I have some questions:

- Is it possible to check the VSH trait in a hive with low mite count when too few pupa are present?

- Are bees able to detect virus levels in the pupa and remove those even without a mite in cell or with low counts?

- Virus apparently remains in a colony for a while after mite are eradicated by beekeeper or bees.

- Effective treating every year keeps the mite level low and also the virus level,
so the mite population in a tf hive grows first without showing a high level of virus disease, later this level gets lower and lower when virus spreads.

So he will probably breed bees which are susceptible to virus at a low mite count. The time of evaluation is much too short. IMHO.
Perhaps he will find a trait like mite biting.

 

Can you spot the weaknesses of his method?

No. Go ahead and spill the beans.

 

Now my question for you is this. Randy Oliver is trying to identify colonies with very low mite counts. The USDA method identifies colonies with high percentages of non-reproductive mites. Is Randy Oliver actually identifying VSH colonies? Or is he finding some other trait(s)? Can you spot the weaknesses of his method?

Why would he want VSH? No one has ever shown it was of any value in commercial honey bees. Seems like something to select against.

I see no weakness in his method.

As an aside I recently asked him what he considered the minimum number of hives needed to have an effective population size for breeding for mite resistance and standing a chance of making progress in a reasonable time. His answer was 1000 colonies.

 

Why would he want VSH? No one has ever shown it was of any value in commercial honey bees. Seems like something to select against.

I see no weakness in his method.

I´m confused. Do you think mite numbers are important or not?

Randy is doing IPM.

You are not doing IPM correctly so it does not work. It is not mites that kill bees. It is viruses that mites transmit that kill bees. So what you want to watch is what is your virus level and treat the mites when the virus level is high. It is easy enough to know what the virus level is doing. Just look at the hive entrance and ground around your hives. Obviously some hives tolerate very high mite levels and others do not. Requeen those that do not tolerate viruses and get the mite level down to the starting point.

It is interesting how virus levels go up and down from year to year. I wonder why? Last year I would estimate my virus level was 10X what it is this year. But even with the higher level last year I had excellent winter survival with only four losses out of 31. Maybe those four were the ones contributing most of the virus ridden bees I saw? The year before last was a low virus year like this year.

 

He is selecting for a condition not a trait. The condition is the number of phoretic mites in the colony at a specific time. That condition can be the result of a number of factors including the genetic characteristics of the bees but also non genetic factors. If he is successful great. Lowering mite levels in the colony should be beneficial regardless of the traits being selected for. The weakness is that he could be wasting his time if the mite levels he is measuring are not associated underlying genetic traits of the bee or only weakly associated. Selection only only works for heritable traits that are associated with lower colony mite counts. I have not seen the article so I don't know if he knows whether mite counts measured by alcohol wash in 3 month old colonies are highly heritable.

According to the chart presented by Fusion Power the presence of 4 hygienic alleles results in 100% non-reproducing mites. That would seem to be pretty good. But maybe that has no value in commercial beekeeping.

 

A single test with low mite levels does not prove nearly as much as 2 or 3 tests over a period of months each of which shows low levels. He is retesting the presumed mite resistant colonies. This provides a much higher level of confidence the colonies selected for breeding are actually showing resistance.

The weakness with this type evaluation is that the starting number of mites is unknown. A nuc that starts with 1000 mites could double 3 times with the result it tests as a mite bomb with 8000 mites just waiting on hive collapse to spread mites far and wide. Given that the hives from which the nucs are set up have variable numbers of mites, the predictable result is that the nucs will also have variable numbers. With his treatment program, it is highly likely that some nucs are set up with very low levels of mites. These nucs might still have very low numbers of mites when tested yet not be mite resistant to any measurable degree.

One way to overcome the variability in starting number of mites is to use mite challenge tests. This involves placing a known number of mites into a colony and watching to see how the bees handle them. Performing challenge tests with 1000 or more colonies would be very time consuming. Presuming the mite counts identify 50 or fewer colonies with very low mite counts, it is much more feasible to move bees and/or brood from highly infested colonies into the possibly resistant colonies and then check a few months later to see if mite counts grow or are reduced. Reference material on this method is available from the USDA publications linked below. Kefuss also published a few articles describing use of mite challenge tests.

