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Treatment Free - How long does it take?

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#1 ·
I'm preparing for a basic informational presentation on treatment options - including treatment free. I'm trying to present just the basic unvarnished facts to the best of my ability without spin one way or the other.

People who have achieved success doing treatment free usually seem to experience a period of relatively high losses before survival numbers get to the point where they can concentrate on much more than just keeping their apiaries viable.

Assuming that you start out (and continue) with bees that have decent genetic potential, have enough colonies for the project to be viable, and propagate from the survivors - how long does it take before the apiary stops struggling to survive and can actually become productive?

Another related question is this - other than finding and catching your own, are there any reliable sources for people to buy those kinds of bees?

This is a serious question, and I believe that there is a serious answer out there - probably several.

Thanks for your help.
 
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#2 ·
I have two sources of data that are responsive to your question. One, I have operated an experimental TF apiary in a remote location for more than a decade. I stock this yard with feral swarms caught from those issuing from the caves and live oak tree holes on the mountain.

The mite/disease resistance of the hived feral swarms is no worse and no greater than my treated colonies. The TF system has adapted over the decade of the experiment, I hive them on drawn foundationless nucs or deeps, and build them up with a combination of drawn and undrawn foundationless. I use drawn comb less than four years old for the started boxes.

I hive a combination of May swarms and July swarms. I typically have 4-8 colonies in the yard, they have several thousand acres of uninterupted State Park land to forage for wildflower.

My mite population spikes in September. If I am observing a heavy mite load w/ "crawler" bees, I move the hives to a recovery yard and treat with a fumigant (over the years: OAV, OA dribble, MAQS, Menthol/Thymol); and with fumagilin if I see crawlers but no DWV. I've had a feral hive with the now rare tracheal mites (2009, determined by dissection) -- and I assume the trach mite mean the resistance bred in commercial strain is not fully present in the wild population.

About half the recovery hives survive. The TF hives express mites in the first (some cases) and invariably in the second year. Most TF hive supercede or dwindle in June of the second year, they do not survive. I see the frequency of queen super-sedure as high in TF experiment -- and many of the supersedure efforts seem to fail in a virgin/ non-productive queen dead-end. Second year hives that go to swarm are split and nuc'd. I use about 1/2 of the nucs for commercial treated increase, and retain the others to combine with dwindling hives in the TF experiment. Second year hives usually enter the fall weak and low on stores, these succumb in the 2nd year winter/3rd year spring.

I do not cage queens for brood breaks, I am not sure this is effective, as the research shows DWV titer in queens is enormous. The queen eats xxx her weight every day, and this loads her body with virus. A brood break does not fix the underlying damage to the queen's vigor.

Supersedure means the queen genetics revert to the background norm. I don't believe 4 (or even 8) colonies is sufficient to cause epidemic cross-infection with mites, but this could be a factor in the failure of the colonies to thrive. I live in a foggy, cool coastal climate; and temperatures are below optimum for drone flight for much of the fog season in the summer. This cool fog might explain some of the virgin queen failure I see; and not be the direct impact of DWV/Mites.

Second set of data are the small groups of new beeks I train. 75% of the refuse to treat because they come to me from a "organic" ethos. Their hives dwindle and die in the second summer. Now new beeks kill hives irregardless, so this data is less useful.

The feral bees show a combination of Italian and Caucasian/Russian characteristics. Workers bees tend to be highly variable in size and color in a single colony. I do not attempt to use AHB-behavior swarms in the TF --- I strongly do NOT believe "Arizona desert Africans" are a viable path forward for small scale beekeeping. I attended beekeeper funerals in Costa Rica, Guatemala and Mexico due to the Latin American Africans.
 
#3 ·
What do your September mite counts look like. I had two hives in one yd checked for mites last week and they had 21 mites and 27 mites in the sample of about 300 bees. They also had one and one half frames of capped brood.

The deadouts I am seeing recently oft times have wooden queen cages in them which means they were queens I put in splits in April this past Spring.
 
#4 ·
How long does it take? Just a few months if you are particularly bad at it. Sorry just couldn't resist.

Just a gut feeling form what I have read. woudl guess 4 to 5 years to see the losses begin to taper off. Getting bees from other places does not seem to be a great idea. From what I have sen local bees adapting to local conditions is one of the battles. Bees that do well in one location do not necessarily fair well in another. So any specific location may be able to get bees from any other location and still do well. but the next person would see very different results.

