Can bees manage themselves

[pargyle]

@BaconWizard - Well you've clarified a few things but the forum is probably well ahead of where some of the issues you identify are ..

If you look up DerekM on here (Derek Mitchell) on here and read his posts (There's a lot of them) or better still and as well - once the conventions start again - go and listen to him. He's been experimenting with tree trunks, PIR vertical hives and goodness only knows what else to determine how bees perform and how they react to parasites and disease in a variety of insulated environments. I'm not going to quote Derek but his research includes data from some very sophisticated and extensive in hive monitoring equipment. The bottom line (or at least my interpretation of everything that Derek has said and I have heard from him) is that honey bees thrive best in very highly insulated tall hives ... yes, it's much more complicated than that ... and that in hgh temperature, high humidity environments (which, given the choice, bees prefer) Varroa finds it hard to thrive.

Unfortunately, such locations in the wild are becoming very scarce - out natural woodlands are depleted, hollow and rotten trees in urban environments are taken down for safety reasons, housing and farm buildings made from modern materials and with modern building techniques do not provide the habitats that our wild honey bees sought out in times past.

So, the reality is that honey bees in the UK are predominantly in managed colonies - why do you think swarms (from both feral and managed colonies) often seek out bait boxes put out by beekeepers and often move into empty hives they find in apiaries ? These 'Un-natural' boxes clearly find favour with our honeybees and perhaps this is an indicator of the state of our rural environment ? I'm not saying that there are no surviving feral colonies - but whether they are an example to be followed by beekeepers - even me - and I'm all for keeping bees in the way that bees would choose if they were able - doubt the ability of feral colonies to thrive and survive long term in the light of the various threats we have introduced by the changes we have made to our environment and the global expansion of parasites and predatory species. Our bees, in the UK, particularly in the warmer South where I live, face further threats from the Asian Hornet, SHB and goodness only knows what other potential impact in the future.

Yes .. it would be ideal if everyone who kept bees in the UK changed to a hive such as those Derek Mitchell has created and just kept honey bees as pets .... I'm sure some people do ... but the reality you have to face is that keeping bees is expensive, they do need management and a crop of honey to be used or sold is the pay off for this management. In order to achieve such management the compromise has to be hives that CAN be managed !

I think all beekeepers would love to see a situation rolled back to those days prior to the invasion of varroa - my father kept bees in those days and it was a very different style of beekeeping ... but time has moved on and the beekeeping world has shifted - we have to live with it - whatever path we take has to account for these changes.

I won't be unkind and say don't continue to think and read and consider - we should all do this as knowledge is the only safe path to making good decisions but ... be aware that quoting other people's ideas and writings is not individual thought and perhaps you need to crystallise your own ideas and bring those to the forum when you have them in place and we can look forward to some healthy debate and perhaps a few fireworks !

 

[Tony Slater]

My Treatment free regime has been well documented on here many times - the short answer to your question is nothing. I do regular sugar rolls and most of the time there are only low levels of mites in my hives - I see 'spikes' occasionally and I keep a close eye on that colony when I see it ... inevitably the infestation levels return to more 'normal' levels. I watch closely for signs of varroa related disease and thankfully have never seen any.

I don't preach that treatment free is the way forward for everyone and if a new beekeeper was intending being treatment free I would actively discourage them. I don't lose colonies - I lost one this year to a swarm that caught me out and a subsequent queen failure but I can't say that varroa has ever contributed significantly to any colony I've lost over the years .. yes, I've had the odd colony dwindle and I've starved at least one that I can remember. But .. my colonies survive, thrive and provide a honey crop that pays for their upkeep.

If I found a colony that were unable to reduce the mite load on their own I would treat - OA by sublimation - I've not had to do it yet but it's pointless being a beekeeper, monitoring varroa and not being prepared to do something about it if TF is not working. The last thing I want is weak or dead colonies.

I don't know why my bees manage to live alongside varroa and maintain mite levels at a level they cope with. Often I find no mites in my sugar rolls at all ... more often than not it's one or two, rarely more than 5. I've seen 15 on one occasion and had a few sleepless night over that one - next sugar roll down to 5 and then 2 !

I think it's a combination of bees, location, high levels of hive insulation, foundation free, local concentrations/combinations of forage (not many high value intensive crops eg: OSR/Heather where I live), low interference inspections and LUCK ... who knows ? It works for me and I keep doing it but don't follow me - I'm well off the beaten track and there are always risks.

I am very interested in your reference to high levels of hive insulation. High insulation means the relative humidity in the hive can increase , and relative humidity above 80% seriously inhibits mite reproduction. Do you insulate wooden hives and if so how?

