Treatment Free

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I have a leave alone beekeeper a mile away. I know that’s not the same as TF but that is how he describes himself.

They're the worst. TF (in general) think about their actions and actively manage IPM and their bees, leavitalone (strange, just realised that that is what my cousin Kevin called his tadger when a lad!) beekeepers do nothing and look surprised when their bees die!
I tend not to have my bees in long rows, sometimes four often six and that's it, with no real difference at either end.

 

[Murox]

Would someone care to describe what treatment free means in practice. And in the same breath what integrated pest control means in practice?? The terms seem to get slung around freely - please define.

 

[BugsInABox]

I’d also like to ask - is it realistic/possible to move towards treatment free with just a few colonies.
Neil

 

[The Poot in Somerset]

Which raises the question for this and some other problems. Do we overpopulate our apiaries?

Even if we keep our apiaries at sensible numbers of hives, you can’t legislate for others. In my village I suffer from another beekeeper “dumping” four jumbo poly hives into a field half a mile away, until removed in the Autumn. He lives a good few miles away and wants the bees to “interbreed with the locals to improve his bees genetics”
I don’t know if he treats. There are also zest hives in the area - two colonies per hive - that the keeper told me receive minimal attention.
I guess it’s difficult to gauge whether an apiary is overpopulated as its difficult to discover the number of other hives around. Unless there is mandatory registration the current issues will persist.
Robbing, varroa transmission, disease and shortage of forage.

 

[pargyle]

I agree that treatment free must be very carefully planned and certainly not doing nothing.
Do bees not rob healthy colonies? My bees are well adapted to their situation. Right now they have chased off the drones, and are going into winter preparation. An itinerant beekeeper had put his colonies about 2km. away. They were busy feeding on the wild lavender. This dried up and he didn't come and collect his colonies for a few days. They were not preparing to winter and smelt out my hives and came in. My bees fought them off ,but at a price. Obviously some got in before I could reduce the entrance. I think there is more to this than just sick or healthy bees.

Bees will rob a hive that is incapable of defending itself sufficiently - whether that weakness is due to them being sick is only one possibility, over infested with varroa is another - a hive that has too much space and too few bees is an easy target - Nucs or colonies newly transferred to a full hive from a nuc are another easy target. Some bees are more genetically prone to robbing and will do it agressively given the opportunity. All bees are opportunists and will take advantage of a situation where they can find a cheap meal ... or rather a cheap source of sugar (honey/syrup or whatever). They have an incredible sense of smell and if there are colonies being fed they can smell the syrup from miles away ... one of the good reasons for never open feeding in an apiary and whilst it's best to put feeders on hives when there are fewer bees likely to be flying .. oh .. and NEVER spill any when your are topping up !

 

[bobthecob]

Bees will rob a hive that is incapable of defending itself sufficiently - whether that weakness is due to them being sick is only one possibility, over infested with varroa is another - a hive that has too much space and too few bees is an easy target - Nucs or colonies newly transferred to a full hive from a nuc are another easy target.

I think another very common reason why hives struggle to defend themselves (in fact, possibly the main reason) is that beekeepers leave the entrances far too wide, in the hope of getting more honey, faster.

 

[pargyle]

I’d also like to ask - is it realistic/possible to move towards treatment free with just a few colonies.
Neil

Of course... but there are risks. I started being treatment free from Day 1 and got lucky ... if I was starting again I would spend a year watching my bees and checking assiduously for varroa to see how they manage the varroa load from a standing start .. perhaps vape at the end of the previous season and again before they start brooding in the Spring. Then ... watch and see how they get on. You will see spikes and at that stage you will have to hold your nerve ... it will either go up, stay constant or decline ... you will have to make a decision then ... if you decide not to treat in the former two circumstances you have to be prepared to see it affect the colony in one way or another ... perhaps, like me, you would get lucky and find that your particular bees cope without being treated ... thereagain ... there's the rub.