Any progress in the efforts to breed disease resistant bees are a factor of their own. If it where me I would look at those sources for the most reliable lines of bees for going treatment free. can't really tell you why just my gut on the subject. I am not sure I would even mention that in a presentation. I certainly would not if I wanted the presentation to only be fairly reliable confirmed information. IF that where my criteria I think I would simply tell others. pick you poison and enter battle. I don't think blood lines etc are effective enough to make a difference at this time. The one that will work is the one you breed yourself through increase from the best.
 
#14 · (Edited)
Yes, the core successful behavioral response I see in my region to Varroa is nearly constant supersedure and swarming.

You see this in both AHB strains (which are present in my area) and in more nearly Italian hybrid mutts. I thought I had become a "god" of swarm traps, since I am so successful (after 10 years of false starts), but I think the arrival of AHB genetics has changed the bees to find my traps, and I am benefiting from the bees shift in behavior.

I've stated before I believe the maintenance of a highly selected and fragile genotype like Minnesota Hygenic is going to be impossible in the wild due to the constant "entropy" of a obligate outbreeding free-flying insect.

The simplest approach that adds fitness to the population is reversion to frequent swarming. Swarming has been selected against by breeders seeking to domesticate the bees as it reduces production and complicates management. The reversion to frequent and rapid colony division is an simple and robust reassertion of the feral genotype.

Swarming defeats Varroa by maintaining vigorous young queens uncontaminated with sublethal levels of virus. It provides a strategic broodbreak, and encourages new comb production. In my region, with its long summer drought and dearth, it is also going to encourage thrifty bees with small clusters. An "Italian-behavior" swarm in July is not going to enter winter in equilibrium -- too much brood and not enough winter stores.

A different climate (with a long, productive summer, instead of a drying one) might encourage a longer season of colony division.

In some ways, what I am seeing is the "Anti-Ives". The natural, successful wild colonies are small, compact young ones. Hiving these, and maintaining their ethology would encourage duplicating many nucs, single deeps or double mediums. Substituting colony numbers for towers.

Not much honey, but a king's ransom in pollination contracts (though you need to combine to make the contractual frame count).

The concept of local maximums of fitness and fragility of genotype can be illustrated. This concept has been explored for many organisms. Consider a hypothetical colony of F1 Minnesota Hybrids, these are wild-outbred, and might be at 75% on a scale of genotype "complexity". They have high "fitness" or say 50% of the colonies survive. Illustrated by the red dot. In future swarming, the sucessor colonies are going to reduce in complexity as they revert to the population norm (or 50% complexity where a minimum number of colonies survive). This reduces fitness. However, some local maximum of a very basic and robust genotype (say AHB) has higher fitness than the norm, and the meta-population genetics will gravitate to this easy to achieve (low slope to climb) local maximum. The movement to local maximums with intermediate fitness (sometimes quite low) is well documented in many species and in ecosystems. I believe we are seeing this in my local feral population, an all-purpose, not very productive, but highly robust social unit. The individual bees colonies sicken and die, but the meta-population survives by wild fecundity.


Remember when researchers fully described the honey bee genome, they were quite shocked to find immune response genes were deleted in comparison to other non-social insects. The evolutionary imperative toward simplicity and generalization, substituting social organization, has been operating on bees for a very long time.

Swarming could (and this is speculative) be controlled by a single gene expression of one component of Queen Mandibular Pheromone. QMP is well studied as a negative control on swarming, and is made up a collection relatively simple chemicals -- at least 3 very similar unbranched carbon chains. Minnesota Hygenic has been studied with "quantitative trait loci" and has identified (from memory here) 17 separate gene locations as central to behavior. This hypothetical difference (one gene coding for a QMP component) vs. multi-loci for hygenic explains the complexity of the genotype vector.
 
#6 ·
I started the year off purchasing 4 hives that had been TF for a few years and one came from stock that's been TF for decades. Perhaps they weren't completely TF as the previous owner did do sugar dusting. I've left them alone for the most part, I believe all of them eventually superceded their queens this year as they were 3-4 years old. One hive I'm not certain of though, but all had typical mite build ups by late summer. Perhaps this says something about sugar dusting. The hives that superceded later in the season I've left alone since I figure the brood break was sufficient. One hive recently collapsed, they requeened in late July and were building back up nicely but I hadn't had time to get to their new location for about 5 weeks. I don't really advocate TF, but I try to be as treatment free as possible, but from what I've seen in my location, it could take awhile. I don't really a see defined answer for the question either, location will play a key role as well as density of other apiaries.
 
