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small cell foundation

97K views 429 replies 36 participants last post by  deknow 
#1 ·
#88 ·
dean, for what it is worth, i have had some experience in the design, execution, and publishing of a handful of scientific studies, (although that was several years ago).

after reading your suggestions for a design in your previous post, it is not clear to me exactly what hypotheses your are trying to test.

my take on the small question, is that there is interest as to whether or not regressed bees have an advantage over nonregressed bees in resisting collapse from varoasis.

if this is the prime question, my initial thoughts on a study would be these:

the experimental variable would be regressed vs. nonregressed bees.

the control variables would be everything else. i.e. type of hive, comb material, feeding or not, genetics, manipulations, and anything else that would mean managing the two groups as identically as possible.

both groups should located nearby geographically to control for differences in weather and available forage.

treatments should not be part of the protocol, because we would want to know specifically what difference cell size makes.

the measure would be regular mite counts, and ultimate success rate in terms of survival.

controlling for genetics would be challenging, because it might be hard to get genetically similar colonies that have are both regressed and not regressed. it might be easier to use already regressed bees for the experimental group, and shake out genetically similar bees onto standard cell for the control group?

it would take someone versed in statistics to figure out an adequate number of colonies needed for both groups to make the data meaningful.

and, it may take a couple of years of observation.

this is my first go at the thought process, i'll keep thinking about it.

and, i'm good for $25 as well.
 
#91 ·
after a little more thought....

all of the colonies should be in the same yard.

no in hive feeders should be used, but rather a yard feeder if needed.

the person doing the mite counts should be 'blind' as to whether the hive is regressed or not.
 
#96 ·
I will throw in some money with the following caveats. The study has to last at least three years and deadouts can be repopulated with survivors from the same side of the study. This does not mean controlling mites by brood breaks. maybe that is unrealistic or enlarges the scale too much but I think those results are an important peice of this debate. I think mite counts are good information but survival and production of surplus honey are the goals.
 
#99 ·
The study has to last at least three years
Let's see….you’ve got to collect enough money to pay Dean a salary and benefits equal to that of Jennifer Berry for a period of three years. You have to provide enough to compensate a PhD entomologist to oversee the study for the same period. Plus enough to cover the overhead of a university entomology department and beelab…oh yeah…don’t forget another $2500 for incidentals. You’d better check your savings and plan to dig deep……maybe check your 401k
 
#97 ·
Am I missing something? I can't see how hundreds of years of breeding bees to be larger so they can produce more honey can be undone is a few months. I also can't see why anyone with a stake in honey production would be interested in going back to once was. Is there an advantage for a commercial endeavor to flood the world with feral stock after man has succeeded in purging most of it?
 
#100 ·
it might be hard to get meaningful results if any dead outs are restocked with remaining colonies in either group. the spitting of a colony would introduce an unwanted extraneous variable.

the endpoint of the study would be whenever there was enough data statistically to answer the question one way or the other.

randy oliver conducted a small trial like this using hsc a few years ago. but both groups suffered a ccd type collapse before he was able to get enough data, and he didn't attempt to repeat it.

(but, oliver's work gave me another instance where non-regressed bees took directly to hsc).
 
#103 ·
....a couple of things briefly.

1. I think it's great to have beekeepers deciding and debating what goes into a well designed study. I encourage you to read more studies.....you will find the the protocols are generally not living up to the ideals one would think science would demand.

2. Look closely at Randy's hsc trial. Note that after the formal experiment, he reticulated the hsc hives, does not treat them, and they "refuse to die". Randy seems to give credit to the offgassing of the food grade polypropylene as acting as a miticide.

Deknow
 
#104 ·
yes dean, i saw oliver's interesting remarks regarding his hsc colonies. i think the question is ripe for answering.

and, just because others have had bad protocols or badly followed good protcols isn't an excuse for doing it again, (i'm not implying that is what you are implying :) )
 
#110 ·
MP > Well great! That was my intention. I'm sure we all could design a study that all here would be comfortable with. Don't you?

