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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #1625  by AdamD
 04 Jan 2019, 14:36
Nigel, it would be interesting for you to see the un-treated bees that Beeblebrox refers to - you obviously have your own locals which you have mentioned before which are not prime examples of 'local bees'.

An experiment of winter-treating a couple of Beeblebroxs' colonies to a) see the mite drop and b) see how they compare the following season to non-treated ones would be very interesting!

And as I mentioned in my earlier post, if non-treated bees could be selectively bred over time, their performance should slowly but surely increase. This is performance of mite resistance and also honey-gathering ability.
It would take a (long) while for them to improve to be close to that of a hybrid bee I suspect. However if below, they could improve to have the average yield as reported by the BBKA survey, I suspect. Say, in 6 - 10 years?

From what I remember, studies have shown that viruses associated with varroa can be transmitted from drone to queen and early queen failure is a result. For Ron Hoskins miticide use - I don't doubt his experience - however if he was using Apistan or Bayvarol as 'chemical' miticides as the only ones available in the early days I believe, before he went treatment free, they could well have harmed the queens or drones by a sub-lethal dose. They are insecticides after all.

I would also assume that if colonies are heavily infested with varroa, they would not be prosperous enough to swarm. But this very much depends on the swarming nature of the bee as I have had , in the past, colonies that would swarm on 5 frames of brood which means that you would be unlikely to get anything other than the odd jar of honey.

I would anticipate, say, an average 6 frames of brood at first inspection in a wooden hive - although when is first inspection? The date changes by the season. My (treated) colonies get to around 14 - 15 frames of brood as an average by the end of May and hopefully stay there for a couple of months and hopefully won't swarm. Overwintering with a small brood will conserve winter stores and is no bad thing in itself; Carniolans have a reputation for a rapid spring build up and then swarm. Ligusticas are renowned for a large winter and summer colony. AMM's are expected to have a small winter cluster and not get too big for a single national brood box. Buckfasts try to be the best of all. (And as you imply Nigel, there are potentially better and not so good breeders out there).

Nigel I have seen your buckets ! Impressive. It is impossible to compare one region with another however for what it's worth, I got 800kg from 11 production hives last year, without local comparisons, I can't say whether they are good or bad, however I got more honey than I need for one season. From those 11, one of those swarmed, one was artificially swarmed and one had brood stolen a few times which reduced its effectiveness. It was very noticeable that the new (2017) queens built up much better in 2018 than colonies with 2016 queens. I suspect the poor spring and a late start made the difference more noticeable than usual.
 #1626  by NigelP
 04 Jan 2019, 15:11
AdamD wrote:
04 Jan 2019, 14:36
An experiment of winter-treating a couple of Beeblebroxs' colonies to a) see the mite drop and b) see how they compare the following season to non-treated ones would be very interesting!
They simply won't do any comparisons, Adam.
And Diana's hope for swarm control from most "natural" keepers is not going to happen.
These guys/gals need it firmly hammered into their heads they need to manage their bees.
In Slovenia it is illegal Not to treat your bees for varroa.

This let alone beekeeping really annoys me....Now if we were keeping Apis cerana, the natural host of varroa I would have very different thoughts. As they can happily co-exist due to millions of years of natural evolution. Been less than 100 years that varroa jumped ship to Apis mellifera, a helpless host with no previous natural defence.
I suspect they will claim they are
helping evolution.....
 #1627  by NigelP
 04 Jan 2019, 15:27
AdamD wrote:
04 Jan 2019, 14:36

And as I mentioned in my earlier post, if non-treated bees could be selectively bred over time, their performance should slowly but surely increase. This is performance of mite resistance and also honey-gathering ability.
Yes but with all the non-treaters out there with their swarmy stock....Frequent brood makes by swarming 2 to 3 times a season has been described as one means of controlling varroa numbers in small feral colonies. The Russian bees that were initially promising were shown to overwinter on no more than three frames of brood
How to you manage the drone lines from these naturaL swarms ? You don't want those genes in your selected stock, plus mongrel bees do not breed true anyway. There are some noble ideas out there but impracticable. Except in small isolated areas.

If you want varroa tolerant bees then everyone has to stop treating. Something that is simply not going to happen.
 #1628  by Patrick
 04 Jan 2019, 17:06
A recent youtube video with some interesting observations on selecting for varroa resistance from untreated colonies the ever excellent Randy Oliver.

