Not treating varroa

[blackcloud]

Anyone engaging in this documented non-activity?

 

[enrico]

Seen people who have tried and failed.
E

 

[Fritillary]

Were you at the Welsh Convention yesterday blackcloud? It was interesting to hear people there talking about their experience and success with non-treatment.

 

[Poly Hive]

When I hear about the "success" of the non treaters I do wonder about the truthfulness. Cynical? Profoundly.

PH

 

[Beefriendly]

It was interesting to hear people there talking about their experience and success with non-treatment.

Be interesting to hear what they classify as "success" and whether that success couldn't have been tripled if they had some control colonies that they had treated.
I suspect the success they talk about is they still have bees. Sick and diseased bees but still something alive and moving inside a hive.
I liken most non-treaters (exceptions being those testing VSH) to pet owners who would knowingly let their dog/cat carry around a large tapeworm infection.

There was similar talk given by a "successful non treater" near Whitby recently. Most attendees where shocked at the poor state of their colonies.

 

[Bakerbee]

We have our bees at bottom of garden at the other end we back on to a foot path. 250 meters down theres a few hives in someones garden. Got talking to them returning from a dog walk. They havent touched their bees or treated for over 2 years.. all i can comment is my hives are full and bursting with foragers while theirs is quiet and at most even on a sunny day has no more than 10-15 bees around entrance. Surely that speaks for itself. Now to politely tackle their varroa levels not impacting mine...

 

[B+.]

Anyone engaging in this documented non-activity?

I would hardly describe it as "non activity". I don't treat but am busy monitoring all season long.

 

[blackcloud]

Fratillary ,yes,I was at the show yesterday and heard Clive Hudson's talk
He was very concise and I would have liked him to have been able to elaborate more.
Does anyone do sugar dusting or drone traps?
As far as truthfulness PH ,he has had the green light from the inspectorate for what that's worth?
My initial thoughts were 'ah but you are isolated in your little corner and don't have other people's drones sniffing about' but the two guys he brought on put that to rest.
Allowing swarming and culling weak hives is at least for me a hard pill to swallow having lost my only colony
I'm sat on my backside in a puddle watching everyone else enjoying their bees- what I'd give for even a plague and pestilence riddled box of bees right now.
However,the one thing that did ring true is that although mine starved,the varroa count on the board was about a dozen total for at least the month I had stewardship.
They were a wild swarm and not only had they been left unfed beforehand,they were totally untreated too.
I did feel the NBU chap got ambushed though.....

 

[Beefriendly]

There was a suggestion (based on research into the Swindon bees and their benign form DWV that allowed them to survive), that other areas might exist where benign forms of DWV might dominate....allowing colonies to survive.
However this all need confirming at a scientific level. Without understanding how they are surviving but suggesting non treatment for all is a little [understatement off] irresponsible.

 

[blackcloud]

He was an invited guest speaker-I don't believe he was preaching and he did advise caution for the inexperienced.
I would certainly not try experiment without a few spare colonies.

 

[Finman]

I would certainly not try experiment without a few spare colonies.

Varroa will kill your hives without your trials.
Try to keep them all alive.

The most easy is to kill giant hives. In autumn the colony becomes smaller and the mite population becomes bigger. Them mites go into winter brood, and violates them all.

One autumn day you will notice that your giant hive has vanished.

Varroa gang double itself in a month. In September 1000 mites and in October 2000 mites. And the mites will spread to next door hives. The worst you can do is to keep treated hives and "nontreated experiment hives".

Members of this forum has dropped 5000 or someting mites with treaments. The number is lethal.


.

 

[Millet]

How easy is it treat for varroa control.. probably the easiest thing to do in bee management is to vap or gas the little suckers..

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

He was an invited guest speaker.

Means nothing.
Bit of an obsession with some in the WBKA at the moment, pitiful really, it seems the 'shook swarm cures all ills' brigade are gaining ground.
I manned the Bees Abroad stand for a few hours instead, and managed to talk some sense into a few who thought icing sugar was a medicine!!

 

[Fritillary]

You didn't hear the talk then. Or the discussion later on?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I didn't need to - heard and read it plenty times before.
As for the discussins after, probably the same lot that got rrrrrreally excited last year that they finally managed to get a few pounds of honey from their hives.

 

[ShinySideUp]

I'm going to be harsh now and I don't care. Not treating for varroa is like humans not taking adequate protection against M,M or R, or walking in public places with a stinking cold and sneezing all over everyone. It is selfish, lazy and relies on other, more responsible, beekeepers keeping their own varroa levels down. Bees in this country have little defence against varroa regardless of what the flat-earth believers would like to think. If there was any sort of immunity there would be wild (truly feral) bees all over the place but there are not. By not treating you are saving a tiny bit of money and causing a whole lot of disease and suffering and is similar, as someone has already said, to not treating a dog for worms because the dog seems ok from the outside.

 

[Bakerbee]

Flat earthers

 

[Hachi]

I'm going to be harsh now and I don't care. Not treating for varroa is like humans not taking adequate protection against M,M or R, or walking in public places with a stinking cold and sneezing all over everyone. It is selfish, lazy and relies on other, more responsible, beekeepers keeping their own varroa levels down. Bees in this country have little defence against varroa regardless of what the flat-earth believers would like to think. If there was any sort of immunity there would be wild (truly feral) bees all over the place but there are not. By not treating you are saving a tiny bit of money and causing a whole lot of disease and suffering and is similar, as someone has already said, to not treating a dog for worms because the dog seems ok from the outside.

 

[Walrus]

I'm going to be harsh now and I don't care. Not treating for varroa is like humans not taking adequate protection against M,M or R, or walking in public places with a stinking cold and sneezing all over everyone. It is selfish, lazy and relies on other, more responsible, beekeepers keeping their own varroa levels down. Bees in this country have little defence against varroa regardless of what the flat-earth believers would like to think. If there was any sort of immunity there would be wild (truly feral) bees all over the place but there are not. By not treating you are saving a tiny bit of money and causing a whole lot of disease and suffering and is similar, as someone has already said, to not treating a dog for worms because the dog seems ok from the outside.

I do mostly agree with this except that you don't mention monitoring mite loads. If you find hives with low mite counts (alcohol wash or sugar shake) then of course no need to treat that hive.

 

[Poly Hive]

I completely agree.

One other comment though is that trickling is safer for humans and cheaper than trickling as the only two bits of kit needed are a pan and a syringe.

PH