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Going Treatment Free - step 1

116K views 571 replies 41 participants last post by  jim lyon 
#1 · (Edited)
Full disclosure - I'm not treatment free, but I applaud anyone and everyone who has established a successful treatment free apiary. Seriously I do.

But, I would suspect that everyone who has done it would agree with a few principles:

  • Treatment free does not mean doing nothing and hoping for the best.
  • Treatment free requires at least as much understanding of bee keeping as any other philosophy - so educate yourself.
  • If you start out with a couple of generic packages from Georgia, and don't check and don't prepare for any contingencies you probably will not be successful as a treatment free bee keeper.
  • If you replace your dead outs with generic packages from Georgia every spring you probably won't ever become successful as a treatment free bee keeper.

Maybe I am wrong about some of these - and I welcome constructive input. The reason I am even bringing it up is that I get quite a few contacts via our local bee keepers association from new bee keepers who of course want to be treatment free - of course they want that, who wouldn't? But they don't understand these basic points of the pursuit. That is on them of course, it should be obvious that everyone needs to educate themselves about their chosen path. But for some reason a common take away from the treatment free internet community is that all you have to do is not treat and all your dreams will come true.

I just wish that all of the proponents would make it painfully true that at least at first - treatment free is not easy.

Or am I wrong?

Again - not hacking on the whole treatment free thing. I'll probably give it a go myself one day when I think I have achieved a sufficient state of Zen.

I almost forgot - Step 1 to becoming a treatment free bee keeper - learn to be a bee keeper.
 
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#252 · (Edited)
No.

You should believe The Navigator. Gene Robinson. He charted the Honeybee Methylome.

It's not about fat bees or vg.

It's about changes in DNA methylation and neroplasticity in the bee brain. That's how they change castes.

Unfortunately, the levels of vitellogenin are controlled by changes in the Honeybe brain, not the other way around. It's a completely different signaling pathway.

Sorry. Those papers don't apply to how Honeybees change their caste.

Fat bees aren't required, only capped brood and Honeybee neuroplasticity.
 
#256 ·
Allrighty then.

I can't figure out why you think this is about caste-changing. That's Huber-level info. You're a couple centuries too late to astonish anyone with the breadth of your knowledge, and I say that as an ignorant newbee.

I've corresponded with Tim Ives. You haven't. My firsthand knowledge of what he is actually saying about his methods is more interesting and valuable to me than your fact-free speculation, which I happen to know is completely wrong.

Sorry.
 
#254 ·
We all know who Gene Robinson is. Right?

More science and less pseudoscience please.

It's capped brood and Honeybee neuroplasticity.

Some of you are buying into a story that really isn't about treatment free beekeeping.

Unless, of course, you explore Mel's MDA splitter method for chemical free beekeeping.

I would definitely call it a good first, or second (maybe third) step.
 
#258 ·
Tim Ives is an MDA disciple.

That's the story.

You know: there are Crowder, Bush, Stiglitz, Palmer, and other disciples around here.

You can recognize them by what they're doing with their bees.

Mel does the tower in chemical free beekeeping.

The Fat Bee thing is funny. But it's not relevant.

Of course, your free to believe a guy who has fat bees, in a tower hive, climbs on a ladder, and gets huge amounts of honey.

But, I'm not going to bite on that bait.
 
#265 ·
Tim Ives is an MDA disciple.

That's the story.
Please proceed. I don't know what evidence you have for this revelation, but here's my evidence:

"Each year I just pull splits, bred them in other yards and create new
yards." --Tim Ives
I'm dubious about your credentials, to be honest. What serious academic would make up stuff about a guy he had no actual knowledge of, based on a few posts on an internet forum, particularly when those accusations can so easily be demonstrated to be a baseless fantasy? In essence, you've accused a beekeeper you don't even know of being some sort of conman. That's pretty irresponsible, and I'm a little surprised that the moderators haven't admonished you for this.

I expect Barry would speak sharply to me if I started making up stuff about you... and you don't even have a name.
 