Particularly regarding working at significant scale, isolated drone populations, need for reliable repeated testing of mite loads within season to select lines worth focussing on, not consigning the less fit queens /colonies to likely decline or oblivion but treating them in the meantime until can re-queen with better queens, and the need to repeat the process annually to make incremental gains. Queen breeders have done much of this before obviously but an interesting worked example applied for varroa resistance at this scale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7811zWFCEs

I do not believe I am in an area of naturally resistant bees, which would presumably be consistent with high numbers of known persistent feral colonies in every available opportunity. If we all stopped treating, we might be left with some naturally resistant bees but I suspect many small (1 -3 colony hobbyists) would be wiped out within four years. Maybe I am wrong, but there is no way I am going to know.
 #1629  by NigelP
 04 Jan 2019, 17:53
Patrick wrote:
04 Jan 2019, 17:06
A recent youtube video with some interesting observations on selecting for varroa resistance from untreated colonies the ever excellent Randy Oliver.

Particularly regarding working at significant scale, isolated drone populations, need for reliable repeated testing of mite loads within season to select lines worth focussing on, not consigning the less fit queens /colonies to likely decline or oblivion but treating them in the meantime until can re-queen with better queens, and the need to repeat the process annually to make incremental gains. Queen breeders have done much of this before obviously but an interesting worked example applied for varroa resistance at this scale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7811zWFCEs
Yes, I've read most of what he has to say about varroa tolerance and means to control therm. It's complicated business with an awful lot of work to determine if colonies really are tolerant or not. I'm amazed at the detail and experiments he performs and his willingness to share those results with the beekeeping community at large.
Amazes me that a bloke with his scientific back ground, donkey's years experience keeping bees and literally thousands of hives can't crack a problem all our natural backyard beekeepers with only a few years experience and half a dozen hives claim to have done so already.
 #1639  by Beeblebrox
 06 Jan 2019, 10:28
"Amazes me that a bloke with [Ron Hoskin's] scientific back ground, donkey's years experience keeping bees and literally thousands of hives can't crack a problem all our natural backyard beekeepers with only a few years experience and half a dozen hives claim to have done so already."

He lives about 20 miles from me so perhaps some of his bees' survivor genetics have percolated across in the last 30 years. I also live near another chap with 80-100 hives who lost all his Italianate stock in 1993 to varroa, but noticed some ferals were OK so bred from them without problems. He tried to alert the BBKA but they weren't interested so he left the BBKA, went his own way and is off the radar. (He says he gets more honey from them than the Italians, he harvests a few tons a year.) So that's 2 major sources of survivor genes in the area, not counting the ferals. But this doesn't explain why resistance is so widely reported in Hampshire, Wales or by many BIBBA members using local bees. The real answer, I feel, is that - as Beowulf Cooper of BIBBA pointed out many years ago - a few bad years shake out non-survivor genes (unless you prop them up) and the original stock of the area is remarkably persistent. This can be seen in the way that colonies that become aggressive due to crossing with another strain, lose the aggressiveness in 2-3 years. That's fast! That's natural selection!

I'm not convinced having masses of bees in a colony is vital. The real value of bees is pollination, and it doesn't matter to our food supply if that is from many modest sized colonies or a few big ones.

"I would be vary careful of what Ron has to say...he used to claim his bees where biting the varroa....science found the varroa where carrying an unusually mild form of Deformed Wing Virus....this is one the diseases carried by varroa."

No, that is not what Ron said. He said he didn't know why his bees survived, but microscopy showed varroa mites on the baseboard with injuries matching bee mouthparts; and he observed pupa ejection. So that seemed a logical link and, in fact, no serious researcher doubts it. These are now recognised as control techniques in many colonies. Then a couple of years ago a researcher found a THIRD mechanism in his hives when they looked at the DWV and found a non-symptomatic version in his his bees crowding out the nasty type ("superinfection exclusion"). This does not invalidate the other data.

