Howdy All
Today i finally got my hives inspected and everything went well i do have a mite problem and i have started treating with apivar-life and he said i need to feed only three out of the ten does not need to be fed and he said that i had some of the biggest queens he has seen so now all my girls have a inspection sticker on them and the spring he will come back and inspect them again so i can be able to raise some queens and nucs i am happy now just got to feed heavy and treat mites which all of us have to do some time or another.
Tom :-D
So, do only three out of the ten need to be fed or not? Sorry, I couldn't follow...you seemed to say both.
that sound fine and dandy. i have a good friend down around lebanon, va that i've picked up a few swarms from in the past. i figure that's probably about a hundred or so miles from you. i picked up two from him last spring. some of my best bees now. i hope you do well raising your queens and and nucs. i know you're in a good place for it.
How hard was it to put an inspection sticker on all your girls??? :shock:
Howdy
To answer your question three do not need to be fed and the rest do and it is not hard to put inspection stickers on hives. So now i am preparing to do some heavy feeding and treat for mites that is in some of my hives not all of them just some so i am treating all of them to be on the safe side.
Tom
Sounds good! Although treating hives that don't need it is not a good idea. Treat where needed and leave the others be.
if you like keeping bees that are dependent on treatments, medications, suppressants, and like to help your mites become resistant, by all means treat your hives even if they don't need it.
If you treat with apriguard you will not have a resitance problem. :-P
Hello
I am treating my hives with apilife-var i have not tried the apiguard and i am not going to treat the ones that do not need it i know some need to be combine with my strong ones to make it thru. But i am thinking the ones with mites they got it from robbing other hives because three of them have no signs of mites but one is only covering two frames now the queen has slowed down to much they are feral so i am going to unite them with the one beside them since they are building up now and have a ton of brood and honey and then i can spilt in the spring.
Tom
Quote from: pdmattox on October 03, 2007, 03:50:57 PM
If you treat with apriguard you will not have a resitance problem. :-P
true, but you are still propagating bees that rely on treatments instead of focusing on selecting for bees that are resistant to mites :-P
well its like i keep saying ;) bees can live with a small mite load but the problem is with the viruses they vector. :-\ and we all know there is no treatment for bee viruses. RDY-B
i'm not a scientist or anything, but my common sense seems to tell me that if i have hygienic bees that groom one another and will tear out brood and eject it from the hive when it has mites in the cell with it, that the hive would be better off by getting rid of those mites before their offspring emerges. i never had to worry about these things before the winter of 95/96, when i was only left with only four out of thirty hives. now i do have to to consider mites and how they effect my beekeeping. my first and foremost line of defense is keeping hygienic bees. as you mentioned, bees can live with a small mite load. and yes, mites do transmit a number of viruses. now if you keep bees that you have to treat because of heavy mite loads, doesn't it make sense that more of your bees have viruses due to that heavy mite load than a hive that can handle mites on their own and don't have to be treated? i don't see why more people don't try to select from the better bees in their own apiaries. they should raise some queens from their better hives and requeen the the ones that are susceptible to disease, aren't hygienic, or just plain lousy. everyone will rush to requeen a hot hive, but won't even take a little time to test their hives to see which ones are the most hygienic. you can trust me when i tell you that you will enjoy keeping bees much more when you don't have to constantly worry having varoasis all the time.
The Old timer says >> i don't see why more people don't try to select from the better bees in their own apiaries. they should raise some queens from their better hives and requeen the the ones that are susceptible to disease, aren't hygienic, or just plain lousy. everyone will rush to requeen a hot hive, but won't even take a little time to test their hives to see which ones are the most hygienic.
Exactly, Above purity of line, hygenic behavior will the savior of beekeeping. That and allowing them to develop resistance to parisites of all kinds. In developing bees that are productive, even tempered, hygenic, and resistant; purity of strain isn't even in my top 10 list. From my experiences with animal husbandry I believe that the real solution is in the mongrelization of the bee genius. I.E. Mixing Apis Mellifera Carni with Apis Mellifera Mellifera and so on, kind of the Americanization (mongeralizing) of the bees that prove to possess the necesary survivour traits. The emphasis should be on survivability not purity. That's one of the reasons I have the mix of bee ethnicities that I do in my beeyard.