 

[Wilco]

I am very interested in your reference to high levels of hive insulation. High insulation means the relative humidity in the hive can increase , and relative humidity above 80% seriously inhibits mite reproduction. Do you insulate wooden hives and if so how?

I think there are a few threads on this if you search through the forum. A bit of skip diving for closed cell insulation to put above cover boards is a good start.

 

[pargyle]

I am very interested in your reference to high levels of hive insulation. High insulation means the relative humidity in the hive can increase , and relative humidity above 80% seriously inhibits mite reproduction. Do you insulate wooden hives and if so how?

My first hive (which convinced me of the benefits of insulation) was a Long Deep Hive- 25 frames 14 x 12 horizontally - it was made from reclaimed timber and has triple walls - internally Victorian floorboars then 25mm sandwich of polystyrene and then pallet timber externally, Apex roof filled with insulation. I moved from that to Paynes Poly hives but I keep a super on top of the crownboard with 100mm of Kingspan PIR in it. I've only ever had one cedar hive (I was given one) and I made a PIR bonnet for it ... See @ Erichalfbee for some photos as she has several. I gave the hive away as it didn't really sit with Paynes Poly and the hive bonnet morphed into a Solar Wax extractor.

Here's my LDH:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/99514363@N06/albums/72157634865981506
And here's what's left of my hive bonnet - you will have to use your imagination until Dani posts her photos or links to them.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/125609724@N03/albums/72157655336719145

 

[Erichalfbee]

Here you are. You need to paint them though

 

[oxnatbees]

As a new bee keeper, looking at the equipment required, chemicals, feed, requeening, winter insulation, managing honey, hives etc
I was wondering can a colony quite happily look after itself in, say a national hive without any human interaction and survive for a number of years?

Yes. Factors which seem to help are:
- Populate with bees from a no-treatment source like a swarm from a wild colony
- Forage: need a certain amount of fuel (nectar) and a variety of pollen (nutrition). Former can be an issue in some areas, but UK pollen is matched to bee requirements unless you have many hives, then you may need supplements.
- Hive type: lot of debate here: the issue with Nationals isn't so much insulation, as mould. Bees can keep a small well insulated cavity warm which suppresses mould, but a large hive may need a mesh floor to keep humidity down, so the bees need to gather significantly more fuel to keep warm - an extra stressor.
- Propolis is antiseptic and antifungal, but some beekeepers remove it
- Natural comb, rather than foundation, seems to help.

Bear in mind too that when people claim their colonies last longer than natural ones, they are probably requeening regularly, so it's not the same colony.

You will get less honey than a highly managed hive.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Bear in mind too that when people claim their colonies last longer than natural ones, they are probably requeening regularly, so it's not the same colony.

And also bear in mind that some people claim that bee colonies left to their own devices die out 'naturally' after a few years - rather than from their neglect.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I must say it's a bit of a novelty being trolled at such a high level of

intellectual inquiry,

It's obvious that our intellect and beekeeping knowledge is far inferior to the beercan wizard and, since they know that bees can fare much better without our fiddling and pumping them full of antibiotics maybe needs to find another forum more suited to their superior intellect.

 

[pargyle]

Yes. Factors which seem to help are:
- Populate with bees from a no-treatment source like a swarm from a wild colony
- Forage: need a certain amount of fuel (nectar) and a variety of pollen (nutrition). Former can be an issue in some areas, but UK pollen is matched to bee requirements unless you have many hives, then you may need supplements.
- Hive type: lot of debate here: the issue with Nationals isn't so much insulation, as mould. Bees can keep a small well insulated cavity warm which suppresses mould, but a large hive may need a mesh floor to keep humidity down, so the bees need to gather significantly more fuel to keep warm - an extra stressor.
- Propolis is antiseptic and antifungal, but some beekeepers remove it
- Natural comb, rather than foundation, seems to help.

Bear in mind too that when people claim their colonies last longer than natural ones, they are probably requeening regularly, so it's not the same colony.

You will get less honey than a highly managed hive.

Actually ... whilst I would agree with much of the above I think you are wrong on a couple of counts:

1. A mesh floor does not reduce the heat in the hive (I spent a couple of years measuring temperature and humidity in my hives - the temperature within a couple of centimetres of the mesh floor climbs to well above the ambient temperature outside. The key is to have insulation above the crown board and to have no gaps, holes or crevices at the top of the hive.

2. The bees seek to keep humidity levels up not reduce them - I used to regularly see 85% in my hives.

3. Mould has never been an issue, albeit my hives have been well insulated or are Paynes Poly boxes. If you have a mould problem then I suspect that you will need more insulation not not more ventilation.

4. Bees in well insulated hives use far less 'fuel' to maintain the temperature and humidity that they seek - the temperatures in the brood nest from my measurements were always around 32 t0 34 degrees - summer and winter. Yes, in the coldest part of the winter they will only really heat the top section of the hive but even on the coldest days I never saw the interior temperatures anywhere near the ambient exterior temps.

