BBKA holds old dears to ransom!

[rae]

As has already been stated by Chris Luck, to an experienced beekeeper there are other ways of closely monitoring the colony that do not, of necessity, involve routine inspections of the brood nest. Close observation and examining of hive debris on a regular[B basis will be found to be telling.

You'd get a much better reception if you posted some facts (what are we looking for?), rather than the generalist "examine the hive debris" lines. If we can spot AFB and EFB etc in the hive debris, let's hear about it.

As to the claim that preserving brood nest warmth will reduce varroa....do you have any solid research to back this up? I'm not being hostile, I'm just interested. Essentially you're suggesting that the reason my big colony has varroa is down to my opening it up regularly - because it did swarm....

 

[victor meldrew]

Swarming creates a broodless period ! Nah, when a swarm leaves ,it leaves a brood box stuffed with brood, most of which is sealed, the Queen having been slimmed down in preparation!
The swarm it's self has varroa albeit in reduced numbers (this it when the beekeeper strikes)
Left to nature and what happens is , the varroa breed in the sealed brood and carry on with their life cycle. The varroa attached to the swarm feed on the adult bee until the now new colony begins it's build up of brood , then into said brood pops the varroa and the cycle recommences !.

As build up in both halves of the swarmed colonies continues, so does the build up of varroa with frightening rapidity .
These are factual observations .
Warm in the brood nest ?
Varroa need warmth just as much, as they rely on thriving brood for gods sake!
Until some fundamental change occurs in the make up of either the honeybee or the varroa , the hands off fraternity will keep their bees at the expense of and by replenishment of from conventionally kept bees

Regards John Wilkinson

 

[Poly Hive]

John?

The bee havers always have been an issue and now they dress it up in a superior way as being holier than thou/thee and me.

Which in turn makes no odds. They were and are a complete nightmare.

Reservoirs of disease and throwing swarms at the general public with not a care as to the stress and panic they create.

PH

 

[Chris Luck]

Right then, just to fill you in regarding me and varroa. As you guessed, I prefer to keep it simple which is assisted on Dadants with these nifty base units. Please excuse if you have seen all this stuff before, I don't know what is in the UK.

This shows a hive sitting on a base unit with a mouse grill that reverses to keep the bees "captive" should it be required for moving perhaps.

Showing clips for holding and releasing base unit.

and this is underneath the base unit showing slides or guides at both sides for inserting a metal plate for "drop count".

and this is a good old faithful West German sugar sifter.

Plus allowing the bees to swarm naturally.

I am fortunate, (that is I chose to be), in that I have 3 hectares of organic pasture and woodland. We are surrounded by cereal farming, some cattle and scattered hamlets. All my bees are on our own land - I wouldn't have it any other way. Most other Bee keepers in the direct locality have their hives scattered around in small copses and woodland that belong to other people AND frankly if you really wanted to have a "wobbly" you should see some of them, perhaps I'll take a few photos in the next day or two, I believe they are visited at least once a year.

Non the less, remarkably maybe, all the bees that I see from these hives are generally healthy. All I have ever seen are some cases of dysentery, not good but not the end of the world.

Later, Chris

 

[Queens59]

I am a newbee and asked my neighbours if they minded me having bees relatively close to their boundary...'no - as long as there were no swarms', well, obviously I can't promise that and I said so.

However, I did say I would do my BEST to avoid one - I think if I had said 'sorry...the latest thinking is that we must allow bees to swarm as and when they like' I would not be here as a beek but as a life long wanna bee.

 

[Brosville]

"the hands off fraternity will keep their bees at the expense of and by replenishment of from conventionally kept bees" - what utter nonsense, I started with 2 swarms last year, I now have 4 colonies of revoltingly healthy bees as I caught 2 swarms from my own bees.
Swarming is a completely natural impulse, and I seem to notice that despite all the efforts of the "conventional brigade" to subvert it , they will still very often do so, whatever is tried to prevent it.
I am exceptionally fortunate, live miles from nowhere with a large garden surrounded by farmland, and have distant but bee-tolerant country people as neighbours who have the sense not to be upset in the least by the odd swarm - more a sense of wonder at one of nature's miracles - perhaps if I lived in a town I may consider artificial swarms or splits (which are possible with a top bar hive), but as I don't..........
As for the libellous tosh about "reservoirs of disease" I notice FAR more disease amongst "conventionally kept" local hives, but I fail to see the point in jumping up and down and wasting bile on accusing them of irresponsibility - the best way is to demonstrate quietly that there is a better way.....
"stress and panic" - not around these parts, more "wow, isn't that great!"

 

[Queens59]

I live next door to an ex farmer, very used to country events (lucky in a village) but he happens - like many others, to feel alarmed at the number of bees in a swarm - a not unnatural response.

