I've come into this thread rather late, but must remark that I'm finding the usual "brick wall" of refusal to begin to understand how other approaches work more than a touch evident.
"Orthodoxy" as represented by the BBKA and it's followers tend to be of the view that "the only way" is to "treat" in some way or another - Chris has reported that he personally doesn't find it necessary - I'm at a loss as to why people should make him into some hate bogeyman figure for
daring to "do it differently" - personally, I find his approach to be at the very least interesting, possibly revolutionary, and perhaps a path worth following for those of similar inclination.
The other thing that obviously isn't being grasped is "holism" - we are very used to things being broken into pieces, each part analysed to death, and then assuming "we know all about it", whereas the complex interreactions of things (particularly in nature) show that when added together, all those disparate parts behave very differently.......
Which is a long-winded way of saying that perhaps these (more) natural beekeeping nutters have a point, and that if you allow your bees to have as natural a life as possible (minimal interference, no brood/queen culling, no foundation, leaving them their own honey for the winter etc etc) that they are perfectly able to deal themselves with what are viewed as utter disasters by orthodoxy - there are strong forces at work (habit and tradition particularly) to dissuade credence being given to such approaches, but as Chris is demonstrating "it works for him", so we are foolish to ignore or decry it.......
