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Do I really need to medicate?

28K views 323 replies 36 participants last post by  Riverderwent 
#1 ·
This is my first year bee keeping. So far I would say pretty successful. Bought two packages in late May. One hive has filled both deeps and working on two supers. Other hive has finally filled the first deep. Pretty good for a late start and no comb to start with.

I try not to bother them too much. Every time I open the hive I feel like I kill so many from the busy hive I feel bad about it. How do you set a 100 pound deep box down on a flood of bees pouring out everywhere.

My question is probably a dumb one, but is treating for diseases and pests something that must be done every year? I haven’t done anything for them but give them a good home to grow. Probably one good month left before it gets cold. I’ll take my supers off the busy hive the end of this month.

Thanks!
 
#86 ·
Missed you dude.

I put up with these closed minded people, because end of day, the world is full of them. They make their own mistakes, and they suffer the costs, not me.

You should get back here Sqkcrk, I used to enjoy your down to earth posts.
 
#98 ·
I was talking right now on the phone with a friend who bred from my Elgon F1 (2 winters survived).
He was on a speaking by Paul Jungels.
Mr. Jungels was very optimistic about the future and wants that now all beekeepers, amateur beekeepers and professional beekeepers get access to resistant bees without having to buy expensive queens.
This should be possible through associations that offer mating places and artificial inseminations that cost nothing to the members.
Mr. Jungels has developed several lines of queens that show 100% VSH behavior and yet meet the needs of beekeepers, bringing honey and gentleness.
I think this is a possibility for us, my colleague has also met a new friend, who also has several lines of Elgon and both persons are accessible to me by car. The association there has a mating place and the treatment-free beekeeping there is funded by state.
I asked to be invited to the next meeting.

http://www.apisjungels.lu/varroa-resistance-is-not-a-pipedream.html
 
#100 ·
Just like BartJan Fernhaut, Paul Jungels has several lines already showing 100% VSH.
http://perso.unamur.be/~jvandyck/homage/elver/pedgr/ped_PJ_2017.html

Roll the page all the way down, there are 3 breeders (used for drones 2017), in the column on the right there is VSH%.
(By change the best 3 have some my bees as ancestors. :D , you see the pedigree as a tree when you click the "etc" )



Copy from another thread:
" https://aristabeeresearch.org/

The second video has has subtitles in English and it is about BartJan Fernhauts work in Hawaii and presenting Baton Rouge and Marken Group in Holland as well.

In the latest Buckfast Breeders Magazine (3/2018) there is a story by Sascha and Ulrich Müller of a VSH meeting where BartJan Fernhaut has been teaching. He told that they have in Hawaii ( 4 fulltime beekeepers helping him) queens which produce 100% VSH offspring. ( "100% VSH Verhalten erbstabil nachzuziehen") They are not Buckfast, more like Italian."


The question still to be answered is whether these 100% VSH breeders offspring can stand mite pressure when their daughter queens are sold all over Europe.
 
#108 ·
The question still to be answered is whether these 100% VSH breeders offspring can stand mite pressure when their daughter queens are sold all over Europe.
You don´t know if you don´t try.
Why do you think Erik sells his queens to a price we can afford? He wants to have some feedback and he gets it. What´s great is, all beeks I know who have elgons never treated them so we can watch what happens.

OT,
thanks for the kind words.

msl,
you seem to think new beekeepers are not able to use their brains.
The posts on this forum are so varied in the opinions nobody is brainwashed.
 
#102 · (Edited)
The OP is (was...don't see them around this thread) a inexperienced beekeeper with 2 hives of package bees.
Why dose a tread like this always become a soap box for the TF crowd to try to talk a new beekeeper in to killing their hives?