#7 ·
There are, I suppose, several aspects here. I was treatment free for 20 years before the Varroa showed up. It took nothing. I was treatment free on large cell and they all died from Varroa. I put commercial bees on wax dipped PermaComb (4.8mm if you average the bottom and the top diameter of a tapered cell) and that was the last time I lost them to Varroa. From when I put the packages on the fully drawn, wax coated small cell to when I had no longer had any Varroa issues, five minutes probably... but winter was still an issue (and seems to get worse with packages as time goes on). So, some feral bees helped with that. Time to raise enough feral queens to requeen everything--a season.
 
#8 ·
I'm preparing for a basic informational presentation on treatment options - including treatment free. I'm trying to present just the basic unvarnished facts to the best of my ability without spin one way or the other.

People who have achieved success doing treatment free usually seem to experience a period of relatively high losses before survival numbers get to the point where they can concentrate on much more than just keeping their apiaries viable.

Assuming that you start out (and continue) with bees that have decent genetic potential, have enough colonies for the project to be viable, and propagate from the survivors - how long does it take before the apiary stops struggling to survive and can actually become productive?

This is a serious question, and I believe that there is a serious answer out there - probably several.
David,

There is no simple answer to your question. It will be different in every place. In the following account I've restated your presuppositions, in order to supply a full picture. The difficulty is in quantifying your 'decent' and 'enough'. I don't suppose this account of the key factors is comprehensive, but I think it gives an idea of the problems involved in supplying a simple answer. I'm sure it could be better organised as well.

The key factors are: initial genetics, local genetics and breeding skills.

Roughly; if have have viable (self-sufficient) initial genetics, and you can preserve that self-sufficiency through effective breeding; you are in a great position

Whether you can preserve the key traits depends on:

a) The number of colonies you have

b) Your breeding skills

c) The background local genetics:

If you are surrounded by treating beekeepers your bees will be constantly downgraded, and you'll need to have good numbers, and keep dedicated drone hives to counter them. You will be less likely to have surviving ferals around you. You will have to establish a strong tf bridgehead and defend it hard. That will take good bee raising skills, including the ability to distinguish the key traits early.

If you are not, or, better, have a strong feral population, matters are entirely different.

I'd suggest making a three-way diagram, starting with an arrow indicating sound initial genetic input, and showing how these four key factors relate to one another.

This is best viewed as a 'new start' project. Changing a long established treated population over to tf is a different matter - but the same principles apply.

Mike (UK)
 
#9 ·
Of course - location location location...

I must say though I'm a bit surprised at the relative dearth of answers. So far it seems to be 1-1 Never vs Immediately (on small cell.) No offense to anyone but I'm not counting speculation and first year (or second or third) results. I know there are others, I wish they would chime in.
 
#12 ·
I look at it like there are 2 methods:

#1 Start with bees of proven mite resistance: B Weaver, Purvis or best yet local treatment free bees.

#2 Start with a lot (maybe 20) hives and use the Bond Method and breed from the survivors.

The key is that the neighborhood has to be free of treated colonies or you will have to have a lot of hives and do a lot of work to maintain your genetics.
 
#13 ·
I look at it like there are 2 methods:

#1 Start with bees of proven mite resistance: B Weaver, Purvis or best yet local treatment free bees.

#2 Start with a lot (maybe 20) hives and use the Bond Method and breed from the survivors.
This is a good early distinction to make. The question cannot be addressed without it, and my response addressed only the first part.

The key is that the neighborhood has to be free of treated colonies or you will have to have a lot of hives and do a lot of work to maintain your genetics.
Ideally we would get figures attached - for the moment the best we can say is 'the fewer treated/more feral the better'. Its up to us, in any location, to move the odds in our own favour by raising numbers, especially of strong drone hives. For what its worth there seems to be good reason to understand that just a small percentage of mite-managers is enough to be very helpful.

To return to the question as David initially posed it:

I'm preparing for a basic informational presentation on treatment options - including treatment free. I'm trying to present just the basic unvarnished facts to the best of my ability without spin one way or the other.
Such facts are thin on the ground, and in each case report only local conditions. You've said you are not interested in 'speculation' but well reasoned accounts go a long way toward explaining why that is, and how to manage the difficulties. Presenting those facts would be very helpful.

People who have achieved success doing treatment free usually seem to experience a period of relatively high losses before survival numbers get to the point where they can concentrate on much more than just keeping their apiaries viable.
Some people do. With others it seems to be like falling off a log. Again, the rationale outlined here indicates why that is.