I would agree that maintaining a high humidity appears to be one of the factors that assist the bees in keeping varroa levels at a manageable level.

5. Less Honey ? Well I'm not sure about that ... I think honey crop has so many factors that affect it - local forage, bees, weather at critical times. How do you measure what is less or more from a colony with so many factors. I know beekeepers who fiddle with their bees constantly and get rubbish crops - I have a theory that over-inspecting actually sets the colony back as they spend more time trying to reinstate what 'damage' the beekeeper has done to their environment. I rather feel that any healthy colony will achieve the maximum crop they are capable of in that particulare location if left, to some extent, to get on with it. You can improve crops by increasing the colony size - there are enough methods to achieve this - or by relocating the colony to an area where there is a high value crop but - I keep my bees in the same place in my garden and what they produce is what they produce.

 

[oxnatbees]

Excellent data led informative reply, Pargyle, thanks.

I appreciate the irony, Jenkins. Just teasing, I:m sure.

 

[Finman]

Not necessarily - Varroa is a threat, of course, but colonies can survive and thrive without treatment for varroa but there are so many threats for unmanaged colonies that the odds are not in their favour.

Varroa kills hives In two years. Compare the study where feral colonies were researched.

Beehive can live tens of years, when varroa kills the colony and next summer the hive gets a new swarm.

Now we can start the debate, where here and there bee colonies live without human's help.

 

[oxnatbees]

Finman, which study? What is your source?

There is an 18 year old colony in a wall near me. You're in Finland, with different bees - as I understand it from reading Ruttner, bees weren't even in Finland until fairly recently, you have no local landrace.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Finman, which study? What is your source?

There is an 18 year old colony in a wall near me. You're in Finland, with different bees - as I understand it from reading Ruttner, bees weren't even in Finland until fairly recently, you have no local landrace.

You could start here.
Post 3
https://beekeepingforum.co.uk/threads/question-about-genetic-strengths.42776/#post-638752

 

[Lizzahedieh]

My Treatment free regime has been well documented on here many times - the short answer to your question is nothing. I do regular sugar rolls and most of the time there are only low levels of mites in my hives - I see 'spikes' occasionally and I keep a close eye on that colony when I see it ... inevitably the infestation levels return to more 'normal' levels. I watch closely for signs of varroa related disease and thankfully have never seen any.

I don't preach that treatment free is the way forward for everyone and if a new beekeeper was intending being treatment free I would actively discourage them. I don't lose colonies - I lost one this year to a swarm that caught me out and a subsequent queen failure but I can't say that varroa has ever contributed significantly to any colony I've lost over the years .. yes, I've had the odd colony dwindle and I've starved at least one that I can remember. But .. my colonies survive, thrive and provide a honey crop that pays for their upkeep.

If I found a colony that were unable to reduce the mite load on their own I would treat - OA by sublimation - I've not had to do it yet but it's pointless being a beekeeper, monitoring varroa and not being prepared to do something about it if TF is not working. The last thing I want is weak or dead colonies.

I don't know why my bees manage to live alongside varroa and maintain mite levels at a level they cope with. Often I find no mites in my sugar rolls at all ... more often than not it's one or two, rarely more than 5. I've seen 15 on one occasion and had a few sleepless night over that one - next sugar roll down to 5 and then 2 !

I think it's a combination of bees, location, high levels of hive insulation, foundation free, local concentrations/combinations of forage (not many high value intensive crops eg: OSR/Heather where I live), low interference inspections and LUCK ... who knows ? It works for me and I keep doing it but don't follow me - I'm well off the beaten track and there are always risks.

Could you explain what a sugar roll is please?

 

[Boston Bees]

Could you explain what a sugar roll is please?

Google "sugar roll bees"

 

[oxnatbees]

You could start here.
Post 3
https://beekeepingforum.co.uk/threads/question-about-genetic-strengths.42776/#post-638752

That's not a peer reviewed scientific paper, as well you know.

Finman studied generits and Knows His Stuff. He may be opinionated and an entertaining gadfly, but he has integrity and I'm sure he is referring to some actual data.

 

[Wilco]

So. What?

My quote:
"Likewise, milk cows are incapable of thriving outside of a diary-farm, they will die very quickly because they produce far more milk than they need or can use, and if they are not milked they will die very painfully. They may be fed with antibiotics daily and have a diet that "works" but is less than optimal.
It is NOT necessarily the best thing for the species Bovinae Taurus for it to continue that way though and just because this is how farmers currently farm and how the market for milk currently behaves, doesn't automatically mean it's the ideal situation. "

Why would that need to be a UK phenomenon, to be true? That's utterly absurd.