Obviously, location plays a part .. if you are in an area where there is a varroa hotspot and a lot of other beekeepers you are going to me more likely to have infested colonies - it's how they cope that is the interesting thing.

I've lost very few colonies over the years and none of them have been disease related or as a result of varroa but I do watch very carefully for the signs.

I'm not saying I would never treat ... if a colony I wished to keep was showing signs of serious infestation and showed no signs of independent recovery I have the means to sublimate OA and I would. If anyone decides to go treatment free don't be zealous about it - if they are not going to recover on their own then you should help them or kill them along with the varroa mites. Like I said ... it's not an easy road to tread and there will be hard decisions along the way.

 

[bobthecob]

Would someone care to describe what treatment free means in practice. And in the same breath what integrated pest control means in practice?? The terms seem to get slung around freely - please define.

I suspect there are semantics that someone will pull me up on, but for most people I think those terms would be taken to mean the following:

Treatment free: As it sounds, nothing is put into the hive to treat for varroa or any other pest or disease. Food (syrup, fondant) may be added if needed.

IPM: Bit of a jargon term, but it just means an approach to reducing pests which has more than one aspect to it. For example, if you used oxalic acid, AND culled drone brood, then used a different varroa treatment next year to avoid resistance building up, that would be 3 different things integrated together - IPM.

Not sure if that helps!

 

[pargyle]

I think another very common reason why hives struggle to defend themselves (in fact, possibly the main reason) is that beekeepers leave the entrances far too wide, in the hope of getting more honey, faster.

It's certainly a possibility .. a full width entrance is harder to defend than a small entrance or one of JBM's underfloor entrances. I run Paynes poly hives and I always have the entrance block in .. it has about 3" slots which I have virtually all the year and the bees seem to find it ideal. There is the option for a few single bee holes in the entrance block but I've never used it even over winter.

My Paynes poly nucs are usually set with the entrance disc covering half of the entrance hole and I also have a home made tube entrance and an entrance protector that I have used at times as a precaution.

 

[bobthecob]

I’d also like to ask - is it realistic/possible to move towards treatment free with just a few colonies.
Neil

Why would the success or failure of going treatment free be affected by the number of colonies you have? I mean, if you only have one colony, it's a risk, sure (but if you only have one colony you are always on the cusp of having no bees, whether you treat or not).

The success or failure of going treatment free, in my opinion, is down to how you manage your bees. If you try to stay with the "standard" approach to beekeeping (i.e. adding as many brood boxes and supers as each colony will fill), and you don't treat, you are asking for trouble. On the other hand, if you are willing to adapt your beekeeping to make it more natural (smaller colonies, less honey for you, more splitting required to manage swarming) then treatment free is more likely to succeed. This is true whether you have 5 or 50 colonies.

 

[bobthecob]

I run Paynes poly hives and I always have the entrance block in

Ditto!

And I use nucs for many of my colonies, which makes them very hard to rob - I enjoy watching wasps approach the circular nuc entrance, have a look inside, go "oh ****" and move straight on ......

 

[Erichalfbee]

Why would the success or failure of going treatment free be affected by the number of colonies you have? I mean, if you only have one colony, it's a risk, sure (but if you only have one colony you are always on the cusp of having no bees, whether you treat or not).

The success or failure of going treatment free, in my opinion, is down to how you manage your bees. If you try to stay with the "standard" approach to beekeeping (i.e. adding as many brood boxes and supers as each colony will fill), and you don't treat, you are asking for trouble. On the other hand, if you are willing to adapt your beekeeping to make it more natural (smaller colonies, less honey for you, more splitting required to manage swarming) then treatment free is more likely to succeed. This is true whether you have 5 or 50 colonies.

I disagree.
If you have ten colonies and you lose two?
If you have two colonies and you lose two?

 

[pargyle]

Why would the success or failure of going treatment free be affected by the number of colonies you have? I mean, if you only have one colony, it's a risk, sure (but if you only have one colony you are always on the cusp of having no bees, whether you treat or not).

