Questions About The "Small Cell Studies"

[Barry]

Sorry. I use only SC comb. So it's a good thing.

[Michael Bush]

Since the question seems to come up a lot, I thought I would clarify a bit.

Rationalization Theories on Small Cell Success

This isn't to talk about my theories of why small cell works or others who are doing it, but the theories of those who want to explain away the success of small cell beekeepers with theories that are more in line with their model of the world. There seem to be many theories from those who are not doing small cell and who want to explain the success of small cell beekeepers in some other frame of reference that makes sense to them. I will address a few of these here.

AHB. One explanation, which is consistent with other beliefs held by these individuals is that small cell beekeepers must have Africanized Honey Bees. Since they believe that AHB build smaller cells and EHB do not, in their model of the world, that explains both the size of the cells, and the success with Varroa as well as early emergence and other issues to do with Varroa. The problem with this theory is that many of us are keeping bees in Northern climates, where we are told AHB can't survive, are selling them to others, who comment on how gentle our bees are, have them regularly inspected, without any complaints of aggressiveness or suspicions of AHB from inspectors, and indeed most of us are collecting local survivor stock when we can, which supposedly could not survive in the North if it was AHB. And I have had samples tested at the request of someone doing a study on bee genetics which says they are not. The fact is we are not raising AHB and don't want to. Whether or not Dee Lusby, or others in AHB areas end up with some AHB genes, is a different discussion, but it's irrelevant to the fact that most of us do not live in AHB areas and are not raising AHB and are not interested in raising AHB.

Survivor stock. While it's true that many small cell and natural cell beekeepers try to breed from survivors, this is simply the logical thing to do. You raise bees that can survive where you are. Many people are doing that even if they are not doing small cell and even if it's not for Varroa issues, but just wintering issues. Typically the people using this argument quote the losses that the Lusby's had while regressing as evidence that they just bred stock that could survive the Varroa. This seems plausible if the Lusbys were the only example, but I had no large losses while regressing and started with commercial stock and when I did the same thing on large cell, I lost all of them to Varroa several times over. Starting again with new commercial stock on small cell I have lost none to Varroa. This is consistent with other people's experience that I know of as well. Considering how many people are working so diligently to try to breed resistant stock, I think it's beyond believability that so many of us small cell beekeepers just blundered into Varroa resistant stock with so little effort. If these people really believe genetics is the cause of our success then they should be begging us to sell them breeder queens. Since they are not, I do not think even they believe this. I certainly don't believe this, although I would love to. It would greatly increase the value of my queens. Since I regressed and since my Varroa issues went away, I then did start breeding from survivor stock I could find around, because I want bees acclimatized to my environment. I have better wintering when I do this. I did not see any change in Varroa issues when doing this as Varroa problems had already disappeared.

Blind faith. This isn't so much a reason being given that it works, as much as discounting that it does work and trying to find a reason people THINK it works. It seems that a lot of detractors of small cell think that the whole group of small cell beekeepers are fanatically religious followers of Dee Lusby. The implication is that we are deluded into believing it is working when it is not. Anyone who comes to one of the many organic meetings where Dee Lusby, Dean Stiglitz, Ramona Hershembiemer, Sam Comfort, I and others speak would see the absurdity of this. As would anyone who participates in the organic beekeepers Yahoo group. We often have different observations and often disagree, as any honest beekeepers do. If we all spouted some standard party line, then this might be a legitimate concern, but while we agree on the basic concepts, we often disagree on details and we have all had different experiences probably caused our locations and our climate as well as just chance. While I have great respect for all of the above listed speakers and particularly for Dee, as she and her late husband Ed pioneered this work, I have never been in total agreement with her or the rest. The four things I think we all agree on are: No treatments; natural or small sized cells; local adapted stock; and avoiding artificial feed. But while Sam and I are pretty happy with simple foundationless, Dee is more focused on actual specific cell size. While Dee will feed barrels of honey to her bees, I have neither the time nor the honey for such things and will, if they are faced with not enough honey for winter stores, feed sugar. While Dean and Ramona like natural comb, their experience has been that they had to force the bees down with some Honey Super Cell first to get them regressed, while I've often had good luck with just foundationless regressing quickly. This may be related to the genetics or the cell size in the hives that are the source of my packages and their packages. It is difficult to say. The point is, there is no "party line" other than Dee's insistence that the Organic Beekeeping list doesn't get sidetracked talking about "organic treatments" when the topic of the list is keeping bees without treatments.

Personally, I have never been able to figure out the resistance to small cell or natural comb. While the large cell beekeepers are obsessed with Varroa, I get to just keep bees. While the large cell beekeepers are still searching for a solution to Varroa, I get to work on my queen rearing and finding easier ways to do less work. Since letting the bees build comb is easier than using foundation, and since those of us doing that are not having Varroa issues, I would think there would be a lot more interest in doing the same. The battle cry of the detractors, of course, is either that there is no study to prove it works, or that there are studies that show that it doesn't. All of this is, of course, irrelevant to me since I'm still not having Varroa issues anymore. I've been hearing such things about everything from Vitamin C and zinc helping with colds to small cell reducing mite counts all my life. In the end it's not about mite counts, although mine have dropped to almost none over time, it's about survival. No one seems to want to count living hives instead of mites, but it's a much easier thing to count. If you put one beeyard on small cell and leave another on large cell, then it seems like the "last man standing" would be an easy way to decide. If one yard dies out and the other does well, that would seem a much better way to decide than counting mites.

