wojciech
House Bee
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2009
- Messages
- 104
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Lincolnshire
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 2
On 1st November, Kim Flottum, editor of the leading Beekeeping magazine Bee Culture gave a talk at Thornes to lincolnshire BKA entitled "Using Nuclei Effectively". What particularly interested me was an aside he made regarding varroa when he stated that he has not used chemical treatments for varroa for over 9 years. I had some email correspondence with him subsequently in order to be quite clear what he was saying for a report I was doing for the LBKA website and Quarterly magazine. He was very emphatic that while he uses OMFs, drone control and as a last resort sugar dusting he uses no chemicals whatsoever, including essential oils. By taking nucs from "survivor" colonies and using them to replace any losses he is utilising "Survival of the Fittest" to breed varroa resistant strains, at times bringing in queens from other beekeepers working on the same lines, mentioning Russian bees. I mentioned to him that in my opinion antagonism to such ideas in the UK stems from the BBKA alliance with miticide and insecticide manufactureres.
It seems to me that the possibility of moving away from dependence on chemicals lies with this approach. While the small beekeeper would find it difficult to risk losing all his colonies, Kim has told me that he is not a large scale beekeeper or queen breeder but through working with other like minded individuals he is making progress.
It seems to me that the possibility of moving away from dependence on chemicals lies with this approach. While the small beekeeper would find it difficult to risk losing all his colonies, Kim has told me that he is not a large scale beekeeper or queen breeder but through working with other like minded individuals he is making progress.