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HITS method of mite control

48K views 281 replies 37 participants last post by  beemandan 
#1 ·
I expect that most of us have heard of the ‘Bond’ or ‘Live and Let Die’ method of mite resistance selection.
I would like to propose a new term for a different one. I want to call it the Head in the Sand (HITS) method. Going forward, I will try to use this term when responding to those who make statements such as ‘I don’t see mites, I don’t test for ‘em and they aren’t a problem’.
 
#5 · (Edited)
I know Mike doesn't agree. And he puts his health certificates up for all to see... His book(s), web site and participation on BeeSource and other internet bee sites (Dee's Organic Beekeepers List and BeeMaster that I know of) have helped many, many people. Gotta wonder, doesn't he run many more colonies than the 23 that were inspected in 2012?

It seems to me the main thrust of HITS is not recognizing that mite infestation exacerbates colony loss in a variety of ways. It seems problematic to say "The colony died of X" when X might not have been a problem for the colony had Varroa not also been present.
 
#7 ·
It seems problematic to say "The colony died of X" when X might not have been a problem for the colony had Varroa not also been present.
Here’s one analogy.
I’m in an auto accident and hurt my arm. Friends tell me to get it x-rayed. Nope, says I…it ain’t broke….I’ve broken bones before, so I can tell. A couple of weeks later it is even more swollen and painful. Another week passes and I start running a fever. Must just be the flu….darn that arm is swollen and painful. Gangrene? No way….that arm ain’t broke. A week later I die in bed. They do an autopsy and discover fluid in my lungs. Cause of death….pneumonia.
 
#8 ·
I tend to think the Varroa mite problem has echoes in the introduction of rabbits in Australia in 1859. At the time, their initial response was to do nothing about them.

I believe those who choose to ignore varroa mites or insist they're not "really" a problem for honey bees are paving the way for a similar outcome.
 
#13 · (Edited)
It is difficult to face the fact that we cannot beat the evil Varroa the bees need to. Spraying, applying, misting, fogging only prolongs the inevitable. Selection is the only true cure. The problem is as soon as hygenic behavior is selected properly it gets watered down by less hygenic genetics via open mating.

Unfortunately the process of biological selection takes time and sacrafices and unfortunately humans don't like to wait or sacrifice :(
 
#14 ·
Natural history has shown us that biological selection might just as easily choose the mites over the bees. That kind of thing has happened countless times in geological history.

So much of apis mellifera's development has been directed by humans - its distribution over the world, the creation of so many of its subspecies. It's really our "fault" so to speak that honey bees as we know them even exist in the Americas for instance; likewise, it's our "fault" as it were that varroa has ended up in all these places. The "natural" component to the relationship between bees and varroa, at least in the New World, is already well out the window.
 
#15 ·
But varroa can be controlled. There are all manner of methods, from strong chemicals to specialized hive furniture and everything in between.
When the pro treatment guys stop having 30%+ losses I'll start treating. I really don't care about natural, I care about what gives the most reward for the least effort.

Treat=bees dying anyway, possibly making stronger mites and weak bees.

Don't treat= bees die anyway, possible making stronger bees.

Head in sand? maybe, but Forum rules won't let me say where I think pro treatment people have their heads stuck.
 
#16 ·
When the pro treatment guys stop having 30%+ losses I'll start treating. I really don't care about natural, I care about what gives the most reward for the least effort.
This past winter my losses were 0%. Estimated average losses for my local club....40%. Am I *that* much better of a beekeeper. No way. I treat. Most all of the losses were the typical booming hives in August-September, then small dead clusters with plenty of honey.

It sure is good bees aren't cute. Don't construe this as me saying my bees are my pets because they're not, but imagine saying, "I'm not treating my dog for heartworm, I'll let him die and then keep buying dogs trying to find one that's able to fight it off."

I really liked one of Randy Oliver's recent articles in which he said, and of course rightly so, that the ability of a colony to keep mite counts low is all in the the genetics and they're all coming from the queen. It's daft (my word, not his) to sacrifice all those workers and their working colony because the genetics of the queen are subpar. Treat the hive and replace the queen. Keep monitoring. Lather, rinse, repeat until you find those great queens.
 