There is also the factor that some colonies might rob out a mite bomb while other colonies are genetically averse to robbing. The robbing colonies could pick up a huge load of mites in a short time while the non-robbers would stay relatively stable. He may be selecting for non-robbing colonies instead of truly mite resistant colonies.

RC, preformed opinions are of little value in breeding for traits with as much variability as mite resistance. Randy Oliver has repeatedly published that he integrated hygienic and VSH bees into his operation. There is very little doubt that he is working with bees that express VSH to some degree. My bees express a high degree of VSH though I have not measured it directly. The evidence is in brood removal patterns in the hive.

https://www.ars.usda.gov/southeast-...area/baton-rouge-la/honeybeelab/docs/varroa-sensitive-hygiene-vsh-publications/

 

Yes, Randy doesn't know what the mite levels are to start with. But I think it's a safe assumption to make that mites existed in each of the nucs. Removing from the breeding pool the colonies that ended the 3 month time period with high mites doesn't prove that the low mite number colonies are mite resistant, it just proves the ones removed were not mite resistant. And constantly moving toward mite resistance (ideally) at that point in time.

VSH is selecting for one particular trait: the Varroa Sensitive Hygienic trait. When you uncap cells and find varroa that haven't reproduced, you're showing the trait is present. The hope, and probably a good one, is that the trait connects to a lower mite count over a progressive period of time, or that the mites don't become more dangerous later on. VSH hives will typically leave a percentage of mites alive to breed. If a larger and larger percentage of varroa carry progressively more dangerous viruses, VSH may not be the solution (although I think we're likely heading down a weird path of doomsday at that point anyway).

Instead, Randy isn't selecting for a particular trait. He isn't even selecting for hives that work with, or work against, varroa. He's selecting for colonies that have low mite numbers. For whatever reason. And he doesn't know what that reason would be, as he expressed in his earlier articles. It could be the ability to raise the hive temperature slightly, killing the varroa. Or it could be a pheromone issue, as with Apis Cerana, where the infected larvae commit pheromone suicide (for lack of a better term). Or it could be a VSH/Hygienic issue. Or a grooming issue. Who knows. At this point, I don't think Randy cares. He wants colonies with consistently low mite numbers, then finding out what they did to get there.

But his fallacy, from my perspective, is that the varroa/bee relationship isn't internal to the hive only. It's external. So you need to assume mite migration is standard for all hives. Which I don't think you can do. Mite migration may be so small of an issue that he doesn't need to account for it. But I don't know. I don't think mite migration has been studied very heavily.

But what he's doing is the same as all alleged successful tf beekeepers did/are doing. They claim to have mite resistant bees. When you ask why (why it works for them at their location but doesn't work for others at other locations) they all say "I don't know." Could be different genetics, could be different locations, could be different environments, could be different neighbors, could be more/less virulent or more/less reproductive mites. Who really knows. So many factors at play.

 

I think I prefer my methodology, not to say this wouldn't work though, but using nuc's doesn't seem like a good starting place for evaluating commercial settings either though. I'm planning to have them build up to doubles their first year, fall treatment to hopefully equalize/minimalize mite populations, then start evaluation the following spring but that's just me.

 

Agree with the comments in the last several posts and a lot of those ran through my mind also.

What Randy is doing is basically the bond method, but instead of letting hives die he is seperating them. The fallacies pointed out in the previous 3 posts apply equally to anyone using the bond method. Bond, is a fairly blunt and simplistic tool, yet some people claim success with it, swear by it, or even claim it's the only true way.

At least by seperating hives instead of letting them die, you don't get a rolling mite bomb effect, which in a bond apiary could overwhelm some hives that otherwise should have made it.

 

I wonder why we felt the need to rename "natural selection."

