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Riverderwent Survival Treatment Free 2017

98K views 620 replies 41 participants last post by  Riverderwent 
#1 ·
The fall honey harvest was today. I am going into the 2016-2017 winter with twenty-five hives. Twenty-two of the colonies are in hives with eight frame medium boxes. Most of those twenty-two hives have three eight frame medium boxes, but a few have either two or four boxes. Three of the twenty-five colonies are fall swarms. Two of those swarms are in a single four frame medium nuc box. The third swarm is in a six frame swarm trap. All of the twenty-five hives are "chock full" as we say here.

In a couple of weeks, I plan to move some resources around and super the four frame nucs. I don't use sugar or syrup. This is my baseline for 2017.
 
#157 ·
The Sacketts Go to Malibu and Become Treatment Free
Small Entrances. My entrances are ⅜” tall, not ¾”. Since I don't use OAV, I don’t need the taller entrance. Where I am, this means that I don’t have to put mouse guards on and take them off. More importantly, this means that I don't forget to put the mouse guards on and end up with a mouse in the hive.

Since I use eight frame boxes, the entrances are also only about 12½” wide. So my entrances are only about 4½ square inches. The small entrances reduce robbing, which reduces hive loss, the spread of disease, and stress on the bees. Since the brood chamber is relatively small (three eight frame medium boxes), these small entrances are not a traffic problem.

Monitoring Mite Levels. I don’t. (See, I can be brief.)

Replacing Queens Routinely. I generally let the bees decide when to supersede the queen. If the bees are particularly aggressive and the queen fails the hive tool test, they usually decide to replace her.

Hive Inspections. There are reasons to inspect a hive. Like splitting a hive that is about to swarm or making sure that a virgin queen got mated. But there are reasons not to inspect a hive when you don’t need to. When a hive is opened and boxes are removed or frames are pulled out, bees get killed, the risk of robbing is increased, and the colony is disrupted and agitated. They are disrupted and agitated if I smoke them, and they are disrupted more and agitated longer if I don’t. So I try not to go into a hive unless I need to. It seems the fewer times I go into a hive, the fewer times I need to.
 
#160 ·
Education needs a lifetime.

Not Feeding.
I changed last year to not feeding. Some hives needed food combs. To much rain, no main flow, the bees genetics showed they were bred for big brood areas so they did not reduce brood amount.

Housel Positioning.
Many opinions, no long time observations, no evidences. To me it´s like the small cell story. What is not a disadvantage maybe an advantage.

Small Entrances.
I have them all year round since 3 years. I made them even smaller in august and now in spring.
Still robbing and one let wasps in. Only screens will prevent that.
A strong hive should defend itself with small entrance.
If they do not genetics show they are bred for gentleness.

Monitoring Mite Levels.
Mentor says the same. I did no monitoring and it costs me 4 hives. Why? The mites outbred the bees and in autumn the winter bees were infested.
I could have prevented this with splitting late or imitating swarming with splitting.
You might say it´s natural selection. But the bees need more time to adapt to natural circumstances in my eyes. They need at least some years and a new local queen IMHO.

Replacing Queens Routinely.
I left it to the bees.
Bad matings because of the weather led to queen failures. This could be my timing but I had some which superseded on their own and it was the same.
One decided to supersede in winter.
The decisions the bees do are not always to their advantage.

Hive Inspections.
Please don´t be offended, David.
In a location where there are no ferals, where bees ( and the drones from open matings) have genetics which make them unable to survive and where infestation of mites and virus is high you need years until you can leave them alone.
The moment you have 2/3 survivors bred out of your managed survivors you may risk this.
The people here who do not watch what´s happening in the broodnest areas and who act when observing the first DWV bees in summer all have up to 100% losses.

2015 to 2016 I checked every week and splitted when they were the strongest and the first swarm cells seen. All survived the winter and got strong even without a brood brake.
2016 to 2017 I thought it not necessary but it was. I splitted too early because I was afraid of swarming and I let the hives become too strong. I had lost control and this cost me 3/4 of my colonies.

But this are just my circumstances.
Education needs a lifetime.:)
 
#165 · (Edited)
On the one hand, I lost another hive. This was one of the three small hive mentioned in post #1:
Three of the twenty-five colonies are fall swarms. Two of those swarms are in a single four frame medium nuc box. The third swarm is in a six frame swarm trap.
I'm officially calling winter, the results: 22 out of 25 hives survived. 12% winter losses.

