There is no beekeeping best practice but many poor quality beekeepers

[Calum]

Hallo
so the BBKA Pesticide Decision is really beyond its sell by date, so it is time we had something new to argue about.

It is my opinion that there are no best practices in beekeeping just several more or less effective methods of trying to achieve the beekeepers objectives that are more or less successful depending on what the bees were actually planning, the weather, nectar flow, time of the year, luck, and implementation of the manipulation by the beekeeper.

I would further argue that by far the biggest threat to kept bees is their beekeeper.

Case in hand: I was chatting to a beekeeper of 40 years about why he is giving up. His response all his bees keep dying. I asked him how his varroa treatment went. His response
“I treated them as usual 3 doses of 60% formic acid”.

It as been recommended that 5-7 doses be applied for at least 4 years now in all magazines, training / lecture sessions and beekeeping meetings (for ordering the right amount of medications in spring and in July/August meetings again).

Discuss :)

[gavin]

I think that you've come to the right place to explore disorganised, ad hoc, ill-informed treatment and management schedules. Almost all of us are like that but some are worse than others. At our recent association meeting I heard an experienced beekeeper recommend to inexperienced ones usng powdered sugar to control the mites.

[Calum]

Yes advice (especially poor advice) from experienced beekeepers poses a problem for newbies - as there are always three different recommendations (sometimes from the same beekeeper) how should they know which is the right one?
I am lucky to have a great mentor that I listen to most of the time (well even some of his ideas dont sit well with me- eg varroa treatment) and two bibles (Einfach Imkern & Der Wochenende Imker). When it comes down to varroa treatment I only listen to the bee institutes here which also have differing opinions but the treatments that are legal in Bavaria are limited so that makes the choice much easier.

[Gscot]

At the moment I consider myself a poor quality beekeeper with poor practices but have managed to keep my 2 colonies alive.
I have heard or good quality beekeepers with good practices with dead colonies.
I think with all the do's and dont's if,s and but's all the different opinions I'm going to have to learn with my own experiance, pick out a few tips that I think suit .
They say get yourself a mentor how do you know he's giving you the correct information...
I recon its about 103 recommendations for a single problem.from the forums.
But the SBA forum always gives you great advice...(got to say that.)

Caught a swarm last year the queen did not lay any eggs dont know the reason why,but did'nt manage to re-queen and its still thriving .That was last Aug.put a couple of eggs and brood frames in in late Sep trying to re-queen.... was told bees only live for about 6 weeks in the summer.... wondering why the bees are not all dead

[Calum]

Gscot I agree with your points - good beekeepers over here loose colonies too.
I have a theory on this and beginners luck.
My theory is that beekeepers starting out have nucs or caught swarms and these will generally have a lower varroa infestation rate, and with a young queen are generally more vital that an established colony.
Beekeepers that have had bees for longer have the kit they need (or in use) and tend to try to keep their stocks at a constant level.
Beekeepers starting out split their colonies more often (building up saftey stocks or expanding) thus lowering the infestation rates in each colony.
I make 2-3 four frame nucs per established colony. An established beekeeper that only replaces his losses will remove much fewer brood frames thus aleviating less of the varroa pressure on his colonies. - just my theory!

Recommendations from forums are a tricky business as remote diagnosis is very difficult (often a little piece of info can be missing that can put the problem in a whole new light) - as there are often many permutations of what the problem can be and adding differing possible solutions you will get many recommendations some conflicting that many not all be wrong (although based on varying understandings of the symptoms listen and assumed) as respondents think they are trying to solve different root causes. A mentor that can lift the lid with you is priceless in comparison.

[gavin]

There's a lot in that. Certainly most of the beginners I've been helping have healthier bees than me!

Forums do sometimes collect characters who like to hold forth on stuff that they don't know enough about, and some mentors - the ones who push themselves forwards - can be the same. I suppose that one way to ensure that your beekeeping is good is to take many of your ideas from the better books. Wedmore and Hooper were my beekeeping bibles.

G.

[Jon]

.. wondering why the bees are not all dead

Bees which don't rear brood live longer.

[GRIZZLY]

Bees which don't rear brood live longer.

And then die out.
I find the problem with a lot of beekeepers is that they become set in their ways - are not prepared to listen to "younger" "less experienced" beekeepers,poo-poo modern research,jump on bandwagons such as pest control and chemical treatments of bee diseases and parasites etc..etc.I could go on,the list is endless.What I will say is find a system of beekeeping that works for you and works for your bees and above all KEEP AN OPEN MIND.

[Trog]

I think, Grizzly that Jon was saying that the bees in question, who are in their winter cluster, will live longer than summer bees because they're not raising brood or foraging. Spring will reveal whether the queen's able to lay properly. I have a nuc that may or may not be OK in the same way. Time will tell.

[Gscot]

Great, these answers for the queenless colony have been logged in my "tips to believe" log.
Also noticed that hive had more honey stored than the queen right colonies
Wondering what's the chance of the queenless colony surviving till May and re-queening

[Trog]

Are you sure it's queenless? Did the bees raise queen cells from the frames of eggs? Maybe she'd just stopped laying for the winter. As Winnie-the-Pooh so wisely put it, 'you never can tell with bees'. :0

[Jon]

And then die out.

re the longevity of bees, it's someting to do with the hypopharyngeal glands.
In Dadant-The Hive and the Honey Bee, Chapter 3 written by C.G. Butler, P72 in my edition, he cites work by Maurizio (1950) which states that:


queenlessness, or even a short interruption of egg laying at swarming time, causes the production of long lived bees similar to winter bees

This is a direct consequence of lack of brood rearing leading to an increase in protein reserves in the hypopharyngeal gland.