 

Well so far the errors Randy is supposed to be making illustrate the authors who claim these are errors do not understand his program. I will admit Buzzkill makes a valid point about heritability or lack there of but the only way to find out the answer is do the experiment. One thing you should remember is Randy is not in the honey production business. He is in the almond pollination and nuc production business. If you want to make honey his queens may well not be the best pick for you.

By the way, I have told Randy I think he will find he can make a bee that is better at dealing with varroa, but not a bee that can go TF consistently. I have also told him those traits will be lost very rapidly in the hands of any back yard bee keeper, myself included. Actually, the biggest weakness of his program is timing. In another ten years he would stand a far greater chance as in ten years it will be practical to do a full DNA on each interesting queen and start to do some meaningful things such as SNP or micro-satellite correlations that can guide us to specific interesting genes or gene control regions. When you can do those things you also need to forget open mating and start to think a lot about single drone II to make optimum headway.

 

What Randy wants to do is what Erik Österlund does for some time now with much success.

But he watches Virus effects too and evaluates established hives.

And he started to work with people trying different locations and circumstances, like being isolated from other beekeepers or not or different hive constellations or different densities of colonies. ( For example my group, we take part with original queens now).

And he adapts his strategies to the observations he makes and changes them if needed.

In our european conditions this is the path to go. A separate path from the commercial arrangements of US commercial beekeepers which will never correlate with a natural beekeeping.

 

Well so far the errors Randy is supposed to be making illustrate the authors who claim these are errors do not understand his program.

I don't see "errors" mentioned until this line. IMO, Randy is not making any "errors". There are some weaknesses with his method. The question to ask is whether or not he will do something to tighten up the selection process. I am certain that other traits besides VSH are important with my bees. The path he is currently taking will identify colonies that maintain very low mite counts which should correlate with more than just VSH traits.

If I had gone to the trouble of identifying @50 colonies that have very low mite counts, I would probably set them up in an isolation yard and manage them for a year to see how many maintain low counts through winter and into the next year. Then I would breed from the colonies with the lowest mite counts over an entire year. This would eliminate any colonies that are not truly mite resistant.

 

I would probably set them up in an isolation yard and manage them for a year to see how many maintain low counts through winter and into the next year.

If you have access to an isolated yard, props to you. I would suspect 99.9% of america doesn't have access to one of these yards. Usually another beekeeper is within flight distance (hobby or commercial), or some form of a feral hive lives within a 6 mile radius (if a queen can, doesn't always but can, fly up to 3 miles away to mate and if a drone can, but doesn't always, fly up to 3 miles away, that requires a bee free zone of 6 miles in any direction), which covers OVER 72,000 acres. That's huge.

For those that don't have access to 72,000 surrounding acres of bee free land, then you not only need to select for your low mite count colonies, but you need to select for your apiary too. I have 4 outyards. Some do better than others, naturally. About 4 years ago I had a gangbuster outyard that all of a sudden started producing half the honey crop it usually did. I thought it was just a bad year for that micro area. Then I started seeing mite explosions, despite my treatments. I couldn't understand what was happening. I had never seen that before. Efficacy rates were good, and 3 weeks later I had huge mite counts. Attended a local BBQ at the firestation nearby and was chatting up bees only to find out 1/4 mile away from my outyard a farmer decided he'd get into bees and bought 50 nucs (when a normal yard in this area will support 8-12 hives). I didn't find the guy, but I suspect he let several crash from mites. It explained my low crops and high mite counts. I stuck it out, and last year I was back to normal (either the other guy figured it out or lost out, I don't know).

My point is that some yards produce honey better than others, and some yards have worse mite migration issues than others. And it changes from year to year. If I chose that as my "isolated" yard (which it had been, relatively speaking, for the previous 5 years), I would have lost most of the genetics as I bred against the high mite count hives. And probably lost quite a bit of genetics along the way.

So when you move your breeder hives to another yard and continue to monitor, if you see changes in mite numbers is it the genetics or the yard that changed?

Then I would breed from the colonies with the lowest mite counts over an entire year.

But you don't breed queens over the entire year. I wish you did. It would make things so much easier.

