Natural Beekeeping Network

[spenbroc]

I have seen several posts suggesting that it is possible to have colonies survive long-term without any treatment for varroa and others maintaining that judicial treatments based on IPM using a variety of formulations is essential to ensure continuing bee health and colony survival year on year.

I am interested in gathering as much data as possible before I consider trying a non-treatment regime in my apiary - mix of horizontal topbar and Warre hives housing local 'mongrel' bees.

My existing method is entirely based on periodic natural drop mite counts and 'thymol string' treatment; for small colonies or nucs I have found sugar dusting a very useful alternative.

Please note that my West Wales location is predominately mild, wet and breezy - I believe this climate/weather may have some bearing on the levels of varroa infestation observed locally.

Jon

[Gareth]

I'll start the responses since I have advocated and used 'thymol string' in the past. This should not be taken as the last word from me and it would be very informative to hear other responses too.

I first became concerned about possible side effects of thymol string last year as a result of anecdotal evidence that mite treatments (including thymol) can affect drone and queen fertility. Earlier this year a scientific paper was published that showed a number of miticides, including thymol, have the effect of 'turning on' genes in bees that are normally activated in response to stressors such as toxins or infections.

I am also aware of more than one beekeeper who has bees that are naturally mite resistant and remain healthy without treatment of any sort.

This has caused me to formulate a plan going forward that avoids the use of miticides or routine sugar dusting (I don't class sugar as a miticide in the narrow sense of the term). I shall continue to monitor mite levels and use natural/assisted reproduction to create brood breaks if and when appropriate. I am also actively seeking naturally mite resistant bees from feral swarms and other beekeepers who have them in their apiaries.

Added to this, I have adopted a low interference/low stress regime that seeks to keep the internal hive environment as undisturbed as possible.

The reason for avoiding routine sugar dusting is that I want to see how the bees cope left to themselves. If I continuously scratch their itch for them, how will they ever learn to scratch it themselves? Or even show that they already can?

Do I expect to be faced with difficult decisions about straying outside of this regime to potentially 'save' colonies? Yes, I do.

[quioui]

This is my second year in beekeeping and I didn't treat at all. Last autumn there were many bees with deformed wings that were thrown out, which is accepted as an alarming sign for varroa infestation. Despite that I didn't do anything and they survived the winter. So far I haven't seen a single bee with deformed wings and everything seems to be going fine.

[homegrown]

Going into our fourth year completely treatment free with a colony in a Warre (captured swarm). Thought I saw a mite on an adult bee once but no sign of deformed wings seen at hive entrance. I may do a mite count this year just to monitor how populations fluctuate.

[spenbroc]

Thanks for the responses so far.

The following is a quote from David Heaf's book 'The Bee-friendly Beekeeper' ISBN - 978-1-904846-60-4

Varroa Control Page 101

'At the time of writing, the survival rate of my Warre colonies in their fourth season is 33%, with the losses probably attributable to three seasons in succession of poor forage (2007-9).'

The bold emphasis is mine and unfortunately he doesn't clarify that varroatosis was the actual cause of the losses. However, I could not tolerate losing 2 colonies out of every 3 in one season.

Jon

[FollowMeChaps]

Jon - I don't treat at all and my colonies seem really strong.
I did a couple of sugar dustings on my horizontals in my first 2 years but nothing at all in the last 3. I'm not sure how you'd dust in a Warré, I leave mine well alone.

I hope this helps

Robin

[spenbroc]

[Gareth]

[FollowMeChaps]

[imkeer]

Last year, I treated only with bee-tea.
Survival rate was 50%, and I was so happy! I was dancing like a crazy man in the garden when I realized.
But last winter I learned this:
The only documented varroa destructor "tolerance" with European Honeybees so far, happened with colonies that were exposed to the pressure of natural selection. This is the conclusion of the study "Characteristics of honey bee colonies (Apis Mellifera) in Sweden surviving Varroa destructor infestation" by Barbara Locke and Ingemar Fries. (Apidologie 2011: 42:533-542)
One of the interesting results was this: there was a big difference in the reproduction succes of the mites. In the non-treated hives this was 48% and in the treated hives 78%. (Varroa mites have 2 to 3 reproduction cycles.)

In general, mites have an even longer evolution than bees. Bees are here since about 40 million years, and mites are about 365 million years old. Their succes is quite big, they are everywhere. They normally don't kill their hosts. So if we expose both bees and mites to the pressure of a natural selection, we actually breed for mites that make it so that they can stay with their host. Then we let nature balance out our mistake of moving bees around the planet.

How about that ?

Luc Pintens
Belgium

[FollowMeChaps]

I think this thread needs to be put into context. We have to ask ourselves - is varroa really a big problem?

Certainly in the wider non-natural beekeeping world the focus of beek's is on varroa and it's seen as the big, probably No. 1 evil.

