reverse Doolittle double split

Changing my beekeeping life

My head is still spinning a bit with all that I learned during my time with my new commercial beekeeper friends in the desert.  Something that was amazing was that in opening all of those hundreds of hives, and breaking the ladders between hive bodies that almost always contain drone brood, all five of us were looking for mites, and only one mite was seen. Period.  And this is with the bees fresh out of  the almonds, where they usually get loaded with mites. They asked me what I do for mites, and when I told them that I hadn't treated, and hadn't even counted for mites, they asked me to let them know what my mite count was coming out of winter, when I got home.  Well, probably more telling is my loss count.  I have lost 4 out of 9 of my colonies.  Some of the bees are there and dead, and some of them are just all gone.  Both of these are due to high mite counts.

I have been encouraging you all to at least count for mites, even if you aren't planning to treat, so that you'll at least know why, if your bees die, but I have been guilty of not doing so myself.  No more!  I will count for mites the minute it stops snowing and gets decent enough to really get in my remaining four top bar colonies.  I have wanted not to treat, and thought I could get away with not treating for mites, because my bees come from cut-outs, mostly, feral colonies (maybe, or maybe they originate from swarms from someone elses hives). The cultural bias towards "organic" or treatment free beekeeping was in the back of my mind.

From now on, I will count for mite loads, and treat my bees when necessary.  I plan to use the system these commercial beekeepers have been using off and on for 10 years now, without seeing resistance building up in the mites.  They have tried oxalic acid, because like all of us, they wanted to go organic.  They found it was murder on their queens, a little too much, and the colony dies.  They tried Apiguard, the organic thymol compound, and found an insufficient mite drop.  They tried a few of the other mite treatments that have come and gone, but always come back to the one that works for them...amitraz, or Taktic brand. The label apparently says to mix it 1:1, and they are mixing it 1:10, so it is a lot weaker than prescribed.  I spoke with Bill, my chemist friend, about this, and his comment was that it makes sense.  If you treat with a very strong chemical, and a few mites survive, you have created a super mite, but with a weak formulation that kills the mites, you aren't creating the resistance.  He also mentioned that a few new studies are out stating that the "organic" compound is much harder on  the bees, with more negative impact, than this synthetic compound.  Now, why use something just because it is organic, if it is harmful to your bees.  It makes a lot more sense to use something that works, is less harmful to the bees, and so far, isn't producing resistant mites.

I know the arguments about letting the bees die, so that when we finally find bees that can live, we'll have naturally mite resistant bees.  A couple of things about that...why should all of the bees, the colony, the super-organism, die, because one of its parts, the queen, is inferior?  Why not re-queen before the bees are infected with disease, and before the colony is raising the fat bees in fall, so that the super-organism can live?  And here is where treatment comes into that picture.  If you drop a wonderful, expensive, mite resistant queen into a colony heavily infested with mites, the battle might be too steep for the bees to win, and you have just killed a good queen with great genetics.  She should get a clean slate to start with, so that you can really see how good she is.

People ask all the time, "what if we don't ever treat, won't the bees that survive eventually all be resistant to mites and diseases?"  In the March issue of the ABJ, this question was posed to Tom Seeley.  He answered that yes, the bees that survive will become mite resistant, but also pointed out that this was tried on an island, so that bee populations could be counted without bees migrating in and out.  150 colonies were left untreated, of them, 5 survived.  Ask yourself, with statistics like that, how many packages of bees will you have to buy before you get the one that can survive without treatment.  Here is the bottom line, if you don't treat for mites when it is needed, and go the next step to buy resistant queens until your colony can handle the mites on their own, your bees will die, and die, and die.


Something else these guys stressed was the importance of a brood break.  The guys that are treating for mites without the brood break because they feed pollen all year are seeing resistance build up.  Maybe the brood break is just enough to help the bees help themselves while using this weaker formulation.  They move their bees back and forth between Colorado and the desert so that the colonies will be built up to go to the almonds, but don't feed pollen patties all winter, so that the bees go broodless for a month or so before the winter solstice.  Then the bees have the final, and biggest, benefit...great nutrition.  One thing they said over and over was that in a year like the one the desert is having this year, with great nectar and pollen flow, you could almost do everything wrong and it would still work out all right, because superior nutrition is the answer. And if it is a year with poor nectar and pollen, you could do everything right, and nothing would work.  Nutrition is the key!  Thanks Tomas and Yonnie, for teaching me to help my bees live!  T