#269 ·
What I don't get is, considering the basic idea that to produce a frame of brood requires a frame of honey and a frame of pollen, how does one get those huge crops?

I know one beekeeper who has hives in NY in which the brood is in a deep and a medium w/ the honey above an excluder, the number of medium supers commonly being head high. Six or more supers above the excluder. Some times they will all have honey in them.

(how do you spell excluder to satisfy Spell Check?)
 
#274 ·
rhaldridge:

Tim is being entertaining. I recognize the methodology.

He's not a conman. He's a story teller.

The fat bee thing isn't scientific, nor is it necessary to understand what he's doing.

It's just a 'Powerhouse Honey Hive'.

And no. There's no way he came up with 18 frames of capped brood from a single queensright hive right before the main flow.

I am an admirer of Mel's MDA Splitter methodology.

That's why I recognized it immediately.

Am I making sense to you?
 
#276 ·
Since we are so far afield anyway. When in relation to the main flow is the best time to add brood to such a hive? I did it this year about a week before the poplar bloom, which I'm sure was late - but on the other hand those hives are rockin'. If I can keep them from swarming I'm pretty hopeful.
 
#275 ·
It seems to exceed the laying capacity which is generally stated to be up to about 2000 per day. 18 deep frames is far more than I have ever seen in my admittedly limited experience. A much more experienced bee keeper I have met who is well known locally for very large honey per hive numbers says that 20 medium frames is an adequate size for a brood nest. But it's all anecdotal as far as I know.
 
#277 ·
David:

The key is that you don't want uncapped brood (or even a laying queen!) in that type of tower hive.

That's why the capped brood, and any bees you shake or combine into the tower will gather and store so much honey. They're basically just foragers, comb builders, and honey makers.

Capped brood, alot of bees, and queen pheromone are the main ingredients (some don't use a queen or the pheromone). You're restricting the castes that the bees will become by doing that.

That's the trick.

Just remember that the queens and combs that aren't useful to this method, are safely in nucs removed to some other yard (some say at least a mile away).

They're the ones used to outbreed mites and prepare for next year's towers.

Here's how Mel does it.

http://www.mdasplitter.com/docs/NucManagement.pdf

Here's Mel's site:

http://www.mdasplitter.com/

Are we cool on this yet?
 
#289 ·
David:

The key is that you don't want uncapped brood (or even a laying queen!) in that type of tower hive.

That's why the capped brood, and any bees you shake or combine into the tower will gather and store so much honey. They're basically just foragers, comb builders, and honey makers.
I did it like that last year with 3 hives and it does makes a lot of honey. But it was still a lot of work and seemed stressful to the hives - at least that's how it seemed to me.

Anyway, this year my experiment is with queenright hives that I pumped up with extra brood, and then extra foragers by removing an adjoining hive just as the main flow started so that all of it's foragers would join the remaining honey production hive. Those hives will mostly become mating nucs. What started out as a rather mediocre hives 6 weeks ago are presently performing like exceptional hives.

Like I said, it's an experiment.
 
#285 ·
I doubt that he has 150 towers of power.

Those 150 hives probably represent the support hives he needs for the towers of power and the splits/nucs for outbreeding mites.

I would not want to be the beekeeper with a puny single deep anywhere near his tower hives.

You might say that he's sacrificing other aspects of hive productivity to focus on honey production with those towers.
 
#288 ·
"This would give me a huge belly laugh...if it wasn't so sad. The idea that if someone isn't posting to beesource, it must be because they are avoiding it or scared isn't a new one. What an absurd contention."

Dean, I've just had a terrible thought.

Maybe his tower fell over on him and he's trapped?

Quick, get over there!
 
#291 ·
It does appear that WLC has most likely nailed it. But, hey, it's apparently a treatment free management system that is working for him albeit one that is labor and resource intensive. It's only a scam if one chooses to believe that resources to build a hive like this don't require multiple queenright colonies to make one "tower". It also dosent mean that Randy Oliver or any of us are gullible (let's remember that the reason Randy was there was to see if someone can raise strong colonies in an area where corn was the predominate crop) And it's not going to result in these types of yields just anywhere, nectar availability is, of course, a necessary component. Those issues aside, go get em Tim. And if Mike Palmer hasn't already answered the question of whether bees can thrive in an area where corn is a major crop, here's one more piece of evidence.
 