Well spoken Mike my sentiments exactly. So dean I think most of us are aware of your objections to Seeley's previous study, and your follow up treatise. Without beating that old horse to death it would be beneficial to hear some of your possible concrete ideas that you would be interested in pursuing in regards to your own trial study of sc. There are certainly a lot of resources in the New England area that might be valuable in your pursuit of a more comprehensive examination of small cell treatment free beekeeping.
 
#113 ·
I'm going to be a bit blunt with a few thoughts (yes, I know you will all find this shocking) :)

1. It is difficult to imagine that a group of people can get together a valid study which avoids the glaring problems in previous studies if they have not read those studies. You've got to do your own homework if you want to have an informed opinion....there is no difference between people who read the study abstract and accept it as truth and people who read my criticisms of the work and accept those as truths. Simply put, your opinion isn't valuable unless it is informed.

Now, given the above...

2. It is difficult to imagine that a group of people can get together a valid study which avoids the glaring problems in previous studies if they are not willing to discuss the glaring problems. If you take someone's word for what the problems are (even if it is my word), you are not acting from an informed place....you are just as likely to take someone elses word for the opposite conclusion. You've got to do your homework and have an opinion.

3. I do have a vision of how this (and other bee research) should and could be done. I don't see much point in pursuing any of this unless it is spectacularly done, and the transparency of the data, procedures, and results place it above petty and casual scrutiny. I don't see any point in pursuing this with less rigor and with less numbers than would provide robust, general, and convincing results...we've already seen enough of that.

I know Mike has suggested something simpler....but again, I don't see the point of doing this and not doing it right....find out if the bees store more varieties of pollen on small cell (as is claimed by some), find out brood emergers faster on the small half of the comb than on the large, find out what behaviours are modified with a changing cell size. We are always told that "what works" isn't enough...we have to explain how....so, if we are going to explore this, lets explore it.

With that said, although I appreciate the input, I will let you all know when I come up with something that I think is viable....I don't mean to be dismissive or unappreciative, I just have been through this a few times already....

deknow
 
#114 ·
Got excited and ready to write a cheque, but further reading made it seem likely this study will never happen.

The level of compensation being asked is just too much.

If someone wants to run a study to prove their own point of view, a level of voluntary effort should reasonably be expected. If money is wanted not only for time, but for equipment, why? During the study the bees will presumably be productive. At the end of the study the person running it gets to keep all the equipment.

An "open chequebook" type approach has to be left aside, or this thing won't even get off the ground in my opinion.

I will pitch in some money, if I'm happy with the way the study is set up, and i also need to be happy it's not just being run as a money making venture.
 
#115 ·
Oldtimer

So whats the weather like there today? I am envious. Its been well below freezing here for over a week, with lows 10-15 degrees. The week before I was feeding some old honey back to a few colonies and they were flying everywhere. Are you rearing any queens these days. I really enjoyed your post here about no-grafting a few quuens and I look forward to giving it a shot this coming May. If they vote to move this sc study to New Zealand sign me up ! Cheers
 
#116 ·
If they vote to move this sc study to New Zealand sign me up ! Cheers
Ha Ha! :D
A properly run study would use more resources than I've got, fun though it would be. Since starting some small cell hives and finding how difficult it is to regress them, and after that KEEP them regressed, I'm really hoping that there will be an eventual treatment free solution to varroa that does NOT involve 4.9 sized cells. It's been fun, and interesting, but to run a whole outfit at 4.9 would be pretty time consuming, at least where I am, with the bees we have.

The weather is excellent beekeeping and queen raising weather at the moment, temperatures reaching up to around 75 during the day and dropping to around 50 or 55 at night, in my area. Humidity is high so everything is very green, nectar pouring in. Good cell raising conditions but only hassle is cell raisers and nucs getting painfully clogged with honey, but a better problem to have than starvation. Yes I'm still selling nucs, hives, and queens. Just sold 50 hives to a commercial guy who went certified organic. Worked for him for 2 years then this year (the third year) he had major losses, he's treating again and buying bees wherever he can get them.

