Excellent observations, Buffalolick. :thumbsup: I would add one caveat - sometimes "soft" treatments are as damaging as "hard". If one is going treatment free, why not go treatment free?
Hi Danny! I always enjoy reading your posts, even when I :scratch:. I suspect we come to the same conclusion, but via different routes. My reason for treatment free is simple stewardship. If I take care of my bees, they'll take care of me. I do admit that I love to collect the "rent" - that's what I call stealing their excess honey. :lpf: I love honey, I love sharing honey with family and friends, and I thoroughly enjoy the extra income I derive from honey sales.
As has been shown, the chemical treatments leave residues in the brood comb, which has a strong negative effect on the bees - especially drones and queens. If we manage the bees for their benefit, we get more fertile drones and queens, less supercedure, a stronger work force, a stronger hive, and more honey. Thus my comment - we take care of the bees, they take care of us.
Your analogy of the "fatted calf" is right on - look how we mismanage our cattle, and who pays the price? The end consumer. I quit buying beef at a local big box store after reading the ingredients label on a package of steaks, of all things! There are those who have demonstrated that the current obesity problem is related more to the use and consumption of HFCS than anything else. That stuff is now pretty much everywhere, and more deleterious to us than plain cane sugar.
Like you, I don't want my bees on the dole, chemical or otherwise. There are those who believe if you feed bees too much, they get lazy. I do my best to leave enough honey on them that I don't need to feed. But as I've posted elsewhere, I feed like mad when I hive a package, swarm, or nuc. I work hard to help them build up into two deep boxes, 20 frames. They generally do this before the flow ends. Then I stop feeding, and usually, not always but more often than not, get a surplus honey crop from that hive the first season.
Let me toss this out for thought. In our sense of "dominion" we have moved bees all over the world. We import them for pollenation, thus bringing in new, exotic pests. We treat them with chemicals to keep them alive and working for us. We've contaminated brood nests and honey. But we're in control, and they crash. We try new treatments and procedures until they too fail. In our sense of "stewardship" we read the bees and try to provide them what they naturally need and want to thrive. We don't force a square peg into a round hole, we simply seek to appreciate the round hole for what it is, and perhaps beautify it a bit. Thus natural comb, foundationless frames, treatment free. The bees then thrive with less management, and less cost to the beek. Now I realize this is an oversimplification, but I think that's what people like Michael Bush, the Lusby's, George Imirie, W. Wright, C.P.Dadant, Root, and the others whom we might call "the Greats" in beekeeping practiced. They didn't try to "mold" the bees or have dominion, they tried to "understand" and be good stewards of this fantastic little creature God put here. And the wonderful thing of it is, there are so many other beeks out there, beyond my knowledge, doing the same thing - seeking to understand, and work in harmony with the honey bee.
Regards,
Steven