Nearly all of my colonies will show very low mite counts in March. If I attempted to select breeding material then, I'd be lost (most show 0-2 mites per 300 bees at that time). In the fall, my mite counts vary widely from yard to yard, but usually more due to mite migration than genetics (I think, perhaps naively). The two time periods that are very telling to me are 1) during the peak of the honey flow, around mid May, and 2) right after the dearth hits around early August. The first shows which hives allow mites to outbreed the bees. The second shows which hives allow mites to hide under cappings. At best, I can select a colony that has low mite counts during both these time periods around August. But its too late for me to breed quality queens then (my best queens come in April), and if I tried to breed my queens then I'm taking a big risk that they'll mate, return, and lay in time for me to prep them for winter. So my better bet is to select the best breeding material but wait till the following April (when I can take into consideration BOTH honey production and mite numbers) and breed from last year's best queen, ASSUMING she overwinters and nothing else comes up that removes her from the selection pool.

I currently operate around 50 colonies. Say I take my top 33% of honey production as my breeding material (16). Say I take my top 20% (which is a fairly large percentage here) as my lowest mite numbers in May (3). Say half of them (still REALLY large selection percentage) still have low mite numbers in August (1.5). Say I then have a 30% winter loss. If I'm lucky, I have a queen in February (that may swarm, or may be superseeded by April, in time for me to breed from). If I'm not lucky, I have to wait till next year to take new numbers and reevaluate. What do I do in the meantime (because I need to rear queens in April for replacements and splits anyway)? Select a queen that I know is not mite resistant. Creating an endless cycle.

For me, I'll sit back and watch because I don't have the resources to participate meaningfully. I hope others (Randy) do.

 

Which sounds similar to what Randy will be doing.

 

Specialkayme,
very good post, thanks.

You can only achieve something in a local group and everyone of the members having a number of beeyards. Exchange breeding material.

 

Exchange breeding material.

That assumes those you're exchanging breeding material with are selecting for the same traits you are. It also assumes they are applying the same selection pressure (or greater) you are. Coordinating between two or three people isn't that hard. But when you're using a pool of people to get 2,000 colonies, and most have under 40 colonies each, that requires 50 participants. That's a very large number of beekeepers to coordinate breeding selection criteria. If 10 of those select for gentleness over honey production, or brood size over varroa levels, or pollen collection over overwintering ability, it skews all of the numbers drastically.

Lets say, just for explanation purposes, that I start off with a population size that is exhibiting 0% desirable qualities (call it varroa selection). I introduce a queen that is varroa resistant. Lets say that first generation now shows a 20% desirable quality level. Now lets say each successive generation is able to recapture the same percentage of desirable quality level as the parent colony PLUS 20% of the remaining level. That would make year one 0%, year two 20%, year three 36%, ect. I would consider 97% to be a good target. Do you know how long it will take to get to 97%? 17 years.

Personally, I think 20% is high. If we change that to 10%, the time period grows to 35 years.

But lets say that I am able to hit my 20% number, and lets say that I decide to exchange breeding material with one other person. That person is able to hit a 10% number. Know how long it takes me to hit 97%? 23 years (better than 35, granted). If I increase that to three people, I'm at 20%, person two is at 10%, and person three is at 5%, it would take me 30 years.

Unlucky for me, I don't have 30 years to work at this (I'll likely still be around, but tropilalaps will likely be killing our hives by then). Lucky for me, breeding doesn't exactly work like those simplistic numbers

Exchanging breeding material works well if you can find someone who is more successful than you. But then you're pulling their numbers down if their taking your breeding material. So in that case, why not sit back and wait 17 years for the big guy to figure it out, rather than try and participate and drag the number down to 23 or 30 years?

 

You know the old saying that say people can look at you and think you are dumb or you could open you mouth and prove it. Oh well, here goes. Every one keeps saying that wider genetics can water down your progress. Then time lines are put on what might be accomplished. I would say that if the ability to handle mites came down to one gene and that gene was present, then it would be the pressure put on that one gene that would make it come to the fore front no matter what else you added, IE, calmness, honey prodution, lack of swarming.