Good luck with the queen cell raising Riskybizz you'll have to post up & let's know how it goes! :)
 
#118 ·
Hmm well to answer all that properly I'd have to write a book LOL! :)

There is a thread on how I regressed the first hive here, which primarily shows that at the time I was a small cell ignoramus. :eek:
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?250294-Small-Cell-Hive

How many hives? Not enough to be statstically valid, currently 8 hives and 21 nucs. All my cell raising is done in the small cell hives, primarily so they can be raised in a treatment free environment. After ironing out the initial bugs, the small cell bees are now raising queen cells the same size as a large cell hive would.

Do they have less mites? All I can say at this stage, is that for SOME of the hives it seems to be working. 2 hives were overwhelmed by mites a few months ago, others have some mites and from time to time show some PMS, and others are more mite free than any other hive I've had, without being treated in that time frame. So, if I was keenly trying to find evidence that small cell have less mites, based on the good hives I could find a way to say yes, but overall, on balance, the jury is still out.

Keeping them regressed? Main problem is even fully regressed hives will try to build bigger cells. I am not convinced 4.9 is a natural size for apis mellifera. I have had to cut out and re-foundation a LOT of combs. As I've learned a bit more about it I now only get comb drawn a few at a time, centre of the broodnest. You cannot just stick a honey box on full of foundation as you do with large cell foundation. If you do the bees will overite the 4.9 foundation and build larger cells.
 
#119 ·
thanks for taking the time to reply oldtimer, and thanks for the link to that thread.

i went back and read it in its entirety, which i had not done before posting to it.

looks like the state of affairs is still the state of affairs.

i still say the mite question is the main one, and the question that i think would be the easiest to answer in a focused study, (and the answer to that question the most useful in regards to whether or not being preoccupied with sc is worthwhile).
 
#122 ·
I know this is supposed to be about small cell foundation, but small cell and natural cell are not that much different of an animal. Why in the world do we need a study about this to tell us if it's beneficial. For natural cell the bottom line is it costs me much less money to do, so even if the bees survive exactly the same as they would on large foundation I am $$ ahead. Personally I think most of the studies that have been done were flawed. Either because they didn't properly regress the bees or the study wasn't long enough or who knows what else. Let's try a study comparing the 5 year survival rates of regular foundation bees and foundationless bees.
 
#126 ·
...you are in a rather unique situation in NZ, as you don't allow any honey imports, a lot of unnavigable but productive land (helecoptering in bees for a honey crop and such), not that many beekeepers in most places, and a reasonable domestic demand...couple this with the MHMS (Manuka Honey Marketing Scheme) run along with the local university for the export market, and you have a great market for honey.

I thought that all beekeepers in NZ were single (unmarried)...as I (and a whole room of beekeepers at the organic conference in Arizona) was sure that Roy Arbon said he knew of no married beekeepers....it later became clear that he said "no Maori beekeepers" :)

There is no commodity market for "treatment free honey"...so the market price is really market determined. I don't know what other people pay, but our suppliers secure a reasonable premium for being treatment free in their management. I wonder if you would accept 20% losses if you were making double per pound for honey? I'm not offering anything here....I don't know what you get per pound....I don't know your market.

Here in New England, we have soccer moms and hipsters supporting what Dee is doing 2000 miles away...what Kirk is doing in Vermont, what Bob is doing in NY...because they want the purist product they can get, and they appreciate what we are doing....because they want to feel like they are doing everything they can to provide their family with food produced in sustainable ways without pesticides....in ways in which the actual producer is not being exploited.

If (as you say), all things being equal, you'd like to be treatment free.....consider that there may be a market out there that would actually like to buy honey from untreated and unfed bees....a market that (unlike you or me), has little time to do something like keep their own treatment free bees, but plenty of money to throw at the problem of obtaining honey from those that do. I see no reason why one couldn't (with a little work) double the price from that of NZ organic honey....I presume the organic standards allow feeding with organic cane sugar, and treating with essential oils and/or acids? Aren't there customers of NZ organic honey that would love to pay more for something that hasn't been fed or medicated...a true sustainable treatment free apiary?