I see I didn't answer the comments about swarming. 6 hives: 4 swarmed last year. There was no one around to see the two in woods, I don't know where those went but not the nearest structure (house 300m away) so quite possibly a hollow tree in the mature wood. The other two I caught and gave away to beginner beekeepers. In general I have far fewer swarms now than when I began because I understand how to move comb, add space etc so they don't swarm prematurely. I reckon one prime swarm a year is a healthy reproductive rate and helps them regenerate. Two of my colonies were building up from casts, so I didn't expect them to swarm.
 #1640  by NigelP
 06 Jan 2019, 13:19
I'll leave you to your fantasies.
A few tones off a 100+ hives.....very poor yield or very poor management. I get about 1/2 that yield per year off approx 16 production hives. No wonder bee farmers are not queuing up for these bees.
Also it is currently impossible to tell the damage caused to a varroa carapace from bees biting them or damage caused as they fall through hive and open mesh.
The non-virulent DWV is not a third mechanism it is the mechanism.

"6 hives 4 swarmed....although 2 where building up from casts".....That equals 100% swarming rate and poor management.
 #1642  by Patrick
 06 Jan 2019, 14:00
Hi Beeblebrox,

As I said before everybody keeps bees differently, it’s the way it is. I personally do not have any issue with management that accommodates the urge to swarm, just as long as the beekeeper does not lose the bees. As a wag once quipped to me, that’s why we are called beekeepers, not bee-fly-awayers.

Losing swarms is certainly not a unique characteristic of any single type of beekeeping and there are some potential benefits for the parent colony, none of which cannot be gained whilst also retaining the potential swarm part. However, for most beekeepers as we will be at work when they naturally swarm or our hives are not where we live to see it happen, relying on being able to collect your own swarms is I think pretty chances. To put it into context, I work and keep most of my bees a field distance away. I have only seen one swarm issue from one of my hives in nearly 20 years - that was from a hive on my allotment whilst I was digging. The colony had a clipped queen (sorry!) so set up shop on a blackcurrant bush (which collapsed under the weight!) and I was able to hive it without fuss.

In my part of the west country it would sadly be wishful thinking that swarms luckily found an already vacant tree hole of sufficient capacity (40l) to set up in. They simply are not there in sufficient numbers any more in our highly managed countryside.
 #1643  by Jim Norfolk
 06 Jan 2019, 14:25
Beebelbrox, enormous respect for Ron Hoskins. I have heard him speak several times. The first when I was a new beekeeper encouraged me to start counting mites and looking for dimples and walking sticks. I still count mites and todays counts are zero over 3 days thanks to my vaping oxalic acid before Christmas.

Regarding swarming, when I started I had my bees in my very large garden with few near neighbours and kept a ladder in the orchard to retrieve the swarms. I got some very nice colonies. I later learnt how to manage swarming and now living with neighbours on either side and behind and in a small garden, non swarming is essential. I provide plenty of space for brood and have noticed over the past few years when I have been putting in foundationless frames for drone brood, the bees have not made swarm cells. Probably co-incidence but who knows. There is so much we don't yet know about bees.
 #1654  by AdamD
 07 Jan 2019, 16:42
Nigel has his views as we are aware.. although his comment about 100% swarming would appear to be correct - and I would not want to keep bees that wouldn't stay in the box - swarming can be reduced by selection. In fact I would not keep nearly as many colonies if all of them attempted to swarm as it would just be a pain in the neck for me.

Ignoring swarming, there is a case for smaller colonies - provided the size of the colony is due to genetics rather than disease. Is it easier/better to have one brood box and two supers of honey at the end of the season or two brood boxes and 4 supers of honey? The second colony sounds better at first - "I got 40 kg of honey from my colony" however that is probably for more work if regular inspections of two brood boxes is required and if someone can't easily lift heavy items to head-height then he/she might require an assistant.

It does make sense that some bees will become resistant to varroa by natural selection in the same way that rabbits recovered after mixie was introduced decades ago. However rather than rabbits being in warrens, they tend to be above ground more, I understand, so they have changed their behaviour and of course you do see them with the disease, sadly, so they are not entirely immune. We could hope that bees will recover in the wild - one would assume that from 'resistant' stock, bees would "percolate" across the country as Beeblebrox suggests.

The problem for many beekeepers who have just 2 or 3 colonies, is would they risk not treating and probably lose all of them to varroa? To spend, say, £150 plus per colony for the bees to die within a year is not anyone's idea of an enjoyable pastime.