 

[Nellie]

"the hands off fraternity will keep their bees at the expense of and by replenishment of from conventionally kept bees" - what utter nonsense, I started with 2 swarms last year, I now have 4 colonies of revoltingly healthy bees as I caught 2 swarms from my own bees.
Swarming is a completely natural impulse, and I seem to notice that despite all the efforts of the "conventional brigade" to subvert it , they will still very often do so, whatever is tried to prevent it.
I am exceptionally fortunate, live miles from nowhere with a large garden surrounded by farmland, and have distant but bee-tolerant country people as neighbours who have the sense not to be upset in the least by the odd swarm - more a sense of wonder at one of nature's miracles - perhaps if I lived in a town I may consider artificial swarms or splits (which are possible with a top bar hive), but as I don't..........
As for the libellous tosh about "reservoirs of disease" I notice FAR more disease amongst "conventionally kept" local hives, but I fail to see the point in jumping up and down and wasting bile on accusing them of irresponsibility - the best way is to demonstrate quietly that there is a better way.....
"stress and panic" - not around these parts, more "wow, isn't that great!"

I live, and keep bees, in a city. Swarming IS a natural impulse and I don't seek repress it, merely to manage it in a way helpful to both my bees and my neighbours. Once we cut through the rhetoric we find, once again, that our methods aren't actually a million miles removed.

At what point should we stop arguing the same point of view from slightly different perspectives and maybe agree that perhaps we have the same aim in mind?

At some point Heidi mentioned husbandry techniques. Funnily enough that's about the only thing we haven't talked about in this long and convoluted thread and when we do eventually get around it I firmly believe that you'll find that actually we want very much the same thing.

 

[Brosville]

I'd like Heidi to be allowed a chance to put her points without being attacked - as I said, I may not agree with everything she propounds (I'd like the chance to find out!), but I think she has a valuable contribution to make to the debate, and if we dissuade her from making those points, it is our loss........

 

[rae]

Right then, just to fill you in regarding me and varroa. As you guessed, I prefer to keep it simple which is assisted on Dadants with these nifty base units. Please excuse if you have seen all this stuff before, I don't know what is in the UK.

Right, so an OMF and icing sugar. Now, I've read the scientific beekeeping site from end to end, and Randy has done a lot of work on icing sugar - and the best I can take from it is that it is a potentially useful tool in knocking down a percentage of the population - but that it should be used in conjunction with other strategies, such as drone brood trapping and conventional thymol based treatments. Are you saying that the only recommendation for varroa in a "natural" approach is icing sugar and an OMF?

 

[Brosville]

The "problem" with the icing sugar treatment is that it is time-consuming, and has to be repeated at the correct time, often several times until the desired effect is achieved, (using mite counts)- sometimes people assume that as it doesn't work like a poison that gives "instant knock down" that it "doesn't work".
Many people use no other varroa "treatments", but will argue that hive design and allowing the preservation of essential nest heat and atmosphere gives the bees a better chance of dealing with it themselves.
I always try to look at things as "what would I do?" - I used a prophylactic dusting on my first swarm, and since then have been lucky and have not needed to treat any of my colonies - if I had to treat it would be icing sugar, and IF that proved ineffective, I may consider something like thymol/lactic acid, but only with extreme reluctance. As for drone brood culling, I'd never contemplate that as it to me "feels totally wrong" - bees are "bright" and have a lot of drone brood for a reason - we dim humans may not quite understand why that is at our present state of knowledge, but I suspect that drone culling will prove to be on a par with routine removal of tonsils/adenoids as was practised "as a matter of course" on hapless infants in the 50's and 60's...

 

[rae]

Many people use no other varroa "treatments", but will argue that hive design and allowing the preservation of essential nest heat and atmosphere gives the bees a better chance of dealing with it themselves.

Evidence? I could argue that painting my hives yellow reduces varroa counts, but it doesn't make it true.

The "problem" with the icing sugar treatment is that it is time-consuming, and has to be repeated at the correct time, often several times until the desired effect is achieved, (using mite counts)- sometimes people assume that as it doesn't work like a poison that gives "instant knock down" that it "doesn't work".

Nope, I'm using the data from Randy's own site, where he has been very thorough with this.

 

[Brosville]

You call for "evidence" presumably of the "scientific, double-blind" type - it may exist or be in preparation, all I know is that there is very strong anecdotal evidence that it works most effectively - given that Bayvarol now no longer works (scientifically proven stuff that!), and knowing icing sugar to be pretty harmless edible stuff, I know which I'd choose
As to whether research will EVER be funded into safe, natural unpatentable remedies, I sincerely doubt it - the money is in finding patentable chemicals (which will work for a season or two then the mites will get immune......)
I'll keep the forum appraised of how I get on with my "all muck and magic" approach

 

[Firegazer]

I've read quite a bit about this, and find the "they'll sort it out if we leave them on their own" argument quite attractive; I just don't think it can work in an area where there are lots of 'domestic' colonies in close proximity.