#259 ·
Yeah...my thinking exactly. If I ever consistently do as poorly as they do....I'll quit treating.....oh wait....that's what you said....right?
Ah well...I guess those tf/treatment arguing folks just can't survive without expressing their opinions....and haven't figured out where to do so.
Maybe I need to start a new thread for them...........
Does anyone think that they'll leave this one alone if I do?
 
#18 ·
Well first of all a "loss" is a pretty loosely defined term but if the definition refers to the total hives lost in a spring to spring year the 30% figure is actually quite manageable assuming that the other 70% are strong hives. With that scenario you could easily make increase if you wanted.
 
#19 ·
I like what one guy said on here. Beekeeping vs beehaving. Beekeeping you obtain bees and watch after them feed them and treat them when needed and keep them alive. Beehaving you obtain bees and they sit in a hive and you have them till they get sick and die, which they will, and then obtain more bees repeat.
 
#21 ·
Those are not the only two options. There are, in fact, beekeepers who don't treat, and who keep bees alive. There are beekeepers who treat and whose bees die.

It requires a certain Head in The Sand attitude to ignore these facts.

Or so it seems to me.
 
#26 ·
I understand, but bear in mind that treatment free beekeepers are a minority among beekeepers, and they probably get tired of being addressed as if they were idiots who have no rational basis for their beliefs. Witness this thread, whose only purpose appears to be to denigrate those who do not share the beliefs of the majority.

I don't deny that there are foolish and shallow people who take a simplistic view of treatment free beekeeping, and they are even more annoying to treatment free beekeepers than they are to you, for reasons that should become obvious with a moment's thought. But there are foolish and shallow people on the other side of the fence as well, who think all you have to do is hang some strips in your hives, dump in the antibiotics, and all will be well forever.

Of course there are successful beekeepers on both sides of the fence, and I certainly don't automatically think that those who treat are foolish. But I do think that trying to use bug poison to kill bugs on bugs is not a practice that can be sustained forever. The process is inherently damaging to the bugs we want, and the bugs we don't want seem to rapidly develop resistance to each new bug poison. I think most intelligent folks can see the difficulty there. I doubt anyone really likes the treatment treadmill, but many can't risk stepping off. They have families to support with those bees, and they know that developing resistant bees is a process fraught with death and destruction. When the Bee Weaver company started their program to breed resistance to varroa, they began with 1000 hives and lost most of them over the first winter. But now, many years later, they'll sell you a queen that at least in some areas, will produce a colony that can survive mites without treatment. These are not yet perfect bees, but denying that such bees exist is a pretty fair example of Head-in-Sanditis.
 
#23 ·
"Treatment Free"? I am certainly not treatment free, I graft larvae to grow queens. I manipulate frames and combs to facilitate growing and dividing colonies, to produce more colonies. I sometimes feed sugar syrup, and pollen substitute. I frequently open hives and examine their combs to determine how they are doing. I have and sometimes still do, used Bt to help control wax moths. I sometimes feed copper gluconate as a nutritional supplement. I've even been known to swap combs from one hive of bees to another, and vice versa. I use some plastic foundation, some beeswax foundation, and some without any foundation at all. Some have horizontal wires, some crossed wires, and some fishing line; others with no supplemental support at all. And I could probably go on for much longer, just describing the many different "treatments" I provide my bees, to help get them to perform as I'd like.

I have not, as yet, resorted to any treatments that are usually referred to as, "hard chemicals". However, I do lose colonies all the time, every time someone comes to pick up a nuc or queen to start their own colonies with, or requeen one.
 
#24 ·
Not treating can't "make stronger bees". If your bees have a genetic hygiene trait, they have it. If they don't, they're not going to somehow develop that gene spontaneously because you let them die a long, slow, miserable death. The idea that not treating leads to "stronger bees" is an illusion, based on a misunderstanding of how evolution works.
 