Beekeeping is a numbers game not religion.... you need to play the odds if you want bees come spring.

telling the OP "Yes, you should treat for mites this year, spend the winter researching, and go buy a few Bweaver queens (sence the OP is in TX) come spring " will have a much better chance of the OP becoming a TF beekeeper... vs becoming an ex beekeeper
no one (or very, very few)has been a success going TF with package bees
the pseudoscience and outher "great" ideas like microbes/scorpins etc needs to go way as does bond, neither has paned out, neither is a reasonable path forward.
We know from gotland what happens when we remove the beekeeper (true bond) Fries etal 2006 -150 hives in 8 apiaries became 7 hives 5 years later.... despite swarm collecting and feeding
Text Font Line Number

2004 they had to intervene and make splits to keep the stock from being lost

As JL notes, TF is an advanced beekeeping skill, not suited to the beginner.
As Sam comfort talks about.... You need to learn to be a sustainable beekeeper 1st... once that is obtained then you can work on not treating.
the title of his latest video say it all "TF, but not stupid"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh4A_WtTLEg

less stupidity, more sustainability and reality is whats needed....
going TF on package bees is stupidity, they NEED to be medicated
 
#110 ·
It´s the circumstances of your location.

Have feral survivors around to bring good genetics and to provide your beeyard with new colonies after high losses is what many do, catching swarms.
Isolation and distributing of your own genetics via drones helps much.

I have not such advantage. No ferals and no swarms around.I have weak stock all around, treated prophylactically all the time, propagating strong survivor mites, I have high density of hives in my area. I´m not the least isolated.
If I would do like Michael Bush can or others do, being able to ignoring the mite situation, I had no bees left after one season. I tried this once with an artificial swarm, made of local mutts and they were dead in a few months.

I´m really amazed I still have some survivors which must be the resistant bred stock I use now. But let´s see how it will be in spring.

By the way: My first colony was treated and they died too. 30-40% deadouts from treated hives are normal here in my locale.
 
#111 ·
Oh SiW, I wasnt having a go at you! or any one else.
I despair, even though I have managed so far to have zero loses with my one hive. I just do not understand why some can have healthy hives and we o not.
there must be missing factors or we would all be able to do as MB etc... are.

We dont have ferals either.
Sadly, we here, also have a huge problem with AFB compared to other countries.
Those that are treating here are having to leave their treatments in for 2 extra weeks, viral loads here appear to be viralent compared to earlier years.

I just think we are missing something important, a missing link, a missing something that would change things if we could just see what it was.
 
#112 ·
I´m never offended! :)

I just think we are missing something important, a missing link, a missing something that would change things if we could just see what it was.
Wish I would know!
I created a feral hive which lives now since 2016, never opened and it still thrives and goes into winter strong and I´m observing some escaped swarms living in stone walls.
Could be left alone will help.

We are a group in my forum which works on the improvements, the longest lived tf bees are 6 years now but my co-worker is an excellent seasoned beekeeper who knows exactly what to do to keep his bees strong.
Losses so far + - 30% which is great.

But it´s about beekeeping and we want to have some honey. So livestock husbandry is not "having" bees.

So why not just learn from the bees and monitor what happens right now while treating and become more experienced? There are many approaches to tf and if you only need some OAV instead of formic or other hard chemicals you do the first step in the right direction.
:)
 
#115 ·
The time window is spring to summer, the measures must then be completed so that the bees can prepare undisturbed for the winter and store the supplies.
J.Lee, a member here in the forum, told me about a friend who has been removing the first drone brood in spring when capped, for years and is tf for many years. Only this, no contaminated comb by treatments.
There are a lot fewer mites in the hive after this culling.
You can do that and then see how high the mite infestation is in the spring when you open the cells, pull out the pupa, and see how many mites are in the cells.
It's good to try something like that, even if it's not a nice job. The bees then breed new drones.
After that, you can decide if and how much you treat, in OAV you have to treat several times, as the mites do not die in the brood.
How do either of these square with the concept of 'letting Nature take it's course' ?
What nature? Man made nature?
:scratch:
Wild honeybees are almost extinct in europe so we have only "lifestock" bees.
Perhaps a time will come our bees are regressed so much they are like wild honeybees again, but I don´t see anyone wanting wild honeybees with their wild behaviours except some scientists who want them to improve lifestock genetics.
If I had a cow giving 40l of milk every day I would not let her run free either. She will not survive.
 