However, it's actually in several peoples commercial interest to keep up this perception - giant corporations make large sums of money developing treatments, probably even aiming at breeding a pesticide immune hybrid bee they can sell. In the last few years breeders (many of whom play leading roles in the bee world hierarchy) have seen the price of bees/nucs/packages multiply, even many local Associations that used to 'pass on' colonies to members ride this wave and sell swarms and nucs raised from them at large sums.

Most importantly, while beeks are being encouraged to focus their wrath on varroa, it diverts attention away from some of the REAL issues like the mass introduction of systemically treated seed both in the agricultural and now domestic arenas. Call me a cynic if you like but it wouldn't surprise me if certain giant corporations (you know who I mean) had people working full-time on perpetuating this belief as one of a planned means of diversion.

I and others believe, and there is a large and growing body of evidence to support it, that varroa is a red herring. The bees are coping with it and as Luc points out above evolutionary programming is on their side to do so.

While everyone panics about this mite they are monitoring mite drops and adding treatments all of which require the hives to be opened and further weaken the bees. I have posted elsewhere why I believe it's a paradox to jump into action when the mite drop increases as this may well be hitting them when they are dealing best with the problem.

In the UK both our untreated bees and feral colonies ARE surviving. I think we should know about and understand varroa, but we need to keep in context that it's far from being the big problem.

Robin

[AnthonyD]

[Gareth]

[Bugscouter]

[spenbroc]

[FollowMeChaps]

I can't answer that Jon. As I said above it's a red herring - we are not seeing losses to varroa so how can you improve on that?. Sure we loose bees to starvation, poisoning, animal attack, etc. but do we loose them to varroa?

I think when folk see high numbers in a living colony the bees are probably dealing with them. If you see a high count of dead varroa in a deceased colony then isn't that is to be expected? If the host dies then the parasite will die too. My point is that seeing varroa dead or alive is not a clear indication of good or poor health - it's just an indication that the bees have varroa. Around here that's not news as all colonies have it.

Robin

[spenbroc]

[Gareth]

[spenbroc]

[Rupert]

I have not treated with anything for anything for since sugar dusting twice in 2008. All my colonies are strong. I know of four surviving feral colonies that are several years old.

I posted on here that varroa was a red herring during the evolutionary beekeeping debate.

Bees will survive if left alone.

Rupert
_________________
A cow on the rocks is not a bum steer

[FollowMeChaps]

[Gareth]

Jon

It depends on your appetite for risk and for reward.

The ONLY way to find out if you have bees that are naturally varroa resistant is to stop treating - with everything, including sugar. Ron Hoskins supplies some of his bees to others, but only if they sign an agreement not to treat.

The REWARD is that you find you do have naturally varroa resistant bees.

The RISK is that you do not. BUT this is not the end of the story.

If you are uncertain about the approach of not treating, cease treatment but continue to monitor mite fall. If the mite fall reaches a plateau and then remains constant (whether that plateau be a dally fall of 2 mites or 12 mites), this indicates that the bees and the mite are in balance. If the daily fall just goes on getting higher, without any let-up, that suggests that the bees are not in balance with the mite. At this point you can make a further decision: do I continue to leave them alone or do I assist them in some way.

Assisting them does not mean that you have to treat. For example, you could work with the natural biology of the bee by allowing the colony to swarm. 2/3rds of the mites are in the brood and these are left behind when a colony swarms. The associated brood break further reduces mite numbers.

If you are not comfortable with a natural swarm, there are other approaches that mimic the same effect. You could encourage the building of queen cells and transfer a well developed one (or maybe two) into a separate hive and populate this hive with flying bees from the old hive. Again, the mites in the brood (2/3rds of the total) are left behind and the brood break further reduces mite numbers.

Obviously they are your bees and it is your decision. When you feel you are ready, give it a try.

[spenbroc]

[spenbroc]

[Gareth]

Jon

To replay your own words, that is very clear.

In your position, with those numbers, I too would hesitate to go cold turkey. Colony 3, in particular is showing a worrying spike, confirmed by the fact that you are seeing a continuous stream of deformed bees. I take those two pieces of evidence to indicate that colony 3 is not in balance with the mite and needs assistance if it is to survive. The last time I saw a spike like that, the next count was showing 80 a day. Colonies that are in balance do not show huge spikes, especially at this time of year.

Because I now have concerns about the effect on fertility of miticides (including thymol), I personally would go for a reproduction-led approach as I outlined above. This does three things:

Breeding increases the mix of genes (through mating)

Breeding helps reduce varroa loads through natural means

Breeding increases colony numbers, buffering against colony losses

I have to say, however, that colony 3 does look as if it is very much on the edge. I would be tempted at this stage to find the queen, shook swarm it and dump the brood. Sounds harsh, but the alternative could be worse. I did exactly this with a colony last year and they subsequently went gangbusters.

Good luck.




(Note to Robin: You and I might have to agree to disagree on this one.)

As a PS to Jon: I am unsure in my mind about the risk of significant re-infection from adjacent colonies in the same apiary. Lateral disease spread is often beekeeper driven through exchange of brood combs etc rather than bee driven.

[FollowMeChaps]

[spenbroc]