On the other hand, my buddy and I did a cutout today, actually two hives four feet apart (on either side of a window) in an exterior wall. Piece of cake. It was about 59°F. They were interesting because the hive on the left was very aggressive. The bees chased me to the truck when we first started. They were less aggressive once they were in the bee vac. The hive was large, seven feet tall, 3 1/2" deep, about 22" wide, probably 2 or 3 years old. (No one had been living in the house for several years.) It had about ten pounds of honey.

But the other hive had a completely different personality. The bees were docile, very docile. The second hive was fair sized but only about half to two-thirds as large as the other hive. From the look of the comb and propolis and the debris in the bottom, it was about a year old. There was very little honey in the second hive. The bees were smaller. Several of the bees in the smaller hive had noticeable physical characteristics of viral infection.
 
#166 ·
But the other hive had a completely different personality. The bees were docile, very docile. The second hive was fair sized but only about half to two-thirds as large as the other hive. From the look of the comb and propolis and the debris in the bottom, it was about a year old. There was very little honey in the second hive. The bees were smaller. Several of the bees in the smaller hive had noticeable physical characteristics of viral infection.
Do you plan to isolate the possibly infected hive? I wouldn't want to add an infected hive to a yard full of healthy bees. But it would be interesting to see how they do.
 
#168 ·
Today we picked up three swarm clusters, "bees in a bucket", from folks calling. We also split a hive into 3 nucs plus the mother hive using three different frames from that hive that had capped queen cells on them. The first four swarm traps we checked all had bees coming in and out. Dogwood trees were already blooming. Bee season has started early this year.
 
#169 ·
Nine days ago we had 23 hives. Today, we have 35, plus a few swarms in traps that are still hanging on trees. A colony moved into a one box hive that was empty yesterday. We have not lost any more of the 22 (out of 25) that overwintered successfully. The hives are booming at the moment.
 
#170 ·
Good grief, that's amazing and terrific.

I still have not seen swarm #1 this year, but at the local bee club the other night we heard "there are a lot of them, and they are huge". One of the guys got a 6 pound swarm. My bees have been pulling in pollen and nectar since January, and I've been checking them every Saturday.

You've basically had a 50% increase in 9 days. That's just awesome.
 
#171 ·
I pulled two trapped swarms off of trees this evening and took them to one of the bee yards several miles away. We will rebox them tomorrow and put the traps back up. We use foundationless frames in the swarm traps, plus one drawn comb. This will form the nucleus of the new colony's brood chamber.
 
#175 ·
I saw it in a cutout today. Thirty pounds or so of fresh capped "spring" honey. Little or no winter honey in that hive. Lots of brood. When I was looking at the brood, I thought that's where the winter honey went. Another cutout today fifteen miles north of there and a little higher elevation had no capped spring honey to speak of. I have not noticed any new capped spring honey in my hives, but it's been a few days since I looked.
 
#174 ·
I am north west of River, about 2 hours, my one TF hive, from a cutout, is making wax, and capping. It got the second brood box two days ago, and the brood pattern on the comb is top to bottom, and side to side. No resources are being stored on the same frame as brood.
 
#176 ·
So we're reducing the hives at a yard that has been a poor performer both in honey and in survival and setting up another beeyard in what appears to be an excellent location. I'm buzzing with excitement. (Come on, you love it; you know you do.) We built and put out six new swarm traps on the lands around the new location. It is near two areas that have been productive swarm producers.

A nice thing about trapped swarms is that they rarely abscond or not take when moved or transferred to a new hive setup. Better for me than swarm clusters and much better than cutouts. But my hiving methods for cutouts have room for improvement. Swarm clusters are tricky in terms of using queen excluders yet allowing virgin queens to mate.
 
#178 ·
i've had traps out for about a week or so and set near my two main yards.

my bees discovered the traps pretty quickly after they were set, but since then there is absolutely no scouting going on by mine or any of the nearby ferals.

we're not quite there yet, but very close.
 
#181 ·
my bees discovered the traps pretty quickly after they were set, but since then there is absolutely no scouting going on by mine or any of the nearby ferals.

we're not quite there yet, but very close.
We've put 17 traps out and have rehived about 4 swarms from them so far this year if I am recalling correctly. We don't set them out in relation to our yards specifically, but some are within a half mile to two miles of at least one of our yards.
 
#185 ·
So first thing this morning I get a call about a swarm. After the severe storms we had yesterday, I'm assuming that they were living in a wall. Nope, it was a large swarm cluster. They had been through the storm. They were docile to the point of being lethargic and glad to see a box with a cover, and more glad to see a frame of honey. There was a dead virgin queen on the pavement below the swarm cluster, so I will keep an eye on the colony to make sure that it is queen right.

On another note and just to keep tabs, we are up to 46 colonies, plus three trapped swarms that I know of that are still in their traps hanging on the tree. And this is April 3rd. In most years, April 1st is the first day of swarm season.
 