#114 ·
I'm lost - totally and utterly lost.

I think my basic problem is that I have absolutely zero understanding of the core principles (the aims and objectives) of the TF movement. I understand the concept of 'letting Nature take it's course' - and although I'm pessimistic about this approach to Varroa, at least I can understand the fundamental principles involved.

Now in my lexicon - intervention, management, or any form of human activity designed to influence an organism's behaviour or remedy a problem is a treatment - originally from the Latin tractare meaning to "manage, handle, deal with, or conduct oneself toward", and used within the field of medicine from 1780 onwards to mean "to attempt to heal or cure, to manage in the application of remedies".

But - within the context of 'Treatment-Free' - I'm now reading about human selection of genetic strains, and the use of Artificial Insemination techniques to promote these strains ... at the expense of others. - i.e. which will effectively result in a well-intentioned but cavalier reduction of the gene pool. How do either of these square with the concept of 'letting Nature take it's course' ?

The problems which the beekeeping community currently find themselves in are a direct consequence of human interference - of people arrogantly thinking that they are smarter than Nature - and yet here we see exactly the same thinking being applied: that OUR choice of genetic strain - because it happens to deal with a problem we currently find too tough for us to deal with - is the magic solution. But at what future cost ?

Although we've been stumbling about in the dark for many years, we appear now to be at the threshold of some major advances towards the understanding of how best to deal with Varroa. It's only very recently that the food source of the (so-called) phoretic mites has been identified, and so our knowledge is beginning to develop at long last. Perhaps very shortly we'll even begin to understand how Oxalic Acid itself has such a dramatic effect upon the mites. Until then, I for one am prepared to play a waiting game until an increase in our understanding hopefully leads to a widespread reduction in mite numbers, so that they eventually become an occasional problem to be dealt with, rather than an essential component of the beekeeping calendar.
LJ
 
#117 ·
>But the consequence of a Varroa mite infestation is invariably death...

Yet almost every weekend I talk to dozens of people personally who are keeping bees without treatments and succeeding. And emails every day from dozens more. There are thousands of successful treatment free beekeepers that I know of personally. How many more are there that I don't know of? How many just don't want to put their head up and get attacked by those who say they are the problem instead of the solution?
 
#119 ·
I continually wonder what the difference is between those of you who are able to keep bees without treatments and those of us who are not yet able to do so.
There must be something we are not doing or locational things that we may be able to correct if we just knew what they were.

I thought at first that it must be that you are all experienced Beeks, but there are also alot of those who are not able to be TF.

Have you noticed anything along these lines that might be of help to us?
 
#122 ·
There were a number of semen imports done around 20 ish years ago, and there was a lot of red tape around it plus almost impossible to meet demands to try to prevent new diseases getting in with the semen.

All the same, over the next few years a number of new bee pathogens made their appearance in NZ. Nobody really knows if it was the semen or not, but some prominant people in the industry think it was. So, semen imports were banned, and have been since.
 
#124 ·
Most of them do "live and let die". MB is correct about this. But there is no advance. Because of the high losses this beeks are not considered. Therefore they don´t go public. Losses are up to 90% with local mutts but the survivors can be used.
"success" is in the eye of the beholder I guess...:scratch:
unless a yard/stock is at least stable, but far better increasing, or a net exporter of bees I don't see it as a success.

on a landscape scale, local sustainability with/with out treatments is stage one, till we hit that mark almost everything elce we do is washed away in a sea of foreign drones from queens sourced thousands of miles away brought in on a replacement treadmill
 
#128 ·
........almost everything elce we do is washed away in a sea of foreign drones from queens sourced thousands of miles away brought in on a replacement treadmill........
We'll see about this exact issue.
Maybe not necessarily "washed away".
I am yet to see anyone running their own local "drone generators" by design (outside of what SiWolKe mentioned maybe going in Euro)

It is all about "young queens" and more "young queens" and more.... of the same.