#292 ·
Maybe I'm naive for reading, but it seems to say "10-18" not "18." And I don't see anything about "18 frames of capped brood."

I've certainly seen 10, and I have seen 20 through three deeps. I don't see what's the big hairy deal.

Assuming 3000 cells available for brood on a frame (http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?242020-Cells-to-a-Deep-Frame) and and a worker lifecycle of about 21 days, and a queen laying 2000-3000 eggs per day as mentioned in the article, I'm still not seeing a problem.

Maybe this isn't the average, but math and experience seem to say that it is quite possible and in a good operation might even be fairly normal.

I don't have some fantastical degree in biology but I do have a MSCE, and I know how to do some basic math.
 
#293 ·
Judging by the photo of the tower hive, I'd estimate that there are alot more resources being used than is described.

Did Tim acknowledge Mel or MDA Splitter at any time?

By the way, I'm simply saying that the fat bee contention is the 'gullibility' issue.
 
#294 ·
Unbelievable.

Otherwise intelligent folk are going to accept a long distance analysis conducted on the basis of, I don't know, telepathy? that completely ignores the statements of the beekeeper himself?

18 frames of brood? I quoted the article that said explicitly that it was over 2 brood cycles. Here. let me quote it again:

In Tim's area, March 11 on average, pollen starts coming in. He says a typical 2 hive body system will start laying at this time and over the next 2 brood cycles (21 days) a 2 hive body system will average 12 frames of brood, but a 3 hive body system will average 18 since it incurred an earlier cycle.
Mel Disselkoen's system requires feeding. Tim does not feed. He told me that this is partly a result of his own experience; he used to drink a dozen sodas a day, and in fact, he took up beekeeping right after he gave up eating sugar, something he did for health reasons. He is quite serious about not feeding; it is a cornerstone of his philosophy, As he put it, the only difference between a queen and a worker is the diet she is fed; it only makes sense that diet is extremely important to bees.

Did no one but me see that video of Tim taking the tar paper off a three deep hive in early March? Is the theory here that he packed that hive with brood from, I don't know, a dozen hothouse hives at some point prior to rewrapping it with felt, just so he could amaze folks with the density of bees in that hive? Really?

And finally, what do you folks imagine is the point of this purported deception? He doesn't have a book out to promote. He doesn't sell bees, as far as I know. What is his motivation?

As far as Randy Oliver's well-known penchant for being gullible, I think I detect the faint acrid odor of professional jealousy. To me, that seems a far more plausible motivation for making up a story about another beekeeper... a story that has, let me remind everyone, absolutely no demonstrable basis in fact. I'll remind folks that Randy was there, talked with Tim, talked with a number of his peers in the area. If Tim were using some variation of the Disselkoen system, don't you think that might have come up?

I have to say that this is the strangest little example of believing what you want to believe and disregarding the rest that I've seen yet on this forum.

Ah well.
 
#314 ·
As he put it, the only difference between a queen and a worker is the diet she is fed; it only makes sense that diet is extremely important to bees.

And finally, what do you folks imagine is the point of this purported deception? He doesn't have a book out to promote. He doesn't sell bees, as far as I know. What is his motivation?
Well, that isn't the only difference. Cell orientation has something to do w/ making a fertilized egg into a queen. I've never heard of anyone making a queen simply by feeding a worker egg and larvae extra brood food. Not that anyone said anything like that.

I would not say that Tim Ives is scamming anyone. That is WLC's hangup. I do question the math. Coming to us second handed. I wish Tim were here to clear things up.
 
#295 · (Edited)
Ray,

I dare say you haven't been here long, and you ain't seen nothin' yet.

