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Treatment free packages.

3K views 3 replies 4 participants last post by  Rusty Hills Farm 
#1 ·
Does anyone have any apiary they can recomend for treatment free natural cell bee packages?
 
#2 ·
I will have some later, I don't promise any to anyone until they are ready. But I think you would be much better off looking for local survivor stock. Check Beesource or ask around for a local beekeeper and get a split from them. Besides even though my stock is treatment free the bees I sell are treated once prior to sell because I am required to do so. My bees like basking in the sunshine they have never even seen a snow shovel.
 
#4 ·
But just because the beekeeper stops treating them does not mean those bees have the ability to survive without treatments. If they did, we would not have lost thousands if not millions of colonies when varroa first arrived. It is misleading to suggest to newbees that ANY hive can become treatment free by just stopping the treatments. They need the right genetics to survive.

My advice to newbees who want to be treatment free is that if you cannot find TF packages, then buy what you can find. Then requeen with known treatment-free queens or VSH queens and in 6 weeks you really will have resistant genetics in the hive and a decent chance to be successfully TF.

JMO

Rusty
 
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