When I say, I say this, I don't mean I know but just that it seems common sense in my mind with what I know now. So it would be in my mind that no matter what other trait you added to the picture, if there were mite pressure and a drone with the one good gene was part of the breeding, the pressure would give that gene the advantage to express its self.

The one small studie I saw where they were keeping managed bees close to other managed bees and having success by just leaving the pressure on the test bees seems to bear this out. I don't think I can find that study but a link was posted on one of these threads not too long ago.
By the way, I just throw this out there cause I know I am a dummy and subject to just wishfull thinking and that is how I am managing my bees right now.
Cheers
gww

 

Specialkayme,
I started a forum to find a group which has the same goals like me, these goals are humble, we want the survivability of some hives to expand again after crashes which happen now and again, and a little honey surplus.
These people I found.
We have + - 100 hives among us and there will always be some colonies left which are treatment free survivors to breed from.
The selection breeding in our not isolated bee yards is more a hobby, we are aware of the disadvantages and know we have to introduce a pure bred resistant queen now and then.

So let the commercials do their thing and the hobbyists try other paths.
I believe this two world may exist side by side, the commercials doing artificial insemination, the others open breeding.
( By the way our commercial mating places are 5 km isolated and drones and queens are flying up to 10km for mating, so this is pure bred stock?)

Here in europe we have made the wild honeybee extinct and what came after is livestock. Unnatural kept and bred livestock, nothing else, and so susceptible we need to control every disease and pest just as with other livestock.

So what do we know how bee colonies will fare if we just let them be as wild honeybees? Would they suddenly develop resistance, live with decent losses like every natural insect does, with good and bad years?
And if everybody does this, not only some scientists who are so isolated they want to import mites?

The alcohol washes, do we know how such disturbances act on the bees? Oh yes, 300 bees, nothing! Every months 300 bees! Nurse bees and foragers, every time the colony has to rearrange.
It´s my opinion that a colony is not just bees with queen, it´s a microcosmos, a unit!

How do we know what our managements do to the bees welfare? It`s not just genetics or the environmental influences of pesticides and such, but we like to have control as in a technical world.

 

Specialkayme,
I started a forum to find a group which has the same goals like me, these goals are humble, we want the survivability of some hives to expand again after crashes which happen now and again, and a little honey surplus.
These people I found.
We have + - 100 hives among us and there will always be some colonies left which are treatment free survivors to breed from.

And how many colonies on average does each person have? Because there is your weak point. And a massive one at that.

100 hives is a VERY small selection pool. But if you selected the top 2% from that pool, so be it. You're working with what you can.

But if each person has 10 hives, and each person chooses their best breeder from those ten, you're actually selecting for the top 10%. It will take considerably longer to achieve your success.

And if each person has 2 hives, and each person chooses their best breeder from those two, you're actually selecting for the top 50%.

 

If there is success at all.
There is too much which influences this in field beekeeping: supersedure, environment, food situation, spraying, infestations from outside.

Great link, AstroBee, many thanks. Very interesting.

 

USDA method of checking for lowest reproductive mite count is time consuming but appears to look for solution that involves mite suppression involving bio-chemical means.

Randy method of alcohol wash is easier and faster but looks at "net result".

All things being equal, I (an uneducated drifter) feel USDA method filters out noise such as mites drifting into hives through robbing etc, as it compares (unless I am mistaken) capped brood for mite reproduction rates. So a hive that may show up as "high mite" in Randy test may show up as "low" in USDA test. The other way is possible, but low chance. So one could say that Randy test is more conservative.

On the other hand, if Randy's best colonies are performing so based on bio-mechanical means, such as mite biting or grooming, but the reproduction rate is high(er) compared to USDA star colonies, it is possible Randy's hive could rank high on viral levels assuming virus is transmitted to bees while they are still developing (which is the case with DWV).