[beemandan]

Originally Posted by Barry

Sorry. I use only SC comb. So it's a good thing.

'Nuff said

[beemandan]

Originally Posted by Michael Bush

Personally, I have never been able to figure out the resistance to small cell or natural comb.

In my case it's pretty simple. I was open minded. I tried them both (small cell and natural cell). SC didn't solve any problems. It added a number of new ones. Natural cell has been consistantly 5.1mm and larger (there was one small clump of cells in one hive that were closer to 5.0). They draw what I believe is excessive drone cells....yes I know what Clarence Collison says...it just doesn't jibe with what I see in my hives. Even Dee Lusby recommends culling frames with excessive drone cells.

I know and hear of a sizeable number of beekeepers who successfully keep traditional cell hives without treatment. What is the point in going through the gyrations to force your bees to produce brood artificially small cells?

Personally, I have never been able to figure out what possessed the Lusbys put their bees on small cell in the first place.

[DRUR]

Originally Posted by beemandan

They draw what I believe is excessive drone cells....yes I know what Clarence Collison says...it just doesn't jibe with what I see in my hives. Even Dee Lusby recommends culling frames with excessive drone cells.

I have been up to my neck in alligators recently, and although I am trying to climb out of the pit I am not quite there yet. I do want to put my 2cents worth in, for what its worth; and neither do I want anyone to think I quit participating after getting my ears trimmed by beemandan and barry because of my inappropriate response to one of Dan's postings. Unfortunately, I guess I don't wear my feeling on my shoulders, so those that find my responses disgusting, be prepared to get disgusted. Now for the issue at hand then I am off to fight the gators again.

I am wondering how pertinent mites on drones really are since a mass destruction of the drone population is not necessarily harmful (but rather possibly beneficial) to the colony. I am also wondering how helpful it is to remove those mites which are more inclined to attack drone brood as opposed to those more inclined to attacking worker brood? Isn't the norm that if you destroy mites with arcacides, then you eventually allow the mites which are immune to arcacides flourish? What about removing mites that have a tendency to attack only drone brood, would this not possibly allow mites who are more inclined to attack workers to flourish?

Originally Posted by beemandan

What is the point in going through the gyrations to force your bees to produce brood artificially small cells?

RESULTS!

Contrary to what all the experts have said, none of my 'small cells' colonies show any substantial mite counts. The only colony which I have had problems with is one which I have had problems regressing (A superceeded MH queen). My mite counts on this colony (24 hr. drop) went from -0-, to 9, to 45-49 (2 seperate drops). This colony is now totally off of large cell and the 24hr. count was insignificant. However, in the month of August, when temperatures here, consistently stayed above 98F and we were in a dearth period, brood rearing ceased. I think this environmental factor can affect mite populations, as brood rearing ceases for about 1 month. When I kept bees during the 80s mites weren't a consideration, so I usually stayed out of the colonies because they were generally more aggressive during the heat and dearth. I am wondering if maybe Ross, Hambone, and some other experienced Texas beeks could weigh in on this and let me know if this is a natural occurrence for Texas. I know that when I was in south central Kentucky during '96 that the temperatures rarely exceeded 94-95F, a big difference from what I see here in my part of East Texas.

When I get a chance I will again do 24hr. mite drop count on all my colonies for comparison. Unfortunately, even if the previous large cell colonies county is substantially lower, there are to many factors (August heat) which could have affected the lower count as opposed to genetics and/or small cell.

Back to the Gator Pit.

[JBJ]

How about an alternative hypothesis, just for comparison, it would be interesting to take SC bees that are doing well on their own, and see how they do on regular cell? I would wager there is a good chance they would still thrive.

My SC friends in this region seem to as many mites or more than my regular cell colleagues.

[beemandan]

Originally Posted by JBJ

take SC bees that are doing well on there own, and see how they do on regular cell

I think, in a rather informal sense, Bill Owens will be doing that. He's the small cell beekeeper who worked with Jennifer Berry on her sc studies. The last I heard, he planned to use sc until his current stock of sc foundation was gone, then he was going lc.

[Barry]

Originally Posted by JBJ

take SC bees that are doing well on there own, and see how they do on regular cell?

I know Dennis Murrell has already done this and if I remember right, they crashed after going back on LC. He has changed his site around now and has removed most of his SC content.

[Riki]

Originally Posted by Barry

I know Dennis Murrell has already done this and if I remember right, they crashed after going back on LC. He has changed his site around now and has removed most of his SC content.

I remember something somewhat different, in his words the bees would perish if he didn't help them (it's almost the same and it's just my remembering,maybe I'm wrong...)

[Riki]

Originally Posted by JBJ

The table on pg 50 of this months BC clearly shows more brood area and less mites for the "conventional cell".

I just watched the video at HAS (http://www.heartlandbees.com/berry2007.htm), and by the 42º minute she said that the ending bee populations were significantly higher in the small cell group. She also said, when she was talking about the total amount of brood (cm²) "we also had more brood, obviously we had more bees", hence I understood that the brood area was also higher in the small cell group.