Feral bees and bait hives

[Beesnaturally]

It's a given that the best chance of successful treatment free beekeeping is to obtain free-living genes. The quick route lies in catching, collecting, or extracting a few nice colonies of thriver-survivor bees.

And the best route to that happy position is to put out plenty of ideal homes, in ideal places.

Agreed?

 

[Sutty]

"Ideal places" would be close to thriving feral colonies and a long way (eg over a couple of miles) from any managed colonies. Good luck finding such a spot in the UK!
Harvesting a thriving feral colony would be the best bet, if you can find such a thing.

 

[Do224]

I caught four swarms in my first season beekeeping and thought ‘great, they look very black and are likely native AMM and well adapted…maybe they’ll be ok with minimal varroa treatment (I just used OA strips)’. All four colonies perished over winter. They all had loads of stores left so I’m assuming varroa got them…at least three of them anyway. The fourth got through to spring but was queenless at first inspection

 

[Anduril]

It's a given that the best chance of successful treatment free beekeeping is to obtain free-living genes. The quick route lies in catching, collecting, or extracting a few nice colonies of thriver-survivor bees.

And the best route to that happy position is to put out plenty of ideal homes, in ideal places.

Agreed?

This is a pipe dream, unless you are monitoring a specific place over a number of years, even if you are, it is a lottery in regard to them swarming. The colony might be one of those that supersede, you will not be able to monitor if there are swarm cells in the tree hollow. Similarly if you cannot produce organic honey, the same could be said about the feral bees, another beekeeper could be in the area that you don't know about and you are collecting their swarms.

 

[blackcloud]

The feral population in our locale is pitiful, and sadly, plentiful.

Masses of poor quality colonies that do no one any favours and monopolizing the forage to the detriment of other pollinators.
Beekeepers are partly to blame.

Perpetuation of the DNA is only snowballing it further.

It needs a complete reset.
Hopefully the arrival of AH will thin it out....

 

[hemo]

Arrival of AH will thin out all bees not just so called feral.

 

[blackcloud]

Might not be such a bad thing.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Arrival of AH will thin out all bees not just so called feral.

Might thin out a few beekeepers too.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

It needs a complete reset.
Hopefully the arrival of AH will thin it out....

it won't take too long before some balloon will find a strain of feral Velutina resistant bees hiding in some remote woodland somewhere

 

[Ian123]

it won't take too long before some balloon will find a strain of feral Velutina resistant bees hiding in some remote woodland somewhere

I’m sure they’ll be on here telling us all about it

 

[Beesnaturally]

"Ideal places" would be close to thriving feral colonies and a long way (eg over a couple of miles) from any managed colonies. Good luck finding such a spot in the UK!
Harvesting a thriving feral colony would be the best bet, if you can find such a thing.

'Ideal' yes. But we can settle for slightly less than ideal. There are, now, thriving [1] feral colonies almost everywhere in my view. And few places have an overwhelming number of commercial hives, and many hobbyists are not treating and aiding the outnumbering of commercially-raised bees.

In any case, it doesn't matter. You can just give it a go. Don't expect perfection, expect to see the odd marked queen (I'd guess fewer than 5% of my catches have been marked). You got them for free; if they turn out to be weak you have options (requeening from a better hive would be number one).

But what we can do options wise is a later topic. I'd say lets talk about how to catch a good number, how to see what you have caught, then how to bring them on. After that we can talk about what to do if they are failing to thrive - diagnosis and action.


[1] And/or semi thriving. The local population are on a journey to ever-improved resistance, and on a journey too to locate all-round health and fitness. If you catch bees that splutter its not surprising, and you have bees; you didn't pay anything for them, you could turn them into commercials in a few weeks if you wanted too. What is not to like?

 

[Beesnaturally]

Golly, look at all the usual suspects who have never kept bees treatment free piling in! Its like a naysayer's convention all of a sudden!

I make a living from free bees, and have never treated or otherwise fiddled with anything. As testified sporadically I'm far from alone in this. Most of North Wales I believe doesn't treat. A large patch of Cornwall the same. There are others.

Optimistic treatment free beekeepers, ignore them. They've always been with us. They are a noisy minority, who massively over-estimate their knowledge.

Hopefully they'll go away.

 

[Beesnaturally]

The feral population in our locale is pitiful, and sadly, plentiful.

Masses of poor quality colonies that do no one any favours and monopolizing the forage to the detriment of other pollinators.
Beekeepers are partly to blame.

