To treat or not to treat

[coconut2018]

Is there many beekeepers on this forum that dont treat there bees at all for over wintering. One bee keeper i know doesnt treat, his hives would be a BB and half for overwintering. Insulation on top and bottom and always leaves them honey. Never treats and still manages to have bees year after year. There is some looses but his advice to me, leave the bees alone without treatment and they will build up a tolerance to the mites. At first i did think this beekeeper was asking for trouble but if hes managing to keep bees for over a decade without all his colonies dying, i think he must be onto something.

 

[Beefriendly]

No, he is keeping sick bees with parasites when he has an option to get rid of these parasites.
Damn poor beekeeping practice. The poor bees are surviving but not thriving. How can you thrive when heavily parasitised? They exist, but it's a miserable existence.
His hight varroa levels will spread to everyone else in his near vicinity.
Selfish stupid lazy barsteward.

 

[coconut2018]

No, he is keeping sick bees with parasites when he has an option to get rid of these parasites.


His hight varroa levels will spread to everyone else in his near vicinity.
Selfish stupid lazy barsteward.

There are very few houses near him, nearest beekeeper is 12miles away.

 

[Beefriendly]

There are very few houses near him, nearest beekeeper is 12miles away.

That I very much doubt, very few are 12 miles from another beekeeper. Beebase will sort that out.
However, this is immaterial. He is keeping heavily parasitized bees.
He is a knobhead.

 

[Ian123]

Also very few of us are bad beekeepers most of us here are amazing and beekeepers storeys are always true also you need to find out exactly what he’s up to. He had 10 hives but looses 7 during the winter,70 percent losses he allows his bees to swarm,splits a couple and collects a few swarms from his area and he’s back to 10. Hardly good beekeeping and if he truly believes bees can thrive treatment free ask him about the huge collapse in feral bee numbers. When you do find any nowadays when opened they are normally poor examples of a colony and in no way are they the same as pre varroa days

 

[Ian123]

Repeated swarming and splits that induce a broodless period will also reduce mite numbers so you may find bad beekeeping helps reduce mites. At a teaching set up I helped in for many years we had a colony in a skep equivalent to a brood they would last a season or 2 max before being replaced

 

[Erichalfbee]

Is there many beekeepers on this forum that dont treat there bees at all for over wintering. One bee keeper i know doesnt treat, his hives would be a BB and half for overwintering. Insulation on top and bottom and always leaves them honey. Never treats and still manages to have bees year after year. There is some looses but his advice to me, leave the bees alone without treatment and they will build up a tolerance to the mites. At first i did think this beekeeper was asking for trouble but if hes managing to keep bees for over a decade without all his colonies dying, i think he must be onto something.

I have a neighbour like that
I end up treating the mites from his collapsing hives myself most years

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

No, he is keeping sick bees with parasites when he has an option to get rid of these parasites.
Damn poor beekeeping practice. The poor bees are surviving but not thriving. How can you thrive when heavily parasitised? They exist, but it's a miserable existence.
His hight varroa levels will spread to everyone else in his near vicinity.
Selfish stupid lazy barsteward.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Where's your Avatar taken?.....that's not Glanaman

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Where's your Avatar taken?.....that's not Glanaman

Ha Makhate - not far from London (Pitseng) at Phelisanong orphange. It's a photograph that was sent to me by my friend Nobert Muvhiringi of the beekeeping group that was set up by the locals after my visit in 2014

 

[Curly green fingers]

I've been bringing two colony's from the brink because of varroa not a nice sight varroa destruction the person that had them hadn't treated for two seasons what a bloody mess they were in thankfully there OK now itso opened my eyes for sure . We need to keep on top of our IPM .
I treat all of my livestock cows sheep pigs chickens whatever . Bees are also stock as they produce honey.
So why should they be any different.

 

[Eyeman]

Is there many beekeepers on this forum that dont treat there bees at all for over wintering. One bee keeper i know doesnt treat, his hives would be a BB and half for overwintering. Insulation on top and bottom and always leaves them honey. Never treats and still manages to have bees year after year. There is some looses but his advice to me, leave the bees alone without treatment and they will build up a tolerance to the mites. At first i did think this beekeeper was asking for trouble but if hes managing to keep bees for over a decade without all his colonies dying, i think he must be onto something.

No reason to let a colony die from varroa that's just irresponsible and bad practice. Just monitor mite levels and only treat those with above threshold levels. Rear new queens from those colonies that keep mites levels down and requeen those who don't. This is what responsible beekeepers do.

