was what I expected, there are only one or two commercial beekeepers "testing the waters" with treatment free bees. You have to tease that out of their postings, but it's there. They seem to be using tf bees, as a means to move from the hard chemical miticides to softer treatments. As we all know, it is a great risk to them.
Randy Oliver did a nice presentation on mites at the Dadant celebration. He talked about how his goal is not to kill all the mites, because then they breed for resistance to the treatment. Instead he seeks a 50% knock down, which enables the colony to apparently thrive (my words), without breeding a resistant mite. In the first part he talked about how treatment free bees make this job easier, but in his experience they still need help. He concluded this section with the Warner Bros. cartoon graphic "That's All Folks!" The next 20 or so minutes dealt with treatments. So in his scheme of things, treatment free bees are a help, but not the solution.
I was fortunate to be able to ask him a question: "There are several, a few, major producers and sellers of Treatment Free or Resistant bees. Have you used them in your operation, and what has been your experience?" His answer, paraphrased - Yes. Several producers and beekeepers regularly offer me bees or queens or to buy such for me to test. I've used a few. But my operation in California tied in with Almond pollination is that they're not successful. They all need some sort of help in my area. Which is not to say that they don't work in other areas, just not in mine.
Unfortunately I was not able to ask a follow up question, which would have been: "So to achieve success with a treatment free bee you need to acclimate it to your particular locale?" As I think about it, my successful treatment free bees have come from Texas and Kentucky, similar areas to where I am now. In my "migratory" operation (my 20 hive trailer! :lpf
I do not leave my county when I haul them from what clover there is, to soybeans. So my bees are acclimated to my particular locale, and they were raised in the south/midwest south.
Perhaps that is what mitigates against, at this point, successful treatment free commercial operations, hauling them from your home yard to Almonds, and elsewhere for pollination purposes. They never really have an opportunity to acclimate to a particular locale.
Regards,
Steven