Quote from: Old Timer on October 04, 2007, 01:14:15 PM
everyone will rush to requeen a hot hive, but won't even take a little time to test their hives to see which ones are the most hygienic.
Maybe because it's easier to tell which hives are hot compared to which are hygenic? How can you even tell that? The hives with the lowest mite counts, year after year? Arguably, then, you could just not treat for mites at all, and just keep splitting the survivors...but you'd be dealing with a lot of setbacks in the meantime.
The hottest hive in my apiary is the one that is suppose to be the most hygenic--MH bees. I have noticed that the Russians seem to be just as hygenic (maybe even more so) and much calmer. But, push come to shove I will take hot survivor bees over calm disease prone ones any day. A few bee stings I can put up with, No bees--humm?
I wonder some times how long this balancing of nature will take? and i think most people that have been keeping bees for honey. never can get enough so its always there best producing colonies that are considered to be better than four frames of survivor bees that winter in a cluster the size of a cantaloupe. at least this is the frame of mind i have :) RDY-B
Quote from: rdy-b on October 04, 2007, 11:30:10 PM
I wonder some times how long this balancing of nature will take? and i think most people that have been keeping bees for honey. never can get enough so its always there best producing colonies that are considered to be better than four frames of survivor bees that winter in a cluster the size of a cantaloupe. at least this is the frame of mind i have :) RDY-B
how long have you been keeping bees? a lot of people don't get honey out of their bees due to poor management skills or weather related issues. it sounds like you speak from personal experience about never getting enough honey. there is nothing wrong with a small tight cluster here in wv, that's why a lot people who don't live where there is warmer weather through the winter prefer strains like russians or nwcs. now if you're a pollinator, you'd probably consider your best hives as those that are disease and parasite resistant with a rapid spring build up. because face it, out of the thousand or so hives that you move around the country, you can't take the time to baby those susceptible hives like a back yard hobbyist. so either you get some resistant bees or or you treat your hives prophylacticly. treating a thousand hives would be time time consuming and expensive from my viewpoint, but maybe not from a pollinator's. RDY-B, maybe you should consider what some of the experts have been doing, like marla spivak who worked on developing MHI. I'm sure you have a high opinion of mr bush on here, i know i do. he'll tell you that he does not treat. you talk about people not getting enough honey - well the key to getting honey is to keep healthy bees. not just bees in the fall that get treated before they overwinter, or bees in the spring that get treated before the flow, but year round hygienic bees that take care of themselves. most treatments for mites shouldn't be in a hive when there is a honey flow that you want to harvest the surplus from. now you discover your bees need treatment, but your greedy and want the honey so you don't treat. then your hive crashes and my bees will still be chugging along. anyone who will argue against keeping hygienic bees only show their own inexperience of and/or ignorance about beekeeping.
yes yes yes all very good points but big bees are needed in CALIFORNIA in FEBRUARY . and big bees are needed on the honey flow not before or after. most people would and do prefer the performance of a good italian queen .I HAve also tinker toy hives with natural comb and HSC and have bees that i maintain as organic as possible- but my most pleasure comes from being successful with BIG BEES IN FEBRUARY and BIG BEES FOR THE FLOW. yes i am greedy very greedy :loll: I try to think i can change things in my short stay in this world so i will roll with the punches and play the cards that i am delt and enjoy the success of it all. the disappointment is a reality that most of the tolerant and resistant lines that are being developed have a ways to go for production in my area :) RDY-B
Dee Lusby has been keeping small cell bees in Arizona since the 80's when I was there in March she had 30 yards with about 30 t0 35 hives in each.She seems to be doing good.
kirko
yes great accomplishments on her part.I have often wondered how she would do at some other location. I know you have spoken to her KIRKO do you know why she has settled in arizona? I also understand that she is managing bees that exhibit AHB gene stock and is doing quite fine with it very interesting indeed RDY-B
here you go OLDTIMER this will cheer you up made me laugh hope you laugh to
http://bee-quick.com/reprints/udunno.pdf RDY-B ;)
thanks, i know pollination is hard work. i'm not trying to discredit any pollinators by my previous post. i'm sure that if i was in the pollination business i'd have to do things different than how i do them in my backyard. if i didn't i would probably fail miserably. so it seems from one of your previous post that you do pollination. hope you do well this febuary.