[chris]

Interesting, Jon. Warré recommended the “pioneer method” for increasing honey harvests in a Warré hive. This consisted of killing off the brood just before the flow. Guillaume and Frèrès have integrated this for varroa control. They give the following arguments:

Brood consumes 4 to 5 kilos of honey for every kilo stocked in the cells. When the brood is sacrificed, the drones are killed off. The comb having been destroyed with the brood, the queen stops laying for lack of space. The nurse bees which constantly produce royal jelly thus have a surplus of food which is consumed by all the bees. The colony benefits from this surplus of very rich food to very quickly build more comb. These bees also live longer, more than the 42-45 days normally the case.

[gavin]

That hardly fits with the 'natural beekeeping' peg that today's Warré enthusiasts like to hang their practices on!

[chris]

Isn't it natural to want lots of honey?:p

[gavin]

Yup! It is probably also natural to want to take brood home for tea (yuck!), and also to develop easier systems for managing your local bees (such as having side bars as well as just top bars in your artificial bee boxes), and even natural to want to develop better means of controlling the pests and diseases that afflict your stock ..... :p:p

G.

[Gscot]

Are you sure it's queenless? Did the bees raise queen cells from the frames of eggs

Hi Trog Caught the swarm first week in Aug. It had a queen but it did'nt lay any eggs
My own opinion is that it failed to mate.Left it till late Sep. and tried couple of frames from other hive to make a queen without success was going to join it with main hive before winter but was'nt 100% sure how to do it. So the bees in this hive have been surviving without additions since Aug-Sep. Checked them this morning and still plenty of bees in hive. Hope they survive till May.

[Calum]

Hi Gscot,
when you caught the swarm what would have been the equivaltent number of frames it was sitting on? If they had no stores at that point to feed brood and were still building the queen wouldnt be laying much.
How many kilos was the swarm? - If it was a good sized one the queen could well have been the old queen - she would have reserves of eggs left or they would have superceeded her.

[Jon]

Re. queenlessness:

I sold a nuc to someone from my BKA in July with a newly mated and marked 2010 queen.
She transferred it to a full size box and carried out weekly inspections, noting the queen present on every one until 30th August.
On subsequent inspections no queen was seen and towards the end of September there was no brood at all.
I checked the colony at the start of October and was pretty sure it was queenless.
At this stage she was beating herself up as she though she had accidently killed the queen.
I asked about supersedure cells but she said she had not seen any.
I had a spare queen in an apidea and offered to requeen it for her.
There were about 4 frames of bees at this stage.
I brought round my apidea with the queen on 15th October and checked through the colony again and there was still no sign of a queen and there was no brood of any sort.
I was about to close up and put the apidea above the crown board hole over a piece of newspaper when I noticed a little golf ball sized clump of bees.
I teased it apart and a black virgin queen scuttled out.
She then told me that she had seen this little clump of bees several times during her inspections looking for a queen.
She checked the colony at the start of November and found eggs larvae and sealed brood which means that this queen mated extremely late in the year and started to lay in the last fortnight in October.
I e-mailed her a few days ago and she says the colony is still alive.
If it gets through the winter that might be a nice colony to graft from as the mother queen which was superseded was from a 100% amm colony and I doubt if there is anything other than amm drones on the wing during October.
I have noticed a couple of my colonies ball the queen like this to protect her when the hive is opened.

[Gscot]

Caught the swarm from my original hive It was covering about 5 frames, put in 2 drawn frames and fed heavy for 2 weeks,no sign of eggs or brood but had drawn another 3 frames, checked again in 2 weeks no sign of eggs or brood checked 2 weeks later no eggs or brood removed queen and added 2 frames of eggs and brood no sign of queen cells. By this time is was too late to do anything else (i think)

[Jon]

In the example I posted above there were no eggs laid for 7 weeks and it became queenright.

[Gscot]

Was feeling quite satisfied with what I tried..... Starting to feel I could have made an erse of it

I'm on a big learning curve and likely to make mistakes along the road hopefully not costly

[gavin]

I've been at this something like 14 years and I make an arse of something most years. In 2011 I'm hoping to raise queens in mini-nucs and I'm bound to make an arse of that!

Am I allowed to say arse?!

[Jon]

Am I allowed to say arse?!

You will probably have to apologise to someone!

Gscot
I should have pointed out that I think the example I gave is highly unusual, both the time of year of the queen mating and the length of time it was broodless.

You have to make mistakes if you are going to learn and your colony may well have a queen in it. You'll find out in the spring.
Last year I experimented with different queen introduction techniques and just when you think you have got the knack of it you start to lose them.
It's really frustrating especially if you have gone through the entire process of grafting and transferring queens to Apideas for mating only to have them killed 6 weeks later due to a clumsy introduction.

The joys of beekeeping.

[gavin]

Might as well get it over with: Sorry!! (if you apologise for your atrocious spelling .... )

G.

I'd add a smiley but I don't think Jon needs one.