deknow,
I think you miss my point, or points.
i don't think i missed your point at all.
I do not need stock of smallcell. I have my own. I have done smallcell I think now for 7 years. You are assuming that I need smallcell bees. You are wrong. There are other reasons for my offer, that I will state later.
i know you have bees. i know you have at least had sc bees (i don't know what you currently have...but i don't doubt that you have sc bees).
One....No matter the hive, no matter the bee, someone markets and sell as demand dictates. You can buy full hives of Russians, Italians, non-treated hives, warre hives, top bar hives...everything imaginable.
yes, there are a lot of products on the market....but you don't seem to be able to find what you are looking for for sale?
You don't need to tell me about "chemical free honey"...I sell it.
please don't misquote me...i said "treatment free" not "chemical free". when i use the term "treatment free", i referring to bees that are not treated by any "chemical" or "soft treatments", are not fed sugar (take note of this...it's relevant to what follows). lots of folks that use thymol, fumidil, organic acids, sugar dusting, etc claim "chemical free"...the two concepts are not the same.
We are talking about selling bees from regressed and claimed resistant hives. Is nobody willing to sell a supposedly claimed fully functioning smallcell hive while claiming mite resistance? But yet the repeated message over and over, is that bees magically have no mite problems once they are regressed down to 4.9 or lower. It was just repeated again on this forum in the past 24 hours.
let's be clear here....feel free to quote me and hold my feet to the fire for anything that i say (and i've said quite a bit between the various forums, the book, and my talks at conferences....many of which are available online for free). ...but am i responsible for what other people say? are you responsible for what other people say?
i don't have mite problems. part of that result is (I believe) from small cell...part of it is management practices (see below), and part is letting the bees with mite problems die. there may well be other factors as well.
I don't care about 3000 members or two conferences, or anything else. I want someone to put their product where their mouth is, and back up the claims that keep getting repeated.
i put my hives as i manage them (and my significant outlay of capital to get to this point) "where my mouth is". i don't think anyone has to read too closely between the lines to see that you are not looking at this impartially, and that you are looking to "prove" failure.....this isn't very hard to do, anyone can kill hive without violating any "defined protocall" if they try...the more money you pay for a "fully functioning sc hive", the more you have invested to "prove it doesn't work". i'm not interested in such games.
if there is someone that you think is succeding, visit their apiary in question. observe (and ask questions) about what they are doing. try your best to replicate everything that you think might be relevenant (and even those factors that you dismiss as irrelevant). to assume that sc is the only factor involved here is an unfounded assumption. we noticed that we all of a sudden were able to overwinter bees without treatments once we regressed the bees...but this was only one thing we had to change from the "standard management practices" to have strong treatment free hive.
You would think that if anyone had the guts, someone would be selling mite resistant fully functioning hives. We as an industry sell everything else. So slicing, dicing, and over rationalizing it, really accomplishes nothing. And if your answer is the "reasoning" that nobody is willing to sell a fully functioning hive, then give me a price of one of your smallcell (two box...I do not care about honey boxes) hives, and if I do not get a better offer, then I'll consider your price.
the way we manage our hives, there are no "honey boxes". the broodnest runs through the center of 5-6 boxes (deeps). saying that you can separate "the hive" from "the honey" is (at least in our management) a fallacy....kind of like separating a corporation from it's capital. i don't consider 2 boxes full of bees "a fully functioning hive" anymore than an automobile plant without working capital and an infrastructure is a car company. taking a "fully functioning hive" of 6 boxes and tearing it down to 2 is a bit like dissecting the goose that layed the golden egg.
Come on, we can do better than that. Someone step forward and sell a fully functioning smallcell hive without the excuses, rationale, or changing subject matter. That is not asking too much I hope.
i offer no excuses....just my experience.
deknow