Natural Beekeeping International Forum

[happyculteur]

[quioui]

This is my third season in beekeeping. I have only one colony in a Warré hive that has never been treated.

I started the colony from a natural swarm and in the first year they suffered from varroa, especially in the autumn. I saw many bees with deformed wings thrown out of the hive but I didn't do anything about it.

The bees overwintered successfully. At the beginning of the season the colony was quite weak as they have lost many bees to varroa in the previous autumn but they built up fast in the spring. That year I didn't see a single bee with deformed wings and no dead varroa mites on the bottom board! We had drought that year so I didn't get any honey.

This year the colony is alive and they started bringing in plenty of pollen. So far I haven't opened the hive but they seem to be much stronger than last year. I gambled with a single colony by not treating and so far it looks like a success. By the way I do not feed my bees anything, they are completely self-sustaining.

[zaunreiter]

[Barbara]

Whilst I can't quote facts and figures like Bernhard, I can speak from my experience, which is that my local dark bees are coping untreated in my location and climate. I believe our recent new member Samphorgatherer, who has 100 hives in Wales untreated also uses local dark bees. I personally have not seen any colony loss that could be attributed to varroa in recent years and my bees like to swarm. Therefore my experience suggests that native bees which like to swarm and live in a healthy environment are coping with varroa.
As we know, beekeeping is very dependent on local conditions and where one person has success with certain circumstances, someone in a different part of the world may find the same circumstances result in colony demise. That is why you need to figure out what works in your area. I'm not into the why's and wherefore's of how it works, but my bees seem to have found a good balance at the moment.

I do agree with Bernhard that only treating colonies that need to be treated is the best place to start and my gut feeling, like Andy and Grzegorz, is that local bees, ideally swarms, should be your first choice.

I find it almost as difficult to believe that people are still suffering significant colony losses to varroa as Anthony finds it to believe that peoples bees survive treatment free. Clearly things are very different in his part of the world to mine. We therefore ALL need to remember that our experience does not mean it is reproducible elsewhere and try not to stamp our ideas on others.

Regards

Barbara

[Che Guebuddha]

OK, let me take a new shot at this! I have been contemplating and meditating on this!

Dee Lusby reported great losses when starting treatment free on small cells. She did shook swarm from the conventional cell size, shaking them into hives with 4.9mm cells.

Michael Bush sais that there is no need to go "Cold Turkey" and that he uses Oxalic Acid Vaporisier (Dennis Murrell's design) during the transition time. Like this he had much less losses than Dee.

The bees I will get this year are treated with Oxalic Acid every year religiously. I wonder if it is of benefit to treat half the regular dose of Oxalic Acid for the first year and then stop. Even drug addicts take the dose down slowly when quiting the addiction.

I honestly dislike to death the use of foreign substances in hives! The problem is also that we humans easily develop habits to things, in this case treating! I dont want to get on that treadmill!

I could aslo buy the bees as a shook swarm without any comb. In this case I will make sure to feed them well so they have fuel to build wax.

For this I will need lots of bees shaken I guess!

[AnthonyD]

[AnthonyD]

[Che Guebuddha]

AnthonyD wrote;

[AnthonyD]

[AnthonyD]

[Che Guebuddha]

You are the most active member in this thread for someone who never tried treatment-free approach
Ah yes, I forgot, you know the reality

[andy pearce]

Bernhard, I am very interested in your reply, this is something I shall study more, and is actually the reverse of my assumption.
Thanks
A

[AnthonyD]

[samphorgatherer]

I have had higher than normal losses this year but plenty of good healthy ones left to breed from. Talking to other non-treaters last week I`ve been harder hit than most but no harder than treating beeks slightly further afield.
I`m expecting losses to be around 40% against 2.5% last year. A lot of it seems to be down to siting, I have apiaries with no losses and all looking good, yet other sites, particularly damp or exposed sites have high losses.
Should easily recoup numbers over the next few months and I shall also set bait hives.
Most losses seem to be due to weaker than normal colonies clustering tightly on patches of brood and being too cold to move stores in from comb margins. No sign of DWV or more than trace levels of mites.
As most losses are on sites which were similarly affected two years ago
I`ll not be re-stocking a few apiaries. I`m also keen to gradually do away with queen excluders and adopt Tim Roe`s (Rose Hive)system, albeit with commercial shallow boxes.

[Che Guebuddha]

samphorgatherer thank you for sharing. I have some questions;

Are your frames foundationless?
Do you use small cell and if not what size do you use?
How is the forage in your area?
Did you treat in the past and with what?