Well, the old, desirable queens are very much part of the local sustainability program and are to be kept around for as long as possible - yes, for drone generation.
Heck, a queen can be kept around for 5-6 years easily and pump desirable drones for local consumption just as well.
The pre-planned local drone production is, essentially, non-existent.

It is the opposite ideas that are in favor right now - let us cull them drones.
God forbid if bees will make some drone comb - cut that junk out.
A big mistake as the desirable drones should be in demand and generated by design.
People should be begging for local "drone pollination" services - I am yet to see this.
Well, working on it. :)
 
#125 ·
on a landscape scale, local sustainability with/with out treatments is stage one, till we hit that mark almost everything elce we do is washed away in a sea of foreign drones from queens sourced thousands of miles away brought in on a replacement treadmill
These beliefs are pessimistic and do not lead to an improvement.
They intimidate and prevent beekeepers from doing anything themselves.

I call a sucess to have any survivors at all in some locale.

The opposite of pessimistic views would be to unite and do something together. Difficult, but feasible, if you can not convince yourself quickly of the opposite. Meanwhile, there are also experienced beekeepers who rethink and are available for such ways and support the small hobbyist.

It's time to leave the misgivings behind and take a fresh turn in the new directions.
 
#131 ·
I am not talking of large scale industrial queen producers.
Drone generation or artificial insemination is part of their conveyor line.
I am not aware of any large-scale queen sellers representing themselves here.
So let's just put them away.

I am talking of little, local guys like me - 20(+/-) hives.
Better yet - a community of little, local guys.
Everyone should be thinking of your own "drone generation" IF you care to have some sort of a local bee at all.
If you don't to it, the large-scale queen seller will do it for you - not the best option.
 
#132 ·
I agree with that; the beekeepers around me still don’t have any type of sustainable apiary. They all import bees whether nucs or packages from the south. Very disenhartening. A guy who started the same time as I did, going into our 7th year, has never heard of Randy Oliver, Mike Palmer, etc. :(
 
#144 ·
That is sad. I don’t treat. I sell bees. My queens die of natural causes, and the bees replace them. I use foundationless in the brood chamber, so they make as many drones as they want. I don’t feed. I’ve got fall honey in hives now that I ought to harvest. Smaller hives and fewer hives per yard. We have a lot of feral colonies. Different location, different bees, different way of doing things. It is scalable, but not by me at least in the near term.
 
#133 ·
Re the thousands of successful TF beekeepers, Solomon Parkers TF Facebook page has (i think) in excess of 20,000 members.

So it's highly likely that Michael Bush would indeed get what must seem like thousands of emails, and of course, many of these people telling him they are successful.

Even here in NZ, there have been a fair number of people pop up from time to time on the local internet telling us they are successfully keeping TF bees. They will bend, or omit, the truth a bit also, forgetting to mention they catch 10 new swarms each year and have been catching around 10 a year for the last 4 years, current hive numbers, 10. Stuff like that.

However I've been around a while and know everyone, or, someone who does, and can usually find out where people are really at. ALL the NZ internet posters who have claimed to be successful TF beekeepers, are not. None of them. But that is not what a casual reader would be led to believe reading their posts.

And I am not even applying a rigorous definition of successful such as, TF and harvesting honey. I'm just using a basic definition, ie, don't treat, and have hives that have survived long term (2 plus years). Regardless of honey crop.

I did get to the 2 year mark with some of my own TF bees, probably a NZ record. But by that time they were in a very bad way, and done for.
 
#134 · (Edited)
A big mistake as the desirable drones should be in demand and generated by design.
agreed, and to the point I was making was when it comes to drones a f-2+ (local X import) overwinter queen and hive is better then a puppy mill import queen and package come spring, even if it takes some IPM to get it to survive.
The OG queen is tossing her genetics in drones.
While the colonys workers and thuse performance in a F-1 is impacted by the local drones she mated with, they are throwing drones with the genetics of OG QueenX and foren drones she mated with.
Its not till F-2 we see the out flow of "local" genetics back to the environment. Simply put drones don''t have fathers, but they have grandfathers, you need to get to the point were the grandfathers/great grand fathers are of the stock you want for the drones to be help full in inacting change...
Another way to look at it is drones don't have sons, but they have grandsons

when people can't keep hives alive long enuff to get to that point (3rd year for many ), the net effect is the area is flooded with foren drones from replacement stock sourced form far away. This wipes out adaptation as the poor genetics are not removed from the breeding pool when a hive dies, they are replaced with more of the same.