I'm not disagreeing with you, maybe I'm missing something, or maybe I'm reading the wrong link. In either case, I don't see anything impossible about this scenario in a 3 deep plus hive. I can't speak to the honey produced because we don't get that kind of nectar profile around here. "Tim's hives have 3 deep boxes for brood chambers, and it's common to have 10-18 frames of bood in its peak, and 10 and 12 supers on them during honey flows."

There is a pernicious trait common in this forum not to believe or accept what others say, that's why it's written in the forum rules. "Please avoid making any kind of accusation toward another forum user. Do not impugn their motives, do not question their skills, and do not use pejoratives. Be responsible and do not post offering advice about things you have not experienced and methods you have not used." Remember, though this is the Treatment-Free Beekeeping Forum, it is populated largely by beekeepers who treat. Don't let it get on your nerves too often.


Post all the links you want:
http://www.indianahoney.org/2013/02/Real-world-beekeeping-happening-in-the-Corn-Belt.cfm
It doesn't mean they're gonna get read. One of my favorite Dean Stiglitz quotes goes something to the effect of "staring at a link for a couple of seconds is not the best way to prepare for discussing its contents." Complete paraphrase.
 
#297 ·
Mr. Haldridge (assuming I got that right),



Post all the links you want:
http://www.indianahoney.org/2013/02/Real-world-beekeeping-happening-in-the-Corn-Belt.cfm
It doesn't mean they're gonna get read. One of my favorite Dean Stiglitz quotes goes something to the effect of "staring at a link for a couple of seconds is not the best way to prepare for discussing its contents." Complete paraphrase.
I think I have read every link... some twice... and viewed the videos.... mainly because I was interested in how this could be true. Tim's success humbles my puny efforts and so I got curious.

I just came in from inspecting some of my better hives - Those with 6 frames of brood I was rather proud of. But since we are now talking bout 2 cycles (42 days??) I could perhaps refer to these as 12 frame hives??

So really... if I walked out to one of Tim's 3 stories... and did an inspection I would count 9 frames on his best and 5 frames of brood on his worst?


I dare say you haven't been here long, and you ain't seen nothin' yet.
Amen to that! This is a very polite and genteel discussion :)
 
#296 ·
Solomon, my name is Ray Aldridge; call me Ray.

I'm just surprised. You'd think that in evaluating the veracity of an allegation, people would remember the basic logical dictum that primary sources are primary. In this case we have several primary sources. There's Randy Oliver, who folks are apparently eager to believe when he reinforces their own views regarding pesticides and treatment, but if not... he suddenly morphs into a gullible undereducated fool who has been taken in by an Indiana slickster. There's this article from the newsletter of an Indiana club, which contains no mention of any brood packing scheme. There's my own correspondence with the guy. There's Dean's report from the talk he attended. There's video, for heaven's sake.

Apparently the existence of a treatment free beekeeper with low winter losses, big healthy hives, and high productivity is such a threatening idea that folks would prefer to believe a conspiracy theory cooked up by someone with no personal knowledge of the situation, using the well-established scientific method of wildeyed speculation.

People are strange.
 
#299 ·
I'm just surprised.
Well, I hope this experience hasn't thrown you off this forum. It certainly has its trolls. I have to deal with it all the time and I stay because I want to be a lifeline to those who are honest and straightforward and want to keep bees treatment free. There is no better way to learn how to do that than to ask someone who already does it. When I started, and started here, there was Dee Lusby. At the time, she was the only experienced treatment free beekeeper. Mention her name now and you'll see derision heaped upon her africanized bees. Never mind the fact that she was doing it before there were africanized bees in the US. Mention Housel Positioning and you'll get heaps of scorn, even though at the absolute very most and least, it might do absolutely nothing. Say something like "I haven't lost any hives to mites in X years" and you'll get piles of mockery even though these people have never seen your hives. Check the archives, I have had losses blamed on mites no matter the condition of the hive. Now, Dee is gone, there is Michael Bush, and me, and a couple others. If people want to know the straight dope, they'll use the PM system, and they do.