Thank you

[catchercradle]

I am hoping to be treatment free this year. My understanding is that varroa levels are likely to be low in UK initially due to the prolonged cold spell reducing the amount of brood for them to lay eggs in. A couple of years ago that was our local bee inspector's explanation for generally low levels. However I will monitor and if it does look like levels are getting high I will at least use icing sugar and possibly the new strips which I think use formic acid?

[Che Guebuddha]

Dave how will you know if Varroa levels are an issue? I dont trust the varroa board. Fallen mites might be due to a very good grooming behavior. Yet most see this as an issue and treat.

I will only watch for deformed wings and general bee vigour for signs of Varroa issues.

This year Im having a new problem;
Local Strawberry grower who is not organic bough a few hectars 300 meters from me. Another conventional potato grower is crop rotating this year with Canola/Rape 2km away. This might impact the bee immunity exposing them to Varroa issues (Bernhard).

Since my new colonies come from a conventional beek treating religiously with Oxal acid every fall I just might do the same this year (but that might change).

Im thinking to treat (oxalic seems to work well here) until i get a few more colonies. Once I've got at least 6 Im considering the Soft Bond, treating only the weakest colonies. To avoid weakness I will do splits from strong survivors and might focus on Equalising stores and brood (Dean Stiglitz) during the season (nothing radical though).

Also, my bees come from conventional wax foundation so until they have gone down to small cell in my hTBHs i might treat (Michael Bush).
It will take time to move the chop n crop foundation comb which I will start with this year.

Its a process

[catchercradle]

Wasn't going to judge just by mite fall but also by whether colonies seem healthy in other ways such as deformed wing virus etc.

[Barbara]

Dusko that sounds like a really good plan.
Good luck with it!

[zaunreiter]

[Che Guebuddha]

Thanks Barbara!

Interesting what you say Bernhard. How do i determine that a colony is gone bellow the point of no return? Is it by their lack of foraging or else?
So in this case im better off joining weak colony with a strong one. Must one kill the weak Queen? Im not happy to do that.

Last year my mother colony went downhills after the prime swarm deported. After feeding lots of syrup they woke up and now they are still alive with enough stores.

I will drive up north this weekend. Will check both colonies and see if the prime swarm is alive. Cant wait to meet the ladies again

[rmcpb]

[zaunreiter]

You either kill the queen or watch nature do it the slow, painful way. Painful for the colony. I think better you take the pain.

What you can try is to do a shakedown of the colony. Use brood and combs without bees to strengthen the stronger colonies. Carefully check for brood diseases before using the comb. You might introduce diseases into a strong hive.

Resetting the weak colony might help to get rid of non-beneficial microbes. A lot within a hive depends on the right mixture of microbes and stability of the bees' microbiom. You give them another chance or two. Shake down another time. (You have to feed when doing a shakedown of the colony.) This way you produce comb and brood needed by the strong colony. And might get another strong colony if the queen is not a failure but the microbiom. If a reset helps to start again, that is the way to go.

If the queen fails there is nothing that helps except requeening with another queen. Mostly the bees will try do that anyway. By supersedure or swarming.

Bernhard

[Che Guebuddha]

This is the first time a hear the term "microbiom". Do you mind elaborating this please? If you have links about microbiom please post them here.

Thanks

[trekmate]

[zaunreiter]

You better know! See: http://www.biobees.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5423

They're watching you...

[GeekBeek]

When feral colonies thrive we should react?? I don't know about anyone else's local area but after talking to many local keepers it appears there is a balance between treatment survival and disease survival round the Northampton area. It appears feral bees are surviving just as long as treated bees. My brother Dad and me are starting straight in with 2 apiaries and running the soft bond method. One apiary run the BBKA way and the other completely treatment free (Warre style on National hives). It seems silly to us to follow the BBKA line of treatment on all our bees if they're surviving the same length of time treatment free. The added benefits of having both types of apiary is that you can see which beekeeping methods are more beneficial to the bees health and also contribute toward the bees natural evolution and selection. You can learn from the mistakes as well as the successes but I think you have to let the bees try for themselves. Is anyone else running a similar method to us??

[samphorgatherer]

[PrimorskiMite]

@samphorgatherer

Looks very interesting, what you have posted. I ask myself sometimes how many hives (queens) have to be in a genepool to realize varroa tolerance in coutries with a high bee density ( UK, germany, etc. ... )
So... how many hives do you have?

[stevecook172001]

I don't intend to treat. The most I have done is given my caught secondary swarm some sugar syrup to get them going. I've had them over three weeks now and have not fed them for a week and a half. They are housed in a Warre hive. They seem to be doing okay. I intend to let them naturally swarm (if they make it) and catch said swarms to increase my hives.