In fact, Randy (in his Varroa Part 9 article) points to the importance of controlling in-cell fecundity. And it appears USDA test methods are more geared towards that.
------
Practical application: VSH clearly reduces mite reproductive success. But of great interest to me is that despite the obvious utility of VSH, in survivor stock left to work it out by themselves, the most adaptive evolutionary responses appear to be targeted towards suppressing in-cell fecundity, rather than VSH or grooming behavior [22]. Why this is I don’t know, but when Nature talks, I listen!
---------------

Because Randy is looking for "net result" and USDA is looking for specific behavior, USDA star bees may provide more consistent outcome all things being equal.

 

USDA method of checking for lowest reproductive mite count is time consuming but appears to look for solution that involves mite suppression involving bio-chemical means.

Randy method of alcohol wash is easier and faster but looks at "net result".

All things being equal, I (an uneducated drifter) feel USDA method filters out noise such as mites drifting into hives through robbing etc, as it compares (unless I am mistaken) capped brood for mite reproduction rates. So a hive that may show up as "high mite" in Randy test may show up as "low" in USDA test.

... in survivor stock left to work it out by themselves, the most adaptive evolutionary responses appear to be targeted towards suppressing in-cell fecundity , rather than VSH or grooming behavior [22].

Difficult part is the long term evaluation. Increase in mite infestation in a year, is it 1000%, 100%, 50%, 10% or 0%. One count does not tell that, several counts do, but other factors come in play,(environment, hive management ) The more the longer time period.

What was this[22] referring? Survivor stock, if I remember right Gotland stock (Sweden) and another stock (Avignon?) from France behaved this way( suppressing in-cell fecundity ).

 

You can Liquid nitrogen for higentinic behavior, you can microscope fallen mites for biting, you can open cells and track in-cell fecundity....or you can simply track the amount of mites in the hive, end result is the hive with less mites is doing better no matter what they are doing to make it happen, breed from those that pass low mite counts from mother to daughter
Randys program is like bond, with out the losses.... select for what is working.
Let nature deside what works, not man saying "it would be a great idea if the bees did X"

 

In one of the National Honey Show (2015) lectures, Dr Debbie Delaney briefly talks about why some researchers go to the pains of checking the brood for in-cell fecundity. Alcohol wash, although measures "bottom line" stuff, it could be negatively influenced by mite overloads caused by external factors (crashing hives robbing) and result in discarding hives with otherwise desirable genetic advantages.

I am not siding with one way or other, but simply pointing out some advantages and disadvantages, like OP asked for.

 

So that there’s no misunderstanding…..Randy’s recommendations aren’t new or original. For literally decades countless professional breeders and entomologists have been doing just that. Selecting for a variety of desirable traits with a focus on varroa. Instrumental insemination, managed and closed population breeding programs have given us the bees we have today. Great improvements were made early on. Measurably better at managing mites than the bees of thirty years ago. But…in my opinion….we’ve hit a plateau. And…Randy Oliver’s articles won’t make that any different.

 

Great improvements were made early on. Measurably better at managing mites than the bees of thirty years ago. But…in my opinion….we’ve hit a plateau.

This month actually marks 30 years that Varroa has been in the US (first reported in Florida and Wisconsin in September of 1987, although Varroa hasn't been widespread in the US for all of those 30 years). When I first started beekeeping, we didn't even test for mites. We didn't have Economic Thresholds or Economic Injury Levels. Nobody did alcohol washes (or sugar rolls, or ether rolls), and "% infestation" was an unknown concept. Then when we started checking mite levels, infestation rates of 20 or 30% weren't really abnormal. And the bees survived (with calendar treatments). Now an infestation rate of 5% is considered the death of the colony (which is more to do with virus loads than changes in varroa or genetics), and certain universities/authors are asserting you should ALWAYS treat whenever you get above a 2% infestation rate. To me, we're actually going backwards from where we were 15 or 20 years ago.

