How many would you like? I could consider a special production run if the price were right. ;-)

But seriously though, I have been buying them from Don the fatbeeman. He occasionally uses essential oils and FGMO. $25

I also ordered some this year from Zia Queenbee. They claim "Breeding stock has over-wintered at minimum two years with no commercial pharmaceutical applications..." $28

Michael Bush's website says he will be selling some of his next year. They will set you back $35-$40.

 

Kingfisher Apiaries sells queens, he is on the forum here.

Wolf Creek Apiaries (similar to fatbeeman) also sells queens $25
http://wolfcreekbees.com/

 

Beautiful photos on that site.

 

Mark:

I have had great success with Carni's from http://www.fullbloomapiaries.com/

Nice northern raised treatment free queens

 

Mark:
I have had great success with Carni's from http://www.fullbloomapiaries.com/
Nice northern raised treatment free queens

They say on their site that they treat for mites 'only when necessary' with formic acid and thymol.

 

What is it about these sources of queens that makes them so pricey?

 

It's the market. If you sell out, you raise prices. If you have a surplus, you lower prices.

Well, either that or they have to make up for losses. ;-)

 

b weavers queens are untreated I believe

 

Yes, BeeWeaver bees are untreated.

 

Just seems like if they weren't so pricey there would be more of them in use by more beekeepers, thereby increasing the number in use all over. No commercial operation that I know will spend that kind of money for a queen.

If I buy 100 queens for $15.00 each, every time one dies or is killed makes the live ones more expensive. A $25.00 or $35.00 queen would require moree work trying to maximize the acceptance rate.

Just my pov.

p.s. any land grant colleges working on this? treatment freenism and treatment free queens?

 

If I buy 100 queens for $15.00 each, every time one dies or is killed makes the live ones more expensive. A $25.00 or $35.00 queen would require moree work trying to maximize the acceptance rate.

You didn't mention how many you would lose over the winter or how much money you would save not treating. We could come up with a Life-Cycle Cost Analysis.

 

7standsbeefarm.com VSH Queens $ 18.00 + shipping. No treatment
Thanks

 

7standsbeefarm.com VSH Queens $ 18.00 + shipping
Thanks

I don't find any claims of being treatment free on this website.

 

Cells aren't that pricey. They work pretty well.

 

Not that I've seen. Do you keep detailed enough records to plot trends? Do you do experiments, you know, do one thing to one yard and another to another to see which works better? You could buy queens from one source for one yard and another for another and see which works out better. I wish I could try things on that scale.

If we had the average survivability of queens from several different producers, we could compare the costs of treating vs. losing hives to see the actual profitability. We could throw honey production, and/or hives available for pollination as well. I seriously doubt anybody does an analysis on that kind of scale. But I have been known to be wrong. ;-)

 

Do you keep detailed enough records to plot trends? Do you do experiments, you know, do one thing to one yard and another to another to see which works better?...................................... I seriously doubt anybody does an analysis on that kind of scale. I imagine you might just think "I bought queens from so and so last year and I had an 81% survival rate over winter, I will buy from them again." But it's just my imagination.

Wired some of your opinions about other people are way off, you are letting your imagination run away with you. You are really showing you just don't have any remote conception how commercial operators work. We are not a bunch of ignorant yokels.

You offered varroa resistant queens for sale. You serious? To do that, you have to have varroa tolerant bees that don't keep dieing out, and be capable of storing enough surplus honey to make a business viable.

Also you are under a complete misconception about how Beeweaver achieved their varroa tolerant bees. There was WAY more to it than just letting nearly everything die and breeding from the survivors. WAY more.

You and others are evaluating the cost of not treating by how many hives die. The main cost of not treating is lost honey production due to mite infested bees. Against that, what little honey treatment free people do get, can no doubt be marketed at a premium price, due to the shortage of it. But all up it would not be worth it for most. If it was, everybody would be doing it.