The success or failure of going treatment free, in my opinion, is down to how you manage your bees. If you try to stay with the "standard" approach to beekeeping (i.e. adding as many brood boxes and supers as each colony will fill), and you don't treat, you are asking for trouble. On the other hand, if you are willing to adapt your beekeeping to make it more natural (smaller colonies, less honey for you, more splitting required to manage swarming) then treatment free is more likely to succeed. This is true whether you have 5 or 50 colonies.

The risk is with only one or two colonies you could lose everything and have to start again. Also, with just one or two colonies you are not really going to get a true comparison.. .. I reckon with 4 or 5 hives you can and with 6 or 7 your get an even better idea of which perform in relative terms and you can see differences in colonies and bee strains .. mine were mostly local mongrels in the early years (although they have always been more like AMM's - small and black) but more recently I've bought a few queens in to see how they perform against my local mongrels. The AMM's seem to have a lower mite load when I've measured them .. the Buckfasts always had higher loads (Lovely bees and very productive) - I make no claims or insinuations - just observations of the Buckfast colony in my location. They have since superceded and the bees in that colony are now more like the local mongrels ... and no signs so far of any regressive aggression, the other Buckfast colony swarmed and I lost the queen .. the subsequent queen did not perform and eventually dwindled and I combined them.

It's not rocket science going treatment free .... and it doesn't mean you have to continually split to keep colonies small or have low honey crops ... my treatment free bees are in 14 x 12's and are big colonies .. I've got two or three supers on all hives that are filled and that's better than average for my urban location and a lot better than some other local beekeepers. They are no more swarmy than anyone else's and a darn sight better than some. I watch my bees but I am a light touch beekeeper. Inspections are only done when I deem it is necessary and only go as far as I need to go to determine what it is I want to know. They are all very well insulated with a super on top filled with PIR and 6mm clear polycarbonate crown boards. I know from past measurements that the brood box temperature is maintained at a fairly warm level and the Relative Humidity is mostly in the high 80's. There is some evidence that high temperatures and humidity do discourage varroa proliferation but .. again - I make no claims, only reporting what I see in my colonies.

 

[bobthecob]

I disagree.
If you have ten colonies and you lose two?
If you have two colonies and you lose two?

Sure, which is why I gave the example of a single colony owner.

But once you get up to 4+ hives, it doesn't really matter how many you have before you try TF. You will have enough spare to build back up again if things go wrong.

 

[viridens]

Like many others here, I remember the heady days when we had never heard of Varroa. Then I lost colonies which were hopelessly infested until Bayer and Co sold us treatments...

Having sold up and started again from scratch with Warres instead of Nationals, I also decided to go treatment free. In the four years since I restarted I have lost one colony due to a poorly performing Queen going into winter, and not to any infestation or disease.

I do not monitor mite drop etc. I see some crawlers with obvious DWV symptoms, but since the colonies are thriving I see no reason to obsess over this. I have seen similar around 'treated' hives too. I have Oxalic acid in reserve in case I see a colony in real distress, but this has not happened with 4 colonies across 4 years. From what I have observed, routine precautionary dribbling and vaping with oxalic acid can damage more bees than the small number of crawlers I observe, and many other 'treatments' are snake oil.

But I am a hobby beekeeper. If my income depended on my beekeeping I would probably treat for Varroa as as a precaution just in case.

The other problems are diseases which seem to be more bad luck than bad management, and still waiting for an effective treatment. Much like the bane affecting us humans now.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Like many others here, I remember the heady days when we had never heard of Varroa. Then I lost colonies which were hopelessly infested until Bayer and Co sold us treatments...

Having sold up and started again from scratch with Warres instead of Nationals, I also decided to go treatment free. In the four years since I restarted I have lost one colony due to a poorly performing Queen going into winter, and not to any infestation or disease.

I do not monitor mite drop etc. I see some crawlers with obvious DWV symptoms, but since the colonies are thriving I see no reason to obsess over this. I have seen similar around 'treated' hives too. I have Oxalic acid in reserve in case I see a colony in real distress, but this has not happened with 4 colonies across 4 years. From what I have observed, routine precautionary dribbling and vaping with oxalic acid can damage more bees than the small number of crawlers I observe, and many other 'treatments' are snake oil.