That backward progression happened despite having MASSIVE selective pressure occurring (when Varroa was first introduced, there weren't any legal treatments for it, and I heard reports [unverified] that over 50% of managed colonies, and almost 99% of feral colonies perished). After that, the MH line was introduced, the VSH lines were introduced, Russians were imported, dozens of "serious" breeders were selecting for resistance, countless backyard "bond" beekeepers were selecting for resistance, and the best minds in the industry (of which are significantly smarter than I) attempted to solve this problem. And where are we? NOD just introduced Formic Pro. Oxalic Acid was approved a few years ago. Resistant genetics? Well, that's more fairy tale than fact (those that claim to have resistant genetics, if you move them to a different location or change the management strategy, suddenly it doesn't work, and I don't consider that resistant genetics).

Now you have the Purdue ankle biters (that will hopefully work where the VSH, MH, and Russians didn't), Seeley's Darwinian Beekeepers (who have taken over as the new "trendy" beekeeping system to replace "Bond" beekeepers), and Randy's article (that appears to tackle what the other hundreds of breeders weren't able to do). Different artists, same song.

As I stated before, I'll sit back and watch. Should be a good show. I'm looking forward to the next act (because I don't think this one will be the last), but I don't think a "solution" will be found in the next 2 years when one didn't surface in the last 30.

 

this is another case of which making broad statements and painting with a wide brush leads to inaccuracies and misrepresentations when it comes to beekeeping.

here are examples of documented bee populations demonstrating natural resistance to varroa:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-015-0412-8

the local population in my area has not been researched, but multi season observations of my bees along with those of a dozen or so other beekeepers strongly suggest we are working with bees demonstrating natural resistance.

this population is also anecdotally competitive (if not even better) when it comes to survival, honey production, workability, and swarm prevention when compared to commercially produced bees that have been imported from other areas.

when it comes to making progress with respect to the 95% of all colonies employed in commercial pursuits that may find themselves in holding yards of 100's or 1000's of hives a 'solution' may or may not be forthcoming.

insofar as a lot of the queen stock made available to the other 5% of all colonies that are managed by us sideliners and hobbyists comes from suppliers whose bread and butter are those other 95% there may not be sufficient motivation to move the ball.

randy's admonitions in his papers are based on a compelling case as to why the industry should consider devoting some time and resources in this regard. there are plenty of examples in nature that the species is capable.

 

randy's admonitions in his papers are based on a compelling case as to why the industry should consider devoting some time and resources in this regard. there are plenty of examples in nature that the species is capable.

I pretty much agree with everything SP said in his post. No question there are bees surviving and producing a crop without known mite treatments. The last sentence hits Randy's objective dead on the head. He is trying to push the commercial queen producers towards looking for mite resistant queens. He has clearly demonstrated such queens exist. Queen zero is a perfect example. Is she the golden bullet? No. Mite bombs will still over whelm her. The commercial queen producers are paying attention and quite a few are working on the problem. Will we have measurably better queens in two or three years? I do not think so. But, given ten or twenty there is hope. This is not an easy problem or it already would have been solved.

Dick

 

Back to FP original question, the way I see it is, USDA type test is analogous boots-on-the-ground in specific area. While the alcohol wash type testing is an high level, arial view inspection. Both got its advantages and disadvantages.

 

It seems to me like poeple are doing things in the way they are and thinking it is the only way rather then reconizing that lots of people are doing differrent from each other and there are examples that there are many ways of success.

The guy that tried something and it failed and tried something else and it worked believes he has the answer. And he does for himself. When he takes that as the only answer and discounts what others are doing and having success at, it becomes hard for him to believe because of his missing something or some other varible that is not being reconized that what he tried and did not work for him is possible.

Doctors used to perscribe smokeing two ciggerrets to clear chest constriction. Mercury used to be perscribed for sexual impitence. The sun used to circle the earth.

That there are bees that live with out treatment, there is no doubt and even those studieing them admit that they don't know why though the do give guesses that they try to use scientific methods to try and prove or diss prove those guesses.

That it is happining is fact, that we know how to replicate it connsistantly is not fact yet. All those that say it doesn't work that way based on this or that are using what the think they know now. It has been proven in the past that the very best minds only know what they know untill they know more.
Cheers
gww

 

Some commercials have made it work.