Assuming that you start out (and continue) with bees that have decent genetic potential, have enough colonies for the project to be viable, and propagate from the survivors - how long does it take before the apiary stops struggling to survive and can actually become productive?
Can you see now why more information is needed before a quantitive response can be made?

Can you see too why much depends on the skill and effort made by the individual? There are plenty of reports of failures. In most cases close questioning reveals basic errors in understanding the processes of population husbandry.

Another related question is this - other than finding and catching your own, are there any reliable sources for people to buy those kinds of bees?
That too depends where you are - here in the UK no. There things are different. Glen Apiaries website appears to be very helpful in respect of purpose-bred 'resistant' bees. Others may know of more. If you state your locality you may get local responses. Getting into the swarm collection and cut-out business may be a good way to pick up wild genetics.

This is a serious question, and I believe that there is a serious answer out there - probably several.
I agree, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to think and talk about it.

Mike (UK)
 
#21 ·
Thanks for the link, as I had lost that account. A June 2012 posting cites infestation at 2-7 per hundred in a sugar roll. This translates to 6-21 per 300 in the standard American unit volume. This is at or above the "economic threshold" cited in many sources. Hives at the economic threshold in June, implies a September mite load which will be enormous. This likely explains the 37% loss recorded in the experiment in the 2012-13 winter.
 
#17 ·
I'm preparing for a basic informational presentation on treatment options - including treatment free. I'm trying to present just the basic unvarnished facts to the best of my ability without spin one way or the other.
if i were asked to discuss this topic in a presentation i would try to make the point that keeping bees post varroa without treatments (and without supplemental feeding as is usually the case with most going tf) is a relatively new approach, practiced by a minority of beekeepers, and yielding highly variable results when it comes to survivability and productivity.

People who have achieved success doing treatment free usually seem to experience a period of relatively high losses before survival numbers get to the point where they can concentrate on much more than just keeping their apiaries viable.
this is also variable. i don't have a reference for these, but i think i've read here that kirk webster's losses for example are more cyclical, and there are others like myself who did not have a lot of losses to start with, and yet others whose losses came after 2-3 years.

Assuming that you start out (and continue) with bees that have decent genetic potential, have enough colonies for the project to be viable, and propagate from the survivors - how long does it take before the apiary stops struggling to survive and can actually become productive?.
i would direct any prospects who want to pursue tf to someone in their area who has been doing it for a realistic estimate of how it may work. if there is not anyone with experience to ask, i would say the prospect would be charting new territory. i say this because i believe it is easier to go tf in some locations and not as easy in others, quality of forage and availability of feral drones being the difference.

Another related question is this - other than finding and catching your own, are there any reliable sources for people to buy those kinds of bees?.
i'll have such bees for sale next year that i believe will do well in this area, but they won't be coming with any guarantees. my feeling is that while genetics are important they do not trump other factors like location, nutrition, and management practices.

best of luck with your presentation david.
 
#22 ·
Squrepeg - Thanks, that's helpful - sounds reasonably successful to me, and enough time span to be significant. Where did/do you get your queens? Can you sum up your cultural practices briefly? If you don't want to go into it here for any reason feel free to just send me a message.
 
#23 ·
you're welcome david, and i don't mind sharing here.

after a rocky start that first summer with some old hives in rotten boxes that had been treated with antibiotics for years......

i started acquiring bees from a fellow in the next county over from me. at the time i hadn't really thought much about being tf or not but as luck would have it this guy had been raising bees tf since the mid-nineties.

he and his father started the operation by locating several bee trees on the side of a ridge that overlooked their farm. i believe they cut out about five colonies and increased them to the point of selling queens and nucs.

i've purchased several nucs and a few queens from this supplier, but now i am propagating my own from them, plus i catch a stray swarm in my traps from time to time. i try to maintain 12 production colonies here at home and have a second location about five miles away for nucs.

the avoiding of supplemental feeding (except on rare occasions as needed) was inspired by mike bush.

i run all 10 frame langs, single deeps with medium supers, solid bottom boards with bottom entrances, inner covers notched front and back with screens, and telescoping outer covers.

i am on a ridgetop but within flying distance of the tennesse river, and there is quite a diversity of flora with the blooms overlapping bewtween the valley and the mountain. roughly 2/3'rds of my area is wooded and the remaining third is mostly pasture with a little row cropping. i'm almost positive that there are unmanaged colonies living in the woods around here because i can see them coming and going when i place wet supers out to get cleaned up.