But you can do it differently than the rabble. You can accept that people might see and do things differently than you see and do them. You can assume that people are telling you the truth about what they're seeing. You can be open to other ideas. And you can work to make this a better place for people looking to keep bees without treatments. Remember, there are many times more readers than there are commenters.

You're gonna have a spectrum of people. Some are purely ideological, some will follow the facts wherever they lead. Some agree with almost anything, some will admit to nothing.

Have fun.
 
#303 ·
Thank you!

I actually took the trouble to join the forum, and I looked at other posts Tim has made. Most involve pretty strong diatribes against the use of sugar. Anyone who could look at what he's saying, and still believe that he feeds his bees in secret, must be a world-class mental contortionist. He's the VP of the Michiana bee club, a strong and active organization, it appears. If he were lying about his practices, you'd think some of his club's members would say something to him on the forum.

I'll just leave this quote here:

Overall winter losses.. 135 lost out of 706. 19.1% losses. Taking my and 8 other sugar free guys (22 lost out of 270 = 8.14% losses) out of the candyland equation. 113 lost out of 436... 25.91% losses.
Let me interpret: the bee club as a whole suffered 19.1% losses. Tim Ives and 8 other sugar free beekeepers suffered 8.14% losses. Those who fed sugar suffered 25.91% losses.
 
#301 ·
Over on the Indiana Board, Tim states that his 3 story yards average the world record in honey production -404 lbs/hive (I have no idea what the WR is). Some hives at the 500+ level.

I had no idea that Indiana was such a honey production state, unless it is solely due to his methodology.

I understand the 18 frame claim now... but it certainly was not clear early on, or in the links provided.

I wonder where all the Indiana beekeepers on here are? Surely they would be familiar with this production phenomena....
 
#302 ·
rhaldridge;936107 As far as Randy Oliver's well-known penchant for being gullible said:
Randys penchant for gullible??? Hmm I think things have been put out that are off. But I may be mistaken. I have never seen Randy praise his exceptional honey production... Randy only pointed out hes doing just great as treatment free in the middle if a apple orchard with 3 neionics coatings a year, and miles of soybeans and corn...... maybe I missed the lines, but Randy and gullible in the same sentence doesn't sit right.
 
#304 ·
It was said by that learned but devoutly anonymous fellow who knows the Truth behind Tim Ives' claims... by a process of divination or maybe crystal gazing. It isn't clear to me.

Just because Randy is gullible (and I do know that he's fallen for 'stories' before in a big way), doesn't mean that we need to be. However, it's OK to laugh heartily at this one.

Can I help it if Randy isn't a degreed Biologist (I am), and can't follow some of the recent work being done on neuroplasticity in Honeybees?

WLC.
Does it smell a little odd in here, or have I just been out to the cow barn?
 
#306 ·
Ah yes. The old "I alone am right" gambit. So.. let me see if I have this right. Your only actual point is based on a misreading of an article by an amateur writer-- the idea that Tim is claiming 18 frames of brood appearing in his hives as if by magic. You apparently didn't notice the qualifiers "after pollen starts coming in" and "2 brood cycles." You are also relying on ridiculing the notion of "fat bees," an attempt by Randy Oliver to make a scientific concept understandable to those without the training you claim to have. Your ridicule appears to encompass the Phds whose work he cites in his popularized article. You claim Tim is using a system that requires heavy feeding, and for some reason you are eager to ignore the accounts of numerous observers of his yards, as well as his own strongly expressed antipathy to feeding. You have no actual firsthand knowledge of any of the facts put forward. Your posts are riddled with logical fallacies, chief among them an Appeal to Authority that you are unwilling to substantiate, except by your unsupported claim of being an "expert."

If anything is being deflated, it does not seem to be Tim's story.

Oh, what the heck. Maybe you're right, and Tim is a devious charlatan who is breeding bees in secret places that none of his fellow beekeepers know about, and somehow managing to feed those massive hives without anyone finding out. With an evil mastermind this diabolically clever, I think we need to worry about more than him corrupting our sacred beekeeping institutions. He may be out to take over the world. Him and Pinky.
 
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