Honey bees

[IndyJay]

I know numerous beekeepers who are treatment free and successful. Sure you lose some, but my “traditional beekeeper“ friends, had between 50-100% die out last winter. We had 100% survival. I can imagine a guy with treated bees, who are descendants from treated bees, who have been propped up like welfare recipients for years… would lose most colonies shortly after shutting off the support of chemical treatments. That makes sense to me. I’ve listened to numerous bee experts, mainly from Europe, where they care more about chemicals in and around their food sources, state that initially losses would be high, but weeding out poor genetics is possible, and advised. We have never done this in the US. We treat 99% of our colonies, and FEED THEM REFINED SUGAR to boot. Then we lament how sickly they are. No. Kidding.
Bees are free… so losing a colony shouldn’t be “expensive” to a small time guy like me. My problem is finding homes for all of them. Bees are being bred for better grooming traits, to be varroa resistant… genetics do exist. Numerous universities have created their own lines of genetics with these traits.
The problem with treating a bug that you cannot eradicate, is that the bugs that survive, are themselves, better adapted to survive… becoming resistant to chemicals used to treat them to begin with.
To each their own… but I also hear the BEST hives are thin walled, vertical boxes that don't emulate the habitat of a bee at all… from the same folks that feed refined sugar and chemicals to their bees. Expensive or not, if I have a weak colony, I don’t want them propogating… I want them to die. I care more about bees, than profit. Bees are being made weak, because we make them weak through our cultural practices.
We over harvest, for profit. Feed refined sugar. Treat weak colonies, for profit. Then we sell “pure honey“ that comes from bees who spent the winter and half the summer eating Costco sugar by the sack.
There is a very successful treatment free beekeeper in NY who had a great YT channel… but he was forced to shut it down when NY made it ILLEGAL to keep bees without treating them with chemicals. The state actually has the right to come destroy every hive.

We plant our bee food. Lots of flowers. Also, we don't spray to kill dandelion or clover in our lawn. We've been here 40 years and our wild bees were here before us.

 

[BnRidge]

NY made it ILLEGAL to keep bees without treating them with chemicals.

Think commercial beekeepers had any input on that? Reminds me of the "how agriculture works" thread.

 

[CloverKnollFarms]

Think commercial beekeepers had any input on that? Reminds me of the "how agriculture works"

Yes.

 

[CloverKnollFarms]

We plant our bee food. Lots of flowers. Also, we don't spray to kill dandelion or clover in our lawn. We've been here 40 years and our wild bees were here before us.

I’m planting some forage for them in the spring. Too much agriculture around here, which has depleted their forage, and introduced a lot of chemicals.

 

[NorTracNY]

There is a very successful treatment free beekeeper in NY who had a great YT channel… but he was forced to shut it down when NY made it ILLEGAL to keep bees without treating them with chemicals. The state actually has the right to come destroy every hive.

Industry and unscrupulous beekeepers are pretty powerful in NY. Years ago we tried to get NY to define what honey was and they fought it and one. I knew of one beekeeper that fed sugar all year because it produced more "honey". It use to be that only foul brood would have you burning hives.

 

[wmfamily]

but he was forced to shut it down when NY made it ILLEGAL to keep bees without treating them with chemicals. The state actually has the right to come destroy every hive.

What sort of world do we live in? As you said bees are "free" and collecting a wild swarm and not treating them shouldn't be a criminal act.

 

[IndyJay]

What sort of world do we live in? As you said bees are "free" and collecting a wild swarm and not treating them shouldn't be a criminal act.

Indeed.

 

[BnRidge]

What sort of world do we live in? As you said bees are "free" and collecting a wild swarm and not treating them shouldn't be a criminal act.

But there is always another side to the story. Think Typhoid Mary. A part of the whole thing I would disagree with is trying to big box something that is destined for my kitchen table. If it were possible, honey bees would be housed in 10,000hive condos, manipulated robotically, a conveyer for food in, a spigot for honey out. Kind of like the chicken "farm" down the road, where 3million chickens are now in a 40ac compost heap because the "system" failed. Food in, eggs out, hit-em with things to keep them alive, then on to kitchen table as Campbells soup. The bees are calmly nixing that crap idea.

 

[cqaigy2]

What sort of world do we live in? As you said bees are "free" and collecting a wild swarm and not treating them shouldn't be a criminal act.

Whether i agree or not, it's not so simple. Imagine you own a large cattle operation or even one for your own use, and your neighbor won't treat or euthanize animals with hoof and mouth, and your animals keep getting infected with from their operation and you keep losing animals.

I used to keep a small number of honey of bee hives, many years ago, and love honey bees. Have done yards or of reading about Varroa. It's difficult because the money in studies are basically for commercial operations, which makes sense because it take money to run studies, so you get money from bee operations, money from treatment companies etc, and they all want to make money, so the studies they support aren't a lot of use for small or hobby market, except where they can sell you stuff.

So back to the Varroa, i've yet to see, in my opinion, any repeatable method that shows Varroa control, without some sort of treatment for the mite. I'm guessing that eventually the type of honey bee we see in the states would develop some resistance like the asian bees, but with increased viral load on the hives. If i were to start back up, my mite control would probably include sublimated oxalic acid and good treatment timing, with good method for sugar roll for testing.

 

[ponytug]

Whether i agree or not, it's not so simple. Imagine you own a large cattle operation or even one for your own use, and your neighbor won't treat or euthanize animals with hoof and mouth, and your animals keep getting infected with from their operation and you keep losing animals.

I used to keep a small number of honey of bee hives, many years ago, and love honey bees. Have done yards or of reading about Varroa. It's difficult because the money in studies are basically for commercial operations, which makes sense because it take money to run studies, so you get money from bee operations, money from treatment companies etc, and they all want to make money, so the studies they support aren't a lot of use for small or hobby market, except where they can sell you stuff.

So back to the Varroa, i've yet to see, in my opinion, any repeatable method that shows Varroa control, without some sort of treatment for the mite. I'm guessing that eventually the type of honey bee we see in the states would develop some resistance like the asian bees, but with increased viral load on the hives. If i were to start back up, my mite control would probably include sublimated oxalic acid and good treatment timing, with good method for sugar roll for testing.

I agree that it isn't simple. As a kid, I happened to be living in an area that had a hoof and mouth outbreak, and it was ugly. Family farms lost herds that they had spent generations selecting for their land. Ditto brucellosis and anthrax, the latter of which survives in soil for at least seventy five years.

Any parasitic organism (virus, bacteria, fungus) is in a constant battle with its host; the parasitic variants that do better spread, and the less fit die back (not necessarily out). Then the host adapts, shifting the advantageous traits, and the cycle repeats. Occasionally, the parasite wipes out the host by being "too good". There are a lot of dead end species in the fossil record.

I don't keep bees, much as I would like to, but it seems to me that treating hives is a short term bump to the system, and the long term solution is to select for varroa resistant bees.

There is a recent paper suggesting that human resistance to "Black Death" seems to be correlated with people having more autoimmune diseases. (Perhaps it comes from selecting for an immune system that shoots first and asks questions later...)

Genetic traits of Black Death survivors linked to autoimmune diseases today

Scientists find people with ERAP2 variant survived 14th-century plague at much higher rates

www.theguardian.com

One of my favorite examples was in selective breeding of cattle, where it was discovered, the hard way, that cows that were bred to be too relaxed/docile tended to be poor mothers as they didn't "worry" about their calves and take good care of them.

In my experience, lots things aren't necessarily straightforward.

All the best,

Peter