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"treatment treadmill"

60K views 241 replies 41 participants last post by  Joel 
#1 ·
in post #21, in the thread 'm bush on treatment-free', in the tfb forum, solomon parker writes:

"I do not want a first year beekeeper to start any way but treatment-free. Once on the treadmill, there's no good way to get off."

do any of you feel like you are stuck on a treadmill and can't get off?
 
#180 ·
Let's use a direct example, Formic Acid is used as a treatment. FA evaporates easily and is applied in such a way that as it evaporates the vapor permeates the whole hive. It condenses onto everything including combs, bees, and mites, hopefully in enough concentration to kill the mites but not the bees. Over the next day or so most of it re-evaporates and leaves the hive, and over the next few weeks whatever still may be there continues to evaporate until levels of FA in that hive have returned to the same very small levels that would be there naturally.

So Ace. If you bought a hive that had been treated with Formic Acid 6 months ago, how would chemical contamination prevent you attempting chemical free beekeeping?
 
#200 ·
So Ace. If you bought a hive that had been treated with Formic Acid 6 months ago, how would chemical contamination prevent you attempting chemical free beekeeping?
I am not a chemist but I do know that when high concentrations of a chemical are used the chemical combines with other components that may remain. Yes the formic acid may evaporate but what did it leave behind? Do you have proof that there are no residuals? I realize that formic acid may be a soft chemical by itself and could possible be used with out long lasting effects in the equipment but is there a beekeeper who treats only using formic acid? I doubt it. It is like saying I smoke but but I don't inhale.
 
#181 ·
Barry…I believe that you have stepped onto a different type of treadmill here….the final word treadmill. The dialog will swirl in semantic circles until motion sickness sets in. I have first hand experience. I suggest that you step off before you need a barf bag. ;)
 
#186 ·
The hive gets contaminated from bees bringing in stuff anyway.
Not my bees! The entrance to each of my hives is equipped with a full bee body scanner and contamination sensors. These will be required for all hives soon…..one of those food security things.
Decontamination units are optional.
 
#194 · (Edited)
please check the forum every hour! :D
Sort of reminds me of Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School.
‘Waitress…bring us a pitcher of beer every thirty minutes until the first one of us passes out….then bring one every fifteen minutes.’
I loved that guy!
(it probably was first every fifteen minutes, then five....but you get the idea)
 
#209 ·
....the antibiotic resistance study that is being discussed on another thread (our of the Moran lab at Yale) documents measurable heritable effects of the use of antibiotcs that is separate from residues. Not all long term effects of treatments are attributal to the persistence of residues.

deknow
 
#210 ·
Agreed but not all treatments are antibiotics.

My point was it is too broad to say that once a hive has been treated, with anything, it can never go treatment free.

In addition, even the longer term affects of antibiotic use need not stop a hive going treatment free. The effects of antibiotic use may be long term, but they are not permanent. Balance will eventually be restored, not only to bioflora, but also at the genome level.

There have been a number of threads here where people have purchased hives that have been treated with antibiotics for years. The new owner stops treatment, then looses some hives to AFB. But of the survivors, the owner has been able to maintain a treatment free regime (seemingly) successfully.

There was even a thread where a guy wanted to be treatment free but when he stoppped antibiotic use of his newly purchsed hives, some showed AFB. He then started a thread asking what to do and was advised by some to treat another time or two to get rid of the AFB. He said he would do that, and THEN go treatment free. Never heard the eventual outcome though.
 
#213 ·
There was even a thread where a guy wanted to be treatment free but when he stoppped antibiotic use of his newly purchsed hives, some showed AFB. He then started a thread asking what to do and was advised by some to treat another time or two to get rid of the AFB.
Isn't it a given that if a colony has an outbreak of AFB the options are burning it or treating it endlessly with antibiotics until another outbreak? I am trying to understand the logic of going treatment free after an AFB outbreak unless it is a laboratory attempt to breed AFB resistant bees.
My point was it is too broad to say that once a hive has been treated, with anything, it can never go treatment free.
Where is that grey line? How do you instruct a newbie what to look for or how to tell when that grey line is over the edge. I know if a newbie already spent good money on new equipment he has the greatest chance of success going treatment free because he didn't start with a problem. Maybe you Oldtimer, Roland, Michael B and Michael P, Mark and host of others can judge what is safe and what is not but a newbie cannot.
 
#212 ·
I bought used equipment from an old man who was forced to quit by infirmity. Thirty splits made on that equipment out of thirty developed AFB. Pretty well shows he has been masking the disease with antibiotics and propagating it. I did not use antibiotics but shook them into new equipment with foundation. Come spring and summer we will see if that worked as well as it appears to have so far. Haven't seen a suspicious cell so far.
 
#214 ·
good luck vance. it had a very similar experience, but not on the scale that you have.

i had a hive abscond in my first year, and the frames looked pretty bad. i happened to catch them, and put them into new equipment.

they made it just fine.
 
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