#186 · (Edited)
Bees, Please.

Last month I made a few unremarkable observations about how I keep bees. The old three legged stool and all that jazz. Well, one of those legs is having the right bees. In an effort now to keep the stool upright, I would like to share some new and equally unremarkable thoughts about how I get those little spiral strands of nucleotides that inhabit the space between my bottom boards and outer covers.

If I were to move to a distant land, like Kansas or Maine or Texarkana, where the wind goes whipping down the plain, or sleigh bells ring, or some such, where would I get mite resistant or tolerant bees. Where shall I go? What shall I do? Well, Rhett, the first thing I'd do is Google "bee removal" and try to find somebody that does bee friendly cutouts and has some bees that came out of some gnarly old hive in the back porch of Tara when it was being torn down. The next thing I'd do is start getting in touch with beekeepers in the area and try to find out the names of some treatment free weirdos.

Then I'd find a creperia and a schnitzell haus, cause they're good, and if time and opportunity allowed, I'd start doing cutouts and trapouts and digouts and pryouts and sawzall outs. Then I'd try to find a remote place nearby (don't you love that oxymoronic phrase) that's a little hard to meander around in and find a Starbucks, like expanses of river bottom thickets or steep and overgrown mountainsides and deep, thick woods where the red fern grows and Sasquatch is likely to make a quartering away stroll looking back at a camera with grainy film in it. Then I'd put up some swarm traps while looking quartering back over my shoulder 'cause Sasquatch probably is real. Then I'd run as much diverse, wild genetics through my beeyards as quickly as practical and let the unfittest unsurvive in rapid succession.

I'd also try to find out the timing of the local flows and try to figure out how that ties in with the life cycle of both bees and mites and try to find thriving untreated bees from another area with similar flows from which I could bring in successful survivors to try in the new area.

To summarize,
1) Get bees from a bee removal service
2) Find and get bees from a treatment free beekeeper
3) Eat crepes and schnitzel
4) Do bee removals
5) Put up swarm traps in the boonies
6) Get non-local treatment free bees from someplace with similarly timed flows.
 
#187 ·
Bees, Please.

Last month I made a few unremarkable observations about how I keep bees. The old three legged stool and all that jazz. Well, one of those legs is having the right bees. In an effort now to keep the stool upright, I would like to share some new and equally unremarkable thoughts about how I get those little spiral strands of nucleotides that inhabit the space between my bottom boards and outer covers.

If I were to move to distant land, like Kansas or Maine or Texarkana, where the wind goes whipping down the plain, or sleigh bells ring, or some such, where would I get mite resistant or tolerant bees. Where shall I go? What shall I do? Well, Rhett, the first thing I'd do is Google "bee removal" and try to find somebody that does bee friendly cutouts and has some bees that came out of some gnarly old hive in the back porch of Tara when it was being torn down. The next thing I'd do is start getting in touch with beekeepers in the area and try to find out the names of some treatment free weirdos.

Then I'd find a creperia and a schnitzell house, cause they're good, and if time and opportunity allowed, I'd start doing cutouts and trapouts and digouts and pryouts and sawzall outs. Then I'd try to find a remote place nearby (don't you love that oxymoronic phrase) that's a little hard to meander around in and find a Starbucks, like expanses of river bottom thickets or steep and overgrown mountainsides and deep, thick woods where the red fern grows and Sasquatch is likely to make a quartering away stroll looking back at a camera with grainy film in it, and put up some some traps while looking quartering over my shoulder 'cause Sasquatch probably is real. Then I'd run as much diverse, wild genetics through my beeyards as quickly as practical and let the unfittest unsurvive in rapid succession.

I'd also try to find out the timing of the local flows and try to figure out how that ties in with the life cycle of both bees and mites and try to find thriving untreated bees from another area with similar flows from which I could bring in successful survivors to try in the new area.
:thumbsup:
 
#191 ·
Yes sir. Picked up three inhabited swarm traps. But I found out while moving some hives from one yard to another that a split I made the other day didn't take and a swarm that I had captured (not trapped) was gone. I used a queen excluder with the swarm. And I believe I also put a frame of brood in there.

I'm hit or miss with swarms. There is a technique to getting the bees and the frames into a box without crushing the queen or getting her on the wrong side of the queen excluder. I just don't know what that technique is. I would welcome guidance.

I do much better putting swarms in one of my swarm traps that are 11½" deep with medium foundationless frames and that have entrance disks with a queen excluder setting. There is room for the bees below the frames, and I can put all the frames in without crushing bees. I'm better than I used to be at keeping swarms and cutouts, but it has been a steep learning curve for me.
 
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