i placed my hives about 100' from a pond, facing southeast on sloping terrain, and they have a good wind break all around but especially behind them to the northwest. they get full sun all day and are shaded in the late afternoon.

i make sure to have a beetle trap in each box, using vegetable oil with some rotten banana juice and a little apple cider vinegar mixed in.

these bees are a bit swarmy, but as i get more comb for checkerboarding i'm getting a handle on that.

this was my first season to try grafting, and i managed to get one round off toward the end of our main flow.

from a feasibility standpoint i got slightly into the black this year for the first time with the honey selling quickly and total receipts nearing $4000. i bought all of my equipment assembled and painted, so someone could be profitable sooner if they made their own.

i'm shooting for a little more honey production next year but not much, as my time is limited for a sideline venture and i want to focus more attention toward queens and nucs.

my approach to beekeeping is still a work in progress and i am always looking for ways to improve, but this is kind of where i find myself at the present time.

sorry for rambling on...:)
 
#28 ·
After about 850 reads in the 18 days this thread has been going there are only about 6 significant answers to the question of "How long did it take your treatment free apiary to become productive?"

Those six answers range from:

JW Chestnut having a 10 year TF experiment which is not yet successful.

Mike Bispham - Still working on it in his 3rd year, with the caveat that honey could have been harvested, but was left for the bees or redistributed. - fair enough Mike?

Juhani Lunden's TF apiary took over 12 years.

Solomon Parker 2-3 years.

Squarepeg - Moderately productive from the start while making increase most of 4 years.

Michael Bush - Immediate success on small cell foundation.

Here is my summary so far - "Such a small number of people report productive treatment free apiaries in this thread that the result is statistically insignificant."

If there is more data that is not being reported I would really like to hear it.
 
#29 ·
Since I've never used mite treatments, or done mite counts (since counts remove mites - which some could consider interference in the mite/bee interaction). I've also not lost any colonies to mites, only lose younger, weaker colonies, to robbing, if I don't catch it in time.

It's been about twenty years since I've heard that without treatments my colonies wouldn't last more than three years. Haven't lost any, yet. They are productive, and continue to be. The first decade in my present location, I only ran colonies derived from one cut-out. They were difficult to work, often extremely defensive, extremely difficult to requeen, and quite possibly Africanized. More than a decade ago, I requeened them all with Italian Cordovan queens, sourced from C.F. Koehnen & Sons, Inc., Since then I've learned to raise my own queens, and have imported Italian Cordovan queens from several other suppliers, to maintain calm bees that are primarily Cordovan colored.

When a queen is only half Cordovan and does not have Cordovan coloration, I find that her workers can exhibit undesirable traits, most usually what's called "runniness". More rarely undesirable traits even occur in colonies headed by Cordovan colored queens. All the queens are open mated, so flooding the area with my chosen drones does help.

To answer your question, succinctly: It takes no time, at all.

I was treatment free when I began keeping bees in 1966, and I'm still treatment free in 2013.

In these past twenty years, plus, I've been in the Tucson/Marana area of the desert Southwest, U. S. A. And, quite likely, the climate in this location, may be the key to my continued TF success.
 
#30 ·
I've also not lost any colonies to mites, only lose younger, weaker colonies, to robbing, if I don't catch it in time.
I have this problem - late small nucs that I feel I should give a chance, and haven't boosted from stronger hives - mostly because I've felt I've hammered them all already in the effort to make maximum increase. Apart from screens, do you have any particular strategies Joseph?

Mike (UK)
 
#31 ·
Thanks Joseph. I didn't know you were treatment free. You do feed when needed though don't you?

I'm starting to suspect that location may be a key factor - if not the main factor - in successful treatment free beekeeping. Maybe some places have an important nutrient missing, or maybe it is the presence of environmental toxins, pathogens or vectors - or likely it is a whole cocktail of factors.
 
#34 · (Edited)
I'm starting to suspect that location may be a key factor - if not the main factor - in successful treatment free beekeeping. Maybe some places have an important nutrient missing, or maybe it is the presence of environmental toxins, pathogens or vectors - or likely it is a whole cocktail of factors.
Do you seriously doubt the analysis of initial genetics + ongoing breeding, taking account of the feral vs treatment-maintained factor?

Location is as you say important mostly - not entirely, but mostly - for those reasons.

Would you think you could take a long-term treated apiary, shift it to a better place, stop treating, and see any kind of success?

Lack of defence against varroa is due to lack of genes conferring defence behaviours. Period. Those genes have to be found somewhere, spread throughout the apiary, and maintained there.