I've been getting told that beekeepers who treat spend so much time running around putting treatments in the hives, and spending so much money on chemicals, and I'm sure it's all true. Surely then there is a competitive advantage to not treating and the queens would be cheaper?

 

Tried a lot of that stock. Go with Bweaver if you want a decent queen.

 

Sol - why yes we keep the genetics recorded for each yard(where the bees originally came from), and for the year, for each hive. Do you really want to know what the number say?


Crazy Roland

SQKCRK - yell at me if I am too far off topic

 

Sol - why yes we keep the genetics recorded for each yard(where the bees originally came from), and for the year, for each hive. Do you really want to know what the number say?

Yes, I would love some numbers. I'm an engineer you know.

 

BWeaver seems to be the model for how a commercial beekeeper could go chemical free. They did it by leaving a portion of their bees untreated and then using the survivors as breeders. (This is a very simplistic explanation and I am by no means an expert on BWeaver, see their website.) They did have a problem with hot bees for a few years, but they've cleared it up now they say.

I have investigated them before, and they have good stuff, but I'm concerned with the overwintering problems I've had with Georgia bees that using bees from further south of me might not be the best plan. At some point in the future, I would like to add some of their queens.

 

B. Weaver. Mine have overwintered here in SE Missouri just fine.

 

That is good to know, thanks.

 

Where do treatment free queens ORIGINATE from? I have picked up, some how, that they were bred for.

 

Any answer to this question? Here I don't mean where does one buy them.

 

I wish with all my heart I could send you 20-30 at a reasonable price, but I did not contact the Apiary inspection service before the first of this year so I cannot mail anything. GRRRR. Next year I will be out in force. I also plan on shipping nucs.
Sqkck, do you raise queens? The cheapest alternative is to order a glenn queen or 2 and graft like a maniac.

mike

 

Thanks Mike. I have a hard time reading the newspaper, let alone graft. I have done it in the past. Maybe I'll give it another try.

What does the Apiary Inspection Service do for you? Certify the Queens as Disease Free or something?

 

The Weavers have been in business for a long time and have proven long term stock. Most of the other "treatment free" breeders you mentioned have only been around for a couple of years, and have relatively few hives. This does not denote real resistance. Weaver had the Smart (sic) bees for many years, which were good, and then those evolved into what they have now. Many beeks here in the south and west have strong strains and have been treatment free for many years. Lusby, Weaver, Round Rock, Baldwin, etc. These are larger producers with many hives. Ask the producer how many hives they have and how long they have been treatment free. Ask around here if in doubt. There is a lot of smoke out there....cough....

 

The Weavers have been in business for a long time and have proven long term stock. Most of the other "treatment free" breeders you mentioned have only been around for a couple of years, and have relatively few hives. This does not denote real resistance.

I would tend to agree. But how long do you think it would take to create "real resistance?" Would ten years suffice? 15? What's a level of loss to varroa that denotes "real resistance?"

 

Viejito, (Old Timer in Spanish)

Wise you are, I have chosen to just listen and keep the advice, only from those of you that really have experience that surpasses a few years or a few dozen hives.
Randy Oliver, during a conference he gave in Santa Fe said; “Ask for advice, and only the new comers, pretending they know it all, will be willing to give you a single line answer”

 

Make me legal.....if I drop any bees in the mail bad things start happening to me. They inspect mainly to make sure that I am not sending any infested bees out of the state.

mike

 

Which we are greatful for. Thanks.

 

Viejito. I like that!

 

If we had bees that could exist in a hive w/ varroa present, while producing a crop of honey of a good amount(relative term, i'm sure), and not having to use any mite controls, I would be satisfied w/ that. Call it resistance or tolerance or whatever. I doubt that I will live to see the day when this is actually established. I may be pessimistic on this matter. Varroa mites aren't good parasites on apis mellifera. They need to get their act together.