#28 ·
You're misunderstanding the basic idea. No one with any sense believes that bees will magically develop desirable traits. The idea is that by treating, you prop up undesirable genetics in the bees, and develop resistance in the mites. By not treating you expose bees to selective pressure; the weak bees die (or are requeened with genetics from survivor colonies) and you do not expose the mites to the selective pressure of acaricides, so they do not develop greater resistance.

You breed from your best bees. Where do you think hygienic traits came from? The genes were in the pool, but the line had to be developed by someone who applied some sort of selective process to the bees.

This is basic animal husbandry; human beings have used the process for thousands of years, long before Darwin. The great thing about bees, compared to other livestock, is their high reproductive rate. This means that selective breeding of bees is a much faster process than, say, selective breeding of horses.

But if you treat, you will find it more difficult to breed for these desirable traits, because the treatment can mask the response of the colony to varroa pressure. Some scientists have chosen to breed for certain marker behaviors, but this is a somewhat artificial approach. The most direct approach to breeding for survivability is to select for survival, not for single traits such as brood removal or hygienic grooming. In my admittedly inexperienced opinion, true survivability will probably turn out to be a cluster of anti-varroa behaviors.
 
#25 ·
Fair point melliferal, but most of it lies on finding a hive that does survive, then base your stock off them, which may bottleneck them but whatever floats your boat right. The way I look at it, treated or not, people select for their best hives, and even in a treatment program, you're strongest hives are probably that way because they're more mite resistant so to blindly say treating is going backwards is not very accurate. That being said, by treating you may keep a lot of dogs around that dilute the gene pool as far as resistance goes, but at least you're keeping some diversity around.
 
#27 ·
If they don't, they're not going to somehow develop that gene spontaneously because you let them die a long, slow, miserable death
No they aren't, thats the point. You let bees with bad genes die.

Its just like playing poker. You keep the cards you want, you trade in the ones you don't. You have no control over what the new cards will be but there is always a chance that it will be better, and as long as you hang onto the best cards every time and only discard the low value cards you will eventually get a full house.

A treatment free program without any breeding program will never lead to stronger bees, but it least it won't lead to stronger mites.

Treating is like playing poker blind and bluffing every time. If the other players (mites) have crappy hands then you will win, if they have a good hand, you lose. Over time the bad players run out of money and stop playing and only the good players are left and because you never look at your cards you never become a better player. Eventually you will end up at a table facing against all the best players and they will clean you out.

Now, if treatments where like a gun and you could shoot and kill the other players any time you started losing it wouldn't matter but until the come up with a treatment that kills 100% of mites you can't do this.

I can't believe I have to try and explain this, haven't we seen every single species that we use a less than 100% effective treatment on grow stronger!? Have you never read a book on the history of parasites or disease in your life?! Why is it that Penicillin and quinine are no longer used even though at one time they where miracle drugs?

Don't they teach evolution in school anymore? Heck in my biology class we created DDT resistant fruit flies in only a couple of months! We went from 90% effectiveness to less than 1% by doing nothing but treating them and letting the survivors breed. I'm sure thousands of other classes have preformed the same basic experiment.
 
#31 ·
Except nature isn't a closed system. In a lab, you can ensure all of a breeding population is treated, and therefore know for certain that only the resistant ones have survived and begun to breed. You can't do that with bees - there's no way to ensure the entire breeding population has been lethally infested with mites. But with bees, even that is only half the problem.
 
#30 ·
Rhaldridge I am not necissarily pro treatment. I observe and treat when needed, just like I do with my children and pets. I think I and beemandan are on the same page. As beekeepers we are trying to keep them around. When we see a problem and do nothing and just let them die, that is not benificial to them or us. Those same bees if treated can get over thier sickness just as me or you and still be around. I am not saying by any means to just routinly treat. I am saying when theres a problem do what you can to fix it, help them don't let them die a cruel death.
 
#33 ·
A big, bodacious colony of bees in the spring will likely be a seriously infested colony in the fall.

A large cluster of bees going into winter is no assurance of survival if they are heavily parasitized.

A lack of visible DWV isn’t an indication that your bees aren’t infested.

An empty hive at winter’s end is much more likely a result of varroa collapse than an abscond.