Don't interpret this as disrespect for the customer...they are the ones that make the whole thing go round....I very much appreciate that _they_ appreciate what we all do.

deknow
 
#129 ·
Seems like it would be a whole lot simpler, a whole lot better for the consumer and the producer and a lot more straightforward to define what it is you are assuring your customer is not in the honey and then test the product before marketing it. The most judicious of producers may have their bees rob out a nearby hive tainted with antibiotics or miticides or perhaps foundation they were using has traces of such chemicals and despite an honest attempt you arent truly delivering an honest product to your customers despite all of your efforts. You know where I am coming from Dean. I refuse to accept the notion that because I dont meet someones strict definition of treatment free that there is one iota of difference between honey where treatments were used judiciously and responsibly and those who claim that the title of treatment free bestows upon thier honey any more purity, in either case you are taking someones word for what might or might not be in it. There are two entirely different issue at play here. A. Those who feel that being treatment free helps them breed better and stronger bees and B. Those who feel that being treatment free actually makes their honey better. I won't argue the former but I will argue the latter is not necessarily so.
 
#128 · (Edited)
A good post Dean. NZ already produces un mite treated honey because a good slab of the South Island has been varroa free, until this season. It has not been marketed as chemical free though because the beekeepers don't know where their bees have been, it is not differentiated from any other honey.

We also don't use some of the more nasty mite treatments like, say coumaphos, treatment is not an issue in the publics minds most of them have total faith in the product. Honey here is tested before sale to very demanding standards because the bulk of our honey is exported, we have to comply with the highest standards from around the world. NZ honey, in bulk anyway, does command a premium price around the globe because it is not adulterated or tampered with or even filtered for pollen, little sugar is fed here, and no corn syrup, we have a good rep.

The comments about accepting 20% losses for double the price for honey, do make sense from a commercial perspective. For me, it's a hobby and I don't have an approved honey processing plant so cannot legally sell honey, that why I'm selling bees and queens. Most bees are sold early in the season, or at least that's when they are worth the most. So if I had to spend the first part of the season making up my own losses it would damage my income and losses of 5% would be the most I would be prepared to wear. For a honey producer it would be of less financial importance, he could do early splits and the bees would recover before the main honey flow anyway. There is also a lot of crop pollination done and for that you want good hives early, a winter deadout would kill a major part of many beekeepers earnings on that hive.

Oh, glad you met Roy Arbon! Quite a character yes! :) He's wrong on the Maori beekeepers though I know several.
 
#130 ·
Is there a difference between a shirt made by an American union worker, and the same shirt, the same materials, the same quality, made by a slave in some far eastern country?

Is there a difference between an ipod maufactured in China (as they are now) and the same ipod manufactured in the U.S. (as they are now advertising they are going to do next year....one product)?

For a while there was a ruling in Pennsylvania that because in lab tests milk produced without synthetic hormones could not be differentiated from milk that had been, the the producers could not advertise this as a difference between the products. The producers could not advertise that they produced milk without synthetic hormones...this was later reversed.

I'm not sure why customers that want to buy honey from operations that aren't treating shouldn't be able to.

If you want to market premium honey based on a testing regimen, then I say go for it. Most organic standards are first and foremost based on practices, not testing standards.

You are selling a commodity product at a commodity price. Your price is subject to market forces beyond your control that include the supply/demand of honey in your own category, but of the worst stuff being sold at discount prices to be used in food processing. I'm not trying to be dramatic, and I'm not putting you down...I'm sure your product is well above average (although I doubt anyone could compete with Dee's honey on Penn State pesticide tests....out of 4 samples, one sample tested 1ppb coumaphos. All other samples and all other pesticides were below the limits of the tests). You should be getting a above average price....but you are selling as a commodity. Wouldn't it be great if we could do something about that :)

deknow
 
#137 ·
Is there a difference between a shirt made by an American union worker, and the same shirt, the same materials, the same quality, made by a slave in some far eastern country?
....and while we are talking about "implying" perhaps you could be more specific about why you used this analogy in response to my post? Has the conversation really morphed from honey purity to social awareness?
 
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