 

[peteinwilts]

Repeated swarming and splits that induce a broodless period will also reduce mite numbers so you may find bad beekeeping helps reduce mites. At a teaching set up I helped in for many years we had a colony in a skep equivalent to a brood they would last a season or 2 max before being replaced

Low impact Warre hive owners rely, and often encourage swarming to interupt the brood cycle. It also gives them fresh queens every year.
It is just another way of keeping (and losing!) bees. I know one Warre beekeeper that has below the national average in loses year after year.

As an fyi, it is not for me. I do not keep warres, and I do treat.

 

[madasafish]

Occasionally I have hives that keep dropping huge mite numbers over weeks. The treatments I give are properly applied - other hives are OK - so theoretically with even only 80% kill rates - it is mathematically impossible to get hundreds of mites dropping weekly over 6 weeks.

Unless they are robbing heavily infected and dying colonies elsewhere.. (And I know of several nearby).

People who don't treat are deluding themselves unless they practise AI or are so isolated their bees can only breed amongst the apiary. As drones can fly 10s of miles to mate (via lots of rests on the way) the quoted "12 miles distant from nearest colony" is unlikely to be far enough (If true).

Hands up anyone who wants to keep bees with 25% or more colonies dying each winter. (If they kept animals like that they would be in jail)

 

[ShinySideUp]

It's a point of contention for me; people who don't treat on the basis that the bees will develop resistance. If that were anywhere near the case no human would have head lice, no dog would have tapeworm, no bird would have fleas. Some things do not go away if you ignore the problem and in this type of case non-treating beekeepers are just relying on other beekeepers to keep the varroa load down for them. A 70% loss rate should surely tell him something.

 

[Wingy]

As a complete beginner I was given 2 “dead” hives last year from a person who does not believe in treating. (now I know a bit more I refrain from using the term beekeeper or friend) I cleaned these up into a usable state. He had lost about 5 colonies from 20 over winter 2016-2017 and went into winter 2017 with 18 colonies. Come spring 2018 he only had 1 colony come through winter!
I got my Nuc through and now have 2 full colonies from it, despite losing a swarm, I also purchased a Nuc this June which is now a full colony so I’m going into winter with 3 strong “treated” colonies and can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t have them all come spring 2019.

 

[peteinwilts]

I’m going into winter with 3 strong “treated” colonies and can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t have them all come spring 2019.

Do not delude yourself. Strong treated colonys does not mean no losses.

A bad case of Nosema due to a wet winter, isolation starvation, late queen failure (or very late swarm) are things that the beekeeper cannot help easily.

Things that can help are mouse protection, methods of stopping hives blown over and starvation can be helped.
Bigger animals can remove mouseguards (I have had one polyhive accessed tby eating through from the base). Hives on bases\stands can be undermined, and sometimes bees just simply will not eat fondant.
I have had losses due to starvation despite a heavy boxes of honey (ivy honey).

We all hope to have as few a loses as possible, and hopefully yours will be fine.

 

[Stiffy]

Seems hard to believe but I have recently spoken to 2 bee keepers who were clueless on the need to treat for varroa effectively.
Goodness know what will happen if (and when) hornets or SHB are another problem to deal with.
S

 

[Ian123]

Seems hard to believe but I have recently spoken to 2 bee keepers who were clueless on the need to treat for varroa effectively.
Goodness know what will happen if (and when) hornets or SHB are another problem to deal with.
S

SIMPLE......those unprepared will suffer large losses and drop out the same as when varroa arrived.

 

[Walrus]

Randy Oliver wrote about this in Sept 2018 edition of American Bee Journal; it's a really good article. Some quotes:

"We beg people with a cold or the flu to cover their mouths when they sneeze in order to prevent the transmission to others of the virus...Think of every collapsing hive as being a giant sneeze of virus transmitting bees and mites"

"With regard to solving the varroa problem our objectives are straightforward:
(1) to shift the genetics of the managed honey bee breeding populations towards mite resistance and
(2) to eliminate the fitness benefit to the varroa/DWV complex resulting from causing the death of their colony"

"the beekeepers who are seriously part of the problem are those, whether large scale or small, whose poor management unintentionally allows collapsing hives to disperse the most virulent combinations of varroa and DWV to their neighbour's apiaries"

He also quotes Tom Seeley's Darwinian beekeeping article:
"by pre-emptively killing your varroa susceptible colonies you will accomplish two important things (1) you will eliminate colonies that lack varroa resistance and (2) you will prevent the "mite bomb" phenomenon of mites spreading en masse to your other colonies. If you don't perform these pre-emptive killings then even your most mite resistant colonies could become overrun with mites and die"

The colony "killings" can take the form of a strong dosage of formic acid (MAQS) to kill the mites and probably the queen, remove the queen and replace with one from better stock once the acid has evaporated away.