Had we absolutely never used chemical miticides in our colonies of bees, who would have adapted first, the mites or the bees? My vote is the mites. If they kept killing all of their hosts, they would either have had to find a different host to feed on or become more parasite like and stop killing their Honeybee hosts.

 

If we had bees that could exist in a hive w/ varroa present, while producing a crop of honey of a good amount(relative term, i'm sure), and not having to use any mite controls, I would be satisfied w/ that.

Mark,

Isn't overwintering also part of that equation? Some hives crash during the summer and some give a good crop and then crash/die overwinter. Otherwise, HH's system of buying packages every spring would make mite resistance irrelevant to the honey producer, assuming you can buy more packages every spring.

Tom

 

Mike,

I for one am glad to see that you are as devoted to bee keeping as you are at your age... keep it up and stick with what you see "working" as you go... I see you being a great producer in the near future...

the FUTURE is what we ALL should be focussing on when breeding and selecting our stocks...

 

the FUTURE is what we ALL should be focussing on when breeding and selecting our stocks...

:applause:

 

Mark, you asked where to get treatment free queens, but (naturally) you are balking at the price.
My view on this- I see a trend happening where people are going to more and more often be breeding their own supply of queens. This due to many reasons: high losses from disease, mites etc...skyrocketing price of gas and shipping...wanting bees that are more acclimatized to our own areas....the trend towards consumers and hobbiests demanding more chemical-free bees and honey....just to name a few reasons.
I'm a hobbiest and I'll be experimenting with making more queens and nucs for myself this year. I want to stop having to buy bees from other folks. I think a LOT of BKs both big and small are seriously considering raising thier own queens and bees- folks who simply bought packages before. I hear hobbiests talk constantly about not wanting to buy packages, about wanting to raise their own- I didn't hear them talking much about that 2 years ago.

To connect back on the topic though- people like me don't mind paying a high price for treatment free queens because we plan/hope to raise more queens from those. We are glad to pay whatever for some good stock to start out with. If a commercial BK has to buy 500 queens every year then yeah the price is a huge factor. But if one has to buy 20 queens and uses them to raise more queens for years to come, then the price is not such an issue.

Who actually buys the most queens?- that would be interesting to know. We all know there are many more hobbiest and small BK out there than commercial ones. But commercial BK buy everything in larger quantities. So overall, who is buying the most queens? If the answer is hobbiests, then this explains the higher price of treatment free queens. Just as people willingly pay more in the store for 'organic' honey.

I suspect the longterm story however, is that hobbiests who buy treatment free bees are the very hobbiests who are most interested in raising their own queens and bees in the future. So like me, they are more than willing to pay more for good non-treated stock to start with.

 

In our operation..

about 72% go to retailers and large commercial operations (orders of 100 - 2,000)...
about 14% go to Universities and researchers...
about 11% go to "Side-liners" or small commercial operations (100 hives or less - mostly breeders)...
about 3% go to hobbiest (20 hives or less)...

Thats just the stats, not saying that any one group is less important than another... ALL bee keepers whether they have 1 hive or 20,000 are helpful to our industry... These figures are based on last seasons reports (a little over 80,000 queens total)... but keep in mind that we just started offering queens to the general public last season, so these figures may change in time, but so far they seem to be following the same pattern.

Hobbiest do out number commercial beeks by at least 10-1, but you have to consider that the average number of hives in the commercial operations greatly out numbers the average number of hives kept by hobbiests... If I had to guess, I would say that the commercial hives out number hobby hives by around 2,000-1... When you look at it from that prospective, the hobbiest are buying their fair share of queens... It may be helpful to note also that most commercial operations have their own breeding operations within them as well... their purchased queens are mainly for adding lineages to their lines...

Hope this helps!

 

In our operation..

[snip]

about 3% go to hobbiest (20 hives or less)...

To get an accurate percent of queens purchased by breeders, one would need sales data from ALL queen producers. There are many that sell most, if not all their queens to the hobbiest.