Hello from Shropshire

[Doc_h]

Just lost my only colony, now deciding if that's the end of 30 years casual /conventional beekeeping or whether to have one last go and convert to a natural, low maintenance system. Getting older and partially disabled, so advice much appreciated. Not bothered about lots of honey or swarm prevention. Just love having bees in the garden.

 

[madasafish]

I can recommend TBHs... you're welcome to come to see mine. I'm near Stoke on Trent

 

[Doc_h]

Convert to TBH?

I have got lots of National hives. Can I use them or would I have to start over? Love to visit!

 

[enrico]

Bees get as much time as you give them. Stack half a dozen box's on top of each other and leave them to it if you want but that is a bit like putting a cow in a field and just leaving it. They do need some management and people will say they need varroa control. But.... They don't need anything if you don't want to...... Just a home. The main thing you will eventually get is swarms. And other nearby beekeepers may feel you are not doing your bit to motor deseases and parasites. At the end of the day it is your decision!
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[alldigging]

Just lost my only colony

How?


If you have trouble lifting then top bars are easier in terms of having no heavy supers to lift.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Or a long hive with half supers?

 

[Doc_h]

Interesting and valid point. Cows have been changed by our breeding over thousands of years so they can't now do without our management. Has the same happened to honey bees? I support bumble bees, hedgehogs etc by providing suitable housing in the garden, but it would be irresponsible, even cruel, to do the same with honeybees if they are so domesticated they can't cope without management and chemicals. Are there feral colonies out there and do they pose a threat to "kept" colonies?

 

[Swarm]

If you have an unmanaged colony in your garden, there is every chance of it posing a threat to nearby apiaries. Supposing they developed EFB or AFB?

 

[enrico]

It is not that they can't cope, it is that we have introduced diseases that wild colonies can keep spreading. In theory every swarm we lose becomes a wild colony unless someone else claims it. The question is how long they will survive. It may be many years, drones will transfer mites between hives, but the main problem is foul brood which is not what any beekeeper wants. We haven't interbred so that they rely on us but we have introduced disease which means they can't necessarily survive without us!
E

 

[BeeJayBee]

Cows have been changed by our breeding over thousands of years so they can't now do without our management. Has the same happened to honey bees? I support bumble bees, hedgehogs etc by providing suitable housing in the garden, but it would be irresponsible, even cruel, to do the same with honeybees if they are so domesticated they can't cope without management and chemicals. Are there feral colonies out there and do they pose a threat to "kept" colonies?

You'll know, because of your background, that in the early days of varroa our honey bees could not cope without miticides simply because the mites were an alien pest that they had never met before. A. cerana can cope with varroa because they've evolved together.

Ron Hoskins of the Swindon Bee Project has been selecting for varroa tolerant (hygienic) bees, ones that groom off the mites in the same way. Ratnieks at LASI has been testing for hygienic bees by freeze-killing brood, and seeing what percentage is removed from the comb.

At the same time, a fair number of beekeepers are being more flexible with varroa treatment - at least locally to us they are - and are leaving colonies to deal with the mites as best they can. If the colony dies it fails the Darwin test, and both bees and mites in that box will no longer contribute to the gene pool.

There are feral colonies that survive unaided and, if the number of swarms this year is anything to go by, they seem to be doing quite nicely.

But no beekeeper can really afford to be complacent, because there are other diseases and disorders that can kill a colony, so even if you're mostly a 'hands-off' beekeeper it's important to do disease inspections and that's where top bar hives can make things difficult because it's less easy to quickly clear bees from the comb.

 

[Thymallus]

Ratnieks at LASI[/URL] has been testing for hygienic bees by freeze-killing brood, and seeing what percentage is removed from the comb.

This one has always puzzled me. How does removing dead larvae relate to removing a parasite sat on their carapaces or breeding among living larvae?

 

[BeeJayBee]

This one has always puzzled me. How does removing dead larvae relate to removing a parasite sat on their carapaces or breeding among living larvae?

I have absolutely no idea, it's a concept that has legs though, because the EU project uses something similar and test by killing a patch of larvae with insect pins. Can't recall what the project is called though - B+ has written about it, I think?

 

[Doc_h]

Interesting explanations, thank you all. It seems like it is the environment we have messed up, not the bee genetics. I always have inspected for disease but worry about the stress of regularly invading the brood box actually lowering their disease resistance. I'll bet there are as many opinions out there as there are bee keepers

 

[Tremyfro]

Interesting explanations, thank you all. It seems like it is the environment we have messed up, not the bee genetics. I always have inspected for disease but worry about the stress of regularly invading the brood box actually lowering their disease resistance. I'll bet there are as many opinions out there as there are bee keepers

That is one of the reasons that I like my long hives. You have the advantage of frames...so easy handling...you don't have to use supers if you don't want to or you can use half supers. The bees are happy to store honey sideways too. There is far less disturbance to the colony as you are not ripping it apart. Just slide the frames aside until you reach the brood nest. Inspections take less time. Using frames means there is flexibility between colonies when you need to boost numbers or need a test frame. Although, if you need to move them...they are heavy...I would transfer bees into boxes to do a move...then reinstall them.

 

[Michael Palmer]

This one has always puzzled me. How does removing dead larvae relate to removing a parasite sat on their carapaces or breeding among living larvae?

It doesn't. There are two types when talking about hygienic bees.

One is removal of diseased brood. The bees recognize there is something wrong with the brood. In hygienic colonies there are two groups of bees. One group uncaps the diseased brood, and one group removes the pupa. Both groups must be present. Sections of brood are frozen with liquid nitrogen and comb is replaced into hive. After 24 hours, the comb is examined. Fully hygienic colonies will have removed all the dead brood, while less than hygienic bees will have some amount of brood remaining in the frozen section.

The second hygienic trait has to do with varroa mites. Scientists at the Baton Rouge bee lab were counting mites in brood. They discovered colonies that had only foundress mites...the original mother mite...but had no offspring in the brood cells. They thought that there must be some pheromone given off by the developing pupae that stopped varroa mite reproduction. They termed the trait Suppressed Mite Reproduction...SMR. Later they discovered that the bees could recognize actively reproducing foundress mites while under cappings and removed the bee pupa, and stopped that mite from reproducing. Foundress mite that weren't reproducing weren't detected, so the only mites the scientists found were the foundress mites. They termed the newly discovered trait Varroa Sensitive Hygiene...VSH. Marla Spivak has found that hygienic bees aren't necessarily VSH bees.