Your feral population is plentiful?! Despite no-one treating them?!

They monopolise the forage! Erm, wild honeybees have always been among the local ecology's more populous pollinators. That means more seeds.

That means more... you can work it out from there I'm sure.

Perpetuation of the DNA is only snowballing it further.

Perpetuation of what dna? Varroa-resistant dna? That's terrible!

It needs a complete reset.
Hopefully the arrival of AH will thin it out....

The gradual reset in progress is the slow but widespread understanding that natural selection for the *fittest strains* is the best - and necessary - fix for the mess beekeepers have made of bees. And that that has already happened, wherever treating is not so dominant as to suppress the development of resistance in local free-living populations.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Golly, look at all the usual suspects who have never kept bees treatment free piling in! It’s like a naysayer's convention all of a sudden!

Please save my sanity. This is the treatment free section. If you treat and don’t agree with not treating please go and play somewhere else.
I was hoping… in vain it seems… that I could avoid looking in here at all.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Most a small area of North Wales I believe doesn't treat

there, fixed it for you

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

This is the treatment free section. If you treat and don’t agree with not treating please go and play somewhere else.

will we get the same in the non treatment free fora?

 

[Erichalfbee]

will we get the same in the non treatment free fora?

Struth! There isn’t one.

 

[Sutty]

There is still an evolutionary pressure for bees to adapt to varroa when they are treated for it - this seems to be forgotten by many. Colonies that thrive better over summer, when supers are on and treatment is not happening are more likely to swarm or be split into several colonies, hence furthering their genes. Those that struggle are less likely to.
For any given pathogen, where a treatment is available, it's likely there is an optimal level of treatment for development of resistance.
For example, and using extreme numbers for clarity. Bear in mind resistance is not an all-or-nothing property. If a pathogen wipes out 99.99% of its host without treatment then mild resistant traits are never selected for and it so impairs interbreeding between the relatively resistant individuals that it is hard to build the population up, and different resistance mechanisms may never come together. If treatment means 50% survive (note the more susceptible have still perished) then there is a chance for low-level resistant traits to be improved on or combined.
Beekeepers who treat (like me) selecting colonies to breed from based at least partially on low post-treatment mite drops could help considerably. I suspect this already happens to some extent. Similarly only treating after a reliable mite count (eg alcohol wash) and breeding from colonies with low mite numbers would help.
I doubt merely selecting "wild" swarms will help much as I suspect most of them will be recently "escaped" managed colonies in their first year or two.

 

[Beesnaturally]

There is still an evolutionary pressure for bees to adapt to varroa when they are treated for it - this seems to be forgotten by many.

Its certainly forgotten by me.

Colonies that thrive better over summer, when supers are on and treatment is not happening are more likely to swarm or be split into several colonies, hence furthering their genes.

This is all off-topic - this thread is for discussion of the capture and early handling of swarms that may be feral thrivers. However:

Your bees wouldn't be in that position if they hadn't been treated earlier in the year, or last year, or at any point in their treatment-dependent lives. They would not exist, and they wouldn't be passing their genes anywhere.

[...]
For any given pathogen, where a treatment is available, it's likely there is an optimal level of treatment for development of resistance.

No treatment is the optimal level. The more treatment or other 'help' the more such development will be slowed

For example, and using extreme numbers for clarity. Bear in mind resistance is not an all-or-nothing property. If a pathogen wipes out 99.99% of its host without treatment...

Things are rarely that extreme, and each mated queen holds a huge amount of variation due to her multiple matings. On a small island yes, maybe. Otherwise, no.

What is more the _evidence_ demonstrates clearly that development of resistance occurs naturally wherever there is no treatment, and not at all where treatment is widespread.

All this is well known and well documented in the literature. I.e.
https://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/darwinian-beekeeping
or:
"In the case of Varroa, which is a worldwide menace to beekeeping, we believe apicultural
practices are responsible for maintaining virulent forms of the pathogen. In areas where the parasite has been established
for several decades in honey bee populations, without being controlled by beekeepers, the parasite no longer is lethal to infested
colonies. This is the case in South America both for Africanized bees and bees of European origin (Rosenkranz, 1999) as well as in
North Africa (Ritter, 1990). "

We can find this understanding in a great many published research papers.

 

[Anduril]

Golly, look at all the usual suspects who have never kept bees treatment free piling in! Its like a naysayer's convention all of a sudden!

You may have forgotten that pre-varroa beekeepers WERE treatment free. I certainly never treated.