The way off the treadmill is local sustainability beekeeping. Keeping your bees alive, making up your own replacements, and having a few extra in the spring for those who were not so lucky/skilled.

If the majority of backyard beekeepers took care of there mites, and pulled/overwintered a nuc per full sized hive things would be very different and some work on the problem would be possibly, the price of bees would fall as craigs list would be flooded with local nucs come spring... and the shift from replacments being foren packages to local nucs would alow localy adapted and mite resistant gentnics to be developed and take hold....

but... theres more... the bigist issue is people NOT using resistant stocks... the TF message is you have to breed them your self, this is hurt full to the cause. The reason TF isn't working/spreading isn't that such bees can't/don't exist.... Its that there isn't a market for them. Some of that is the "do it your self" message, some of it is the let them die message... hives fail, mite bombs can take out the best stock... understanding the need to sometimes protect your stock going back to the drone issue... those queens and there f-1s would be distributing resistance genetics and should be protected... even if it takes treatments... as the area will be better off for it.
we need to encourage people to buy and then propagate local drivitives of them.

We need to demand resistant stock instead of settling for puppy mill package queens. Once we are sustainable we have choices, it becomes a buyers market, and we would not bee like many are now, buying anything they can, in a panic to place an order before the bees are sold out for the year... The pre orders have allready started in my area:pinch:

its simple suply and demand.... if the puppy mills were left holding a bunch of unsold packages and all the Russian/VSH queens were sold out, it wouln't take but a year or 2 for the queen producers to start shifting what they were making...

we (the US) have done this once.... when Italian bees came in there was a huge demand (genital and more productive is a huge incentive) .... threw mass production and constant re queening the bee gentnics of a country was shifted...
before then a queen was a queen.... but all of a suden people could get $20 for an Italian queen (near $600 in todays $$$),it's no coincidence the classic queen rearing manuals came out in this era. The market demanded... the queen producers answered

We are back to a queen is a queen/I will take what ever I can get (hobbyist market)... In till that changes we get no were..

I am talking of little, local guys like me - 20(+/-) hives.
Better yet - a community of little, local guys.
Everyone should be thinking of your own "drone generation" IF you care to have some sort of a local bee at all..
yes... and no....
ego says your bees are better...the math, not so much. see my drone points. the reality is everyone should be looking in to drone suppression of sub par stock, the bottom 90%... alive dose not make breeding stock...

there are those who understand the facts about bees and those the don't....devil take the hindmost...if only one could keep them from spreading like a mite bomb..

WE
created this problem, and the TF movement is far from with out blame
the fix is simple.... locals stop bringing in (or saveing swarms from) package bees...
 
#142 ·
...... when people can't keep hives alive long enuff to get to that point (3rd year for many )......

the fix is simple.... locals stop bringing in (or saveing swarms from) package bees...
Haha...
And then you are kicking me for "abusing my livestock".
People do not get it when I say - "I can not wait when some of my bees die" AND "I am trying to bend over backwards to save some tiny nucs"..
You guys are saying - what? Which is it?

Is it not obvious?
* Yes, I want those package swarms I caught the last summer to die off as quickly as possible (so I can get some honey off of them).
BUT, I do not know sometimes the origin of the swarm I caught (usually I have a good idea, but not always; for example, if I caught an escaped Saskatraz queen, I'd rather keep it alive).
* Yes, at the same time, I will put in lots of time and resources to save a tiny nuc that I think preserves a valuable line going forward
(worthy drone generation going forward is a part this outlook - but yes, it takes several turn overs; .......yes, we get the idea about the "Grandpa but no Dad", etc, etc)
 
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