The properly natural thing to happen (once the fairly 'unnatural' import of various global parasites and diseases occurred) is for beekeepers to provide some well separated homes, which mimic hollow trees closely, keep hands off and let the strong live and the weak die. This could result in either all UK bees dying out - natural selection doesn't have a plan or bee-specific sensitivities - or a small group of genetically adapted bees 'getting on' with varroa and re-colonising the country.

A few problems with this plan:

1) it might kill everything off;
2) it probably only works if NO ONE medicates colonies to encourage stronger mites to develop.

Anyone 'cheating' with medicines, and then allowing the resultant genetics to spread (both bee and mite genetics) would keep resetting the adaptation race between the two species. Part of the bees' selection pressure on mites getting too strong needs to be the colony dying and taking those strong mites out of the game; that's how the predator/parasite strength is kept in check 'naturally'. Keep ALL bees alive and the pests just get stronger and stronger, eventually killing the domestic stock anyway, but certainly killing off any local feral population that doesn't have the short-term crutch of interventions.

I think some of the Natural Beekeeping techniques look really good, and would probably work brilliantly, but only if everybody used them.

Until then, the most helpful thing we can all do (suggested on Randy Oliver's site) is to ensure we measure each colony's adaptation to varroa - how well it's coping without medicine or serious interventions - give as little artificial help as we can get away with, and ONLY BREED from the ones that need the least help. If we do this, there should be a persistent pressure on the bees to adapt and, once we get a significant proportion of the population able to cope with little/no help we can start letting the struggling colonies die which (if we prevent their mites from spreading to other colonies) should put pressure on the parasite/disease to get less virulent. This road would be stable and, eventually, require no medicines.

This may have to be done on a global basis if people keep 'shuffling the deck' by importing bees (plus varroa?) and queens from outside the country.

Crazy, or sane? Practical or dreamland?

FG

 

[victor meldrew]

On it's inception, sugar dusting was practised by numerous beekeepers in the UK.I being one of them . I tried both methods ,ie removing frames and dusting each side and sifting through a screen. Neither worked effectively ! and I suspect the same goes for the majority trying it
A member of our group conducted a survey on the relative merits of both systems. I never did see his findings , I think it was quietly dropped as was the wide spread practice of sugar dusting !

John Wilkinson

 

[Brosville]

then there's the argument about being "hands off" about breeding too.... There are some very reasonable arguments made that this is another area where "bees know best", and the likes of Brother Adam "got it wrong" in seeking to breed the perfect bee...
What I do find very marked is that there are many people who find sugar dusting all they ever need, and some who swear blind that it doesn't work for them - looking at it from a scientific viewpoint, one or both lots are fibbing, or there are other differences in which the bees are kept that affect the results....

 

[Firegazer]

I think Randy says that dusting knocks off some percentage (~30%) of the mites currently on bees. The effect of this on the colony's mite load will vary massively based on whether they are broodless (30% of all mites) or brood and drone rearing (most mites in cells = naff all %).

Were the studies done with this in mind? Was 90% mite removal the success level (in people's minds)?

FG

 

[Chris Luck]

Are you saying that the only recommendation for varroa in a "natural" approach is icing sugar and an OMF?

Nope, I'm simply answering the question about what I do that it works for me. If you don't try something you won't know and as I've made clear I will always go for the minimum intervention and non use of drugs and chemicals. I've been "organic" all my life and have no intention of changing now. Not so long ago it was fashionable to dish out anti biotic drugs to humans at every opportunity, (well, certainly in France that was the case), then it was realised that resistance was building up and when they really were required they didn't work.

Got to go, Chris

 

[rae]

You call for "evidence" presumably of the "scientific, double-blind" type - it may exist or be in preparation, all I know is that there is very strong anecdotal evidence that it works most effectively - given that Bayvarol now no longer works (scientifically proven stuff that!), and knowing icing sugar to be pretty harmless edible stuff, I know which I'd choose

Yes, a proper evaluation, just like Randy did(ish) for icing sugar (read the site). The best evidence is that feral colonies (by definition colonies that aren't messed about with) have been hammered by varroa. If your theory was remotely true, feral colonies would be thriving all over the place, and us box-openers would have lots of dead bees.

 

[victor meldrew]

20 years ago there were swarms all over ,every early summer .then varroa arrived and as it spread throughout the land the incidence of swarming began to lessen and still is lessening !,in spite of the recent influx of newbies whose talents haven't been honed yet to the point of proper swarm control.
In my eyes this points to the disappearance feral colonies from which the bulk of swarms issued year on year .So much for "let them get on with it "
No I'm sorry my friend , I admire your idealism and your blind faith .Faith may move mountains but it aint going to move varroa .

Leave your bees alone , promise you won't obtain replacements for losses and let's see how long you last , not very I suspect.

John Wilkinson