But I am a hobby beekeeper. If my income depended on my beekeeping I would probably treat for Varroa as as a precaution just in case.

The other problems are diseases which seem to be more bad luck than bad management, and still waiting for an effective treatment. Much like the bane affecting us humans now.

Yes I can see that and if I was starting up again I would run all the boxes on natural drawn comb, split and give away bees rather than keep my colonies strong. I might invest in VSH stick to start with and build on that but I’m getting on a bit and find life simpler just to treat with sublimated oxalic acid.
I am curious about your observations on OXalic vaping harming more bees than DWV because I have never seen similar.

 

[pargyle]

Yes I can see that and if I was starting up again I would run all the boxes on natural drawn comb, split and give away bees rather than keep my colonies strong. I might invest in VSH stick to start with and build on that but I’m getting on a bit and find life simpler just to treat with sublimated oxalic acid.
I am curious about your observations on OXalic vaping harming more bees than DWV because I have never seen similar.

Yes ... as you know as well as not treating my bees all my frames are foundationless .. and build their own comb. Is this another factor in success in being TF .. I don't know. So many variables and unknowns ..

I've never seen any downsides to vaping OA .. all the one's I've ever done the bees hardly seem to react and there's never any dead brood or bees thrown out as a result. If OA by sublimation harms the bees surely you would see some evidence of it afterwards ? Trickling in mid winter ... that's a whole different matter ... opening them up in January and pouring OA in syrup over them ... can't think they really like that a lot ?

 

[madasafish]

Yes ... as you know as well as not treating my bees all my frames are foundationless .. and build their own comb. Is this another factor in success in being TF .. I don't know. So many variables and unknowns ..

I've never seen any downsides to vaping OA .. all the one's I've ever done the bees hardly seem to react and there's never any dead brood or bees thrown out as a result. If OA by sublimation harms the bees surely you would see some evidence of it afterwards ? Trickling in mid winter ... that's a whole different matter ... opening them up in January and pouring OA in syrup over them ... can't think they really like that a lot ?

I have no problems with beekeepers going TF.

I was, however, nearly wiped out in 2015 by my bees robbing hives abandonned at the local National Trust Gardens 0.25 miles away. The beekeeper apparently believed in no inspections, had AFB at his home hives, infected the NT hives and just left them to die.. I lost 6 out of 7 hives to AFB as a result.. Robbing in October - November 2014 found in mine March next year.

Never had AFB since . Not an experience I wish to recall..

Based on that and other contact with local "natural" beekeepers who do not inspect, I am sceptical of the ability of new beekeepers to succeed in that route without a lot of skilled help...

 

[1amanda1]

My bees have been treatment free since 2010. I check them for notifiable diseases, feed them if they are short of stores but aim to leave them with enough honey so that I don't have to, I don't use queen excluders, I have solid floors on my hives (it's windy here) and I use foundationless frames (you should see the mess they make sometimes ). I spend time watching the bees at the entrance and only do a full inspection every now and then or if I think something is amiss. It works well for me.

I know lots of beekeepers and we all do things differently. When I first started out, I would ask several beeks what to do in a certain situation and would get different answers from each of them. We talk a lot about our different methods without being judgemental beyond the "Oh, I don't do it like that, I do it like this." Of course I think I'm right, otherwise I would be doing it differently. But I respect their right to be wrong!...and sometimes I even decide they are right and copy them so that I am still right.

I love to know what others are doing with their bees, even if I don't want to do it the same way. But we all have to be polite or some people will not feel confident in sharing their ideas and we will all be the poorer for that.

 

[captain666]

Hi Amanda.

My opinion is; 'Treatment Free' beekeepers are like farmers with poor fences.

Yes, beekeepers will disagree, yet they both can be right, just different approaches.

Fred.