A small cluster of dead bees in an overwintered hive may appear to be starvation or exposure but the underlying reason that the cluster was small and lacked the vigor to survive is probably varroa.

Collapse by every other cause is influenced by varroa.
 
#38 ·
Nah, it's fine. Barry allows rants from the other side of the fence, as long as it's civil, and those rants insult a much larger body of beeks.

You can't take this stuff personally, even when it's borderline ad hominem. And I can almost guarantee that if you got the worst ranters in a room together, they'd be a lot more polite than they may seem to be on this forum. The medium encourages conflict.

Anyway, even when the message is insulting, you can still make reasoned arguments against it.
 
#35 ·
I believe that Brother Adam said you really need around 100hives to make any progress on breeding because of open mating etc. I should also point out that if you do manage to breed resistant bees you may not like the result if you are not carefully selecting. Resistance could come in the form of agressivness or increased swarming or smaller populations that produce less honey etc.

In any case I think beemandan's point was varroa is a problem whether you treat or not and whether you bother to look or not.
 
#36 ·
I think for those who successfully have kept there colonies without miticides should be called MITP. (Money in the Pocket.) Maybe not as catchy but better on the bottom line.

Workin on your genetics toward coexistence is the logical choice for beekeepers now and the future generations of beekeepers.

Yes I see mites. I saw 3 in inspections yesterday. Sure keeping your head in the sand is dumb, but breeding for tougher mites using treatments is pretty..........ya.

Sure varroa is a problem but the solution is clear and chemicals natural or not are not the long term answer.

Anyone on here who thinks you can beat or out treat a force of nature like varroa is two sandwiches short of a picnic. You have to work with it, understand it, and use the bees natural tendencies to fight against it. Making a better bee.

Out of 57 colonies this winter (treatment free since 2004) I lost 5.
3 were five frame nucs, 2 were hives. Due to splitting I am up to 74 already.

Using our honeybees best defense against them "artificial swarming".

We all have a choice some will stick there (HITS) some will slow down progress treating, and others lusby, bush, Webster, Williams, and others will pave a way to a future where varroa are no longer a major concern.

(Don't get me wrong some of my best friends treat.) But who always agrees with there friends 100% of the time right?
 
#39 ·
I think for those who successfully have kept there colonies without miticides should be called MITP. (Money in the Pocket.) Maybe not as catchy but better on the bottom line.

Workin on your genetics toward coexistence is the logical choice for beekeepers now and the future generations of beekeepers.

Yes I see mites. I saw 3 in inspections yesterday. Sure keeping your head in the sand is dumb, but breeding for tougher mites using treatments is pretty..........ya.

Sure varroa is a problem but the solution is clear and chemicals natural or not are not the long term answer.

Anyone on here who thinks you can beat or out treat a force of nature like varroa is two sandwiches short of a picnic. You have to work with it, understand it, and use the bees natural tendencies to fight against it. Making a better bee.
I don't think anyone who treats has an eye toward eradicating mites. I think most of us know it can never be done.

How do we know this? Because we've BTDT. Varroa mites are to bees what cockroaches are to us - and as we all know, there's just no killing cockroaches. That's why pest control companies are called pest control companies, and not pest eradication companies. The fact is, although roaches can't be completely got rid of, they can be controlled to the point where they're not an issue anymore. They're definitely there, but they're not active or populous enough to spread disease.

The alternative is to let roaches flood the house and only allow people who don't get sick to breed, and...continue to live in a veritable bath of roaches. Yay.

Now of course, just like with mites, there's natural methods of treatment if chemicals bother you. They shouldn't - technically everything in the world is a chemical - but if you're concerned about chemicals that may be caustic or toxic to humans, there's chemicals that aren't. There's also mechanical treatments - for instance, roaches can be controlled by diatomacious earth. Any roach (or any insect for that matter) that walks through diatomacious earth will die, there's no avoiding it and there's no such thing as developing a resistance because its method of action is purely mechanical (can a person "resist" dying from hypovolemia?). There are such mechanical treatments available for bees as well, that mites simply can't resist or "become stronger" from as long as they're varroa mites.
 
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