The evidence around wild survivor populations is that once a level of resistance has come about, the population can survive but not so much individual hives. Many of the survivor wild populations swarm profusely.

 

SiW....

The species is capable but the beekeeper is not satisfied with the natural losses.
Losses are NORMAL, they have a wide range.

I agree with this as long as there are way to go forward more then bacwards. The story of micheal palmer when he first started out and was losing large amounts of bees and buying to replace to meet a contract. Now he keeps nucs around all the time and replacement is cheeper, easier and on good years when loses are better, more profitable. No differrent then with rain and honey produtions. 30 tons of honey last year and 20 tons this year. Most want to squeeze out the last dollar and it is why most keep bees. Looking at differrent ways to get that dollar might have as big as an impact as keeping every hive alive. You might make more splitting treating and splitting off a nuc for eventual replacement but you might make just as much from salvaging honey from dead outs and replaceing the hive with you nuc you made up for that purpose. For those that do mite counts on every hive every 30 days, it might be profitable to just extract the honey with that labor and replace with the split you were going to make anyway. The guys that know the effort to do both get to make the decision but me looking at a guy that runs his hives with no treatments and is happy with however many bees die but still having enough to move forward with sorta like some years, just like with honey production, are better then others and money is still made and the effort adds up to ok.

That has to be considered a success and should not be looked down upon.

If his bees get better and stronger while doing this, so much the better.

That is pretty much how I think the guy I bought bees from does it and he is happy and I know he got $200 from me one time and I am happy with what I got.

He has kept bees small scale for 20+ years and so it has been good enough to keep doing it. Could a comercial guy do the same thing? Some do. I don't know if they make as much as others make but they make enough that they haven't changed.

Could they do better? Better is a subjective term depending on your value system. The guy who has lots of money compared to the guy with a big family but not much money both might think they are doing the best that can be done.

Every time Square peg post his numbers, I think he is doing pretty good just like michael palmer is supporting his family and I think he is doing pretty good.

So for everyone saying it can't be done that way, this might be true for the guy who hasn't done it yet but is not true for those that are doing it.

I do not think we know why or what mechanizm makes bees not die by mites yet. I think randy having 1000 hives makes for a lot of hive to not lose eveything while trying compared to the back yard guy with 5 or 10 but am not convinced that the backyard guy can not be successful enough and still make more then he loses which in the end is what is going to count for him.
Wether the bees become stronger or the virus becomes stronger remains to be seen but it is only a guess from a scientific point of view right now and proby both happen in differrent enviroments and at differrent times.
My bees might all die this winter but this spring they almost scared me going from three to eight with out me even trying. Some bees have to die of something at that rate.
Cheers
gww
Ps Oldtime, you got your post in first but you have a point in my post cause swarming got me eight hives. Of course if they are alive, I can still pick from the best of them and try and improve upon that when making more.

 

Specialk....

Not counting time to get back up,

One thing about bee keeping, it is hard to just go to the store and get some anytime you want and expecting it to work. Everything is done in years and if you lose a year it can take two to get it back. It is defanatly something that takes time. I started a year later then I had planned cause I didn't catch a swarm and it was too late to expect success by the time I relized I wasn't going to catch one. A whole bunch of famous bee keepers lost all their hives even before mites and before they became famous. Some were even considered good bee keepers because of thier ability to build back quickly from almost total loss.

Good to see you still around. I expect to learn some things from you even if I follow my own path and take some losses because of it.
Cheers
gww

 

Good to see you still around. I expect to learn some things from you even if I follow my own path and take some losses because of it.

Fortunately my stubbornness is more persistent than my intelligence

My mantra, if I had one, certainly isn't "don't go TF." It would be "TF ahead: proceed with extreme caution." It can be done, but successes are rare. Successes and failures are both costly. I've seen many more discouraged from beekeeping and walk away when the TF system didn't work then I've seen buck up and change directions. I hate to loose beekeepers when they're playing a game that's rigged against them and they don't know it.