It happens, SOMEWHERE, AT-ALL, and thus provides an example of the kind of accepted "best practice" human management of a farmed animal that may be doing more harm than good, in the name of profit, EVEN IF IT HAPPENS OUTSIDE OF THE UK. Things that exist outside of the UK do not magically cease to exist or being a model we should observe and learn from. (It may WELL become legal here in the next few years actually, but that's an entirely different discussion)

Rather than address the point being made, you attempted to claim that it doesn't happen.
You were flat out wrong. It does. My ACTUAL POINT, that human management is good for companies, but not necessarily the farmed species or even people sometimes, remains entirely true. I am not claiming that it is automatically bad in all cases, either.

I have made NO claims, whatsoever about beekeeping. I have pointed to already extant ones that have some scientific basis (but I opined that they need further study, because they were small-scale studies with small sample-sizes and fairly short-term) and I would expect anyone contributing to this thread to be well-aware-of them, especially as all can already be found on this forum, most of it in THIS THREAD.

I have then said that further study and therefore apiculture using those techniques, needs to be encouraged so we can KNOW what works or doesn't, rather than relying on convention, dogma, ideology, or one-true-way-ism.
I have even said that I suspect management of bees IS a necessity but can't actually know. I have at NO POINT claimed these ideas work, don't work, are true, not-true, are good/bad/indifferent. I have said it needs to be more-than acceptable to try them out rather than just reflexively shouting-it-down. Trying them, needs to be actively welcome.

Apparently, the idea of waiting to confirm facts with both informal study, then better science and then acknowledging the facts AS facts, no matter WHAT our pre-existing opinions may have been, and in preference to dogma, is very upsetting to some people. OMG How dare I? He's a TROLL!

It seems some feel that expressing that kind of opinion should be limited to experienced bee-keepers alone, it couldn't possibly apply to, oh, maybe the ENTIRETY of our species' knowledge! Or to the ENTIRE academic attitude to what positions we can vehemently hold-to with intellectual honesty.

What an incredibly disturbing response some people have had to that concept. I am disgusted by the pitchfork and torch-wavers.

I have PLENTY of experience over 20 years in what makes good or bad intellectual inquiry, and how the"scientific method" as the press call it, is supposed to work. And that is what I have discussed. I don't care if someone is a bee-keeper, or a yak-farmer, or a cosmologist. It applies to all people in all circumstances. Bee Keepers are not exempt.

This area refers to the industry I work in. You have no idea what you are talking about. Please see previous point about engaging in discussion rather than getting personal/emotional and making spurious and utterly ridiculous claims.

 

[philipm]

Normally cows on a dairy farm will have had their calfs removed they are milked by a machine the more milk taken the more they will produce up to a limit. If they were to be in the wild the calf would use the milk so the cow wouldn't die. I think this is another case of someone from the city not understanding how things work as the calf suckles the milk will reduce. No calf no milk.

 

[BaconWizard]

Normally cows on a dairy farm will have had their calfs removed they are milked by a machine the more milk taken the more they will produce up to a limit. If they were to be in the wild the calf would use the milk so the cow wouldn't die. I think this is another case of someone from the city not understanding how things work as the calf suckles the milk will reduce. No calf no milk.

I have lived most of my life on a farm with roughly 150 head of dairy cattle, and 200 of beef although pigs were the main one. For the sake of clarity, I am not myself a farmer. My academic background was in microbiology, specific to meat and fermentation.

Modern dairy cows produce more milk than is needed by a calf, and continue to produce much longer after a calf is weaned than they did just a few hundred years ago: the blink of an eye in deep-time.
This can be demonstrated with surrogate mothers with male calves that are raised for English Rose Veal.

Although yes, the management of the herd does increase or decrease yield too.

As you are fully aware of course, it is irrelevant; if the diary herd example was a bad one (it isn’t) then there are plenty of other examples to be had for anyone who thinks for 30 seconds. Pick one you like if you don’t like mine.

Human management is done to benefit humans, specifically the farmer, and this is not ALWAYS in the best long-term interests of the kept animal or even other humans, including following generations.
The same might be true for bees. Knowing if so, and how-so, is of paramount value and importance.

it’s amazing how people are prepared to die upon the hill of “no, we want to know LESS about bees, in case something new or different than current ideas is proven”

 

[BaconWizard]

This area refers to the industry I work in. You have no idea what you are talking about. Please see previous point about engaging in discussion rather than getting personal/emotional and making spurious and utterly ridiculous claims.

You wanted a citation, you were provided with a good meta study of which there are countless more.
Blustering and making accusations won’t change it, you are wrong and have proven so by the means you yourself asked for, while very obviously avoiding the actual point being made, presumably because your position is untenable.