Tf beekeeping is about having mite-managing bees. They are mite-managers because they have mite-managing genes. That's it. What is your objection to that analysis?

Mike (UK)
 
#33 ·
Mike (UK)
:eek:t:

With weaker nucs, I've discovered that those I keep in 3-frame mating nuc condo compartments, are usually doomed. But if I move them, soon enough, into my usual 5-frame nuc boxes, I can save many of them. My usual 5-frame nuc, has a 1-1/2" thick piece of polystyrene foam (with hole cut through it for Summer ventilation), for their bottoms, then covered with a piece of #8 galvanized hardware cloth, to keep the bees from damaging the foam. This time of year I place a small sheet of plastic between the hardware cloth and foam, to reduce infiltration of colder Winter air. All my full-size nucs have top/upper entrances. If they're in one box, I slide back the covers to create a narrow entrance slit (the bees have to push their way in and out). If I add an additional box, or two, I slide back the first box, to create the entrance slit. If I think the entrance slit is too much for them to defend, I use a piece of plastic sheet to block the excess entrance space. Sometimes the extra box is empty, to protect an inverted feeder jar and pollen sub patty.
 
#35 ·
David,

Yes, I do feed, when necessary. I sometimes add supplemental copper to syrup I feed to nuc starts. I spray Bt on empty, idle, comb to deter wax moth larvae. And, I round up toads that are attacking my hives. I can't think of anything else I do, that might be considered, "treatments".

There are many copper mines in our near vicinity. Perhaps local forage is boosted in this mineral (though I don't know of any tests done to verify this, or not). Or, if that might even make a significant difference to V-mite virulence.
 
#39 ·
You never know. It could be something that makes the bees more resilient, or something that works against the mites. It could be a micro-nutrient that encourages a fungus that produces a natural mitacide. But it seems that perhaps there might not be an easy solution that will simply work anywhere.
 
#37 ·
:eek:t:
Mike (UK),
Excellent interpretation of my Winter Nuc entrances. The pieces of black plastic I place across the entrances (as nuc entrance reducers), do often function as push-through curtains. This seems to really reduce episodes of total robbing kill-off.
 
#38 ·
Given that TF bees do not seem to relocate as well as expected I continue to think far too little attention and credit is given to the genetic diversity of the local mite. Much faster turnover of generations should result in much faster adaptation on the mite side rather than the bee side. I do not think it is the genes of the drones that contaminate a TF hive, but the genes of the attached mites. Treating mites favors the fastest breeders and the mites most prone to jump from hive to hive. The feral hive that survives may simply have the benefit of a well adapted mite.
Give me a well adapted parasite and the adaptation of the host is a secondary concern. Now if I could just find and retain that well adapted mite.

To answer David's guestion of how long; longer than now.
 
#47 ·
Sorry I misunderstood. Do you know of anyone who has been able to reproduce that result using permacomb? It seems that there was at least one study of small cell that did not seem to result in successful treatment free - but if they just used SC foundation, then it wasn't really apples to apples was it?
 
#41 ·
I'd like to share my experience. Started with 2 hives 2010 and treated them with formic and all the usual treatments and got 80lbs honey. Next year split to 4 hives treated in the spring with tactic. No other treatments. Thinking about going treatment free. Worried about losses. Only got 80 lbs honey. Spring 2012 all four hives bombers split to 8 treated all hives with formic. No other treatments. Got about 90 lbs honey. Disaster strikes lost 4 before the end of October. Lost the other four before the end of January. Decided to go treatment free. And bought 16 packages 2013 also bought old nasty used comb lots of disease likely hanging around in the comb. Fed each package 2 frames of honey and 1 frame of pollen. Also fed 2 gallons healthy bee formula to build their immune system. The rest drawn comb. In May split 4 of the packages and caught 1 swarm got 540 lbs of honey fed 2 more gallons of healthy bee formula. Home recipe using some essential oils. I don't consider this a treatment because it is only to stimulate the bees own immune system. One of the packages died after trying to supercede several times i have 16 strong hives going in to winter and four that might die. All in all i think it takes no time at all to be successful. As long as you know what to look for and how to do the shook swarm method for controlling all your different diseases i used the shook swarm method on three hives two built back up and are strong enough for winter. Planning on splitting up to 40 or so next year. I have been breaking even every year so far. I believe due to cost of increase. But i expect to be in full production with 400 hives in just 5 years from the time i went treatment free. I inspect my hives at least every 14 days.
 
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