overwintering and breaking treatment regime

[ccar2000]

As a hobbyist my focus is keeping two healthy bee hives and not to have them keeping me!
It is my intention to do this with the minimal amount of treatment possible.
I am in favor of manipulations such as opening the brood nest, checkerboarding and changing the hive size to accommodate growth or for seasonal preparedness. I would prefer the bees supersede rather than swarm.

My inexperience along with the area/climate where I live, it seems to be a challenge to keep bees. And after two failed attempts to have a hive survive winter I am opting to treat for Nosema with a Fumagilin treatment in September/October to help with overwintering.

The question I have has to do with purchasing Russian/Carniolian packages, hiving them and getting them acclimated or naturalized and have the strength to go without the antibiotic.
What should my long term game plan/process be?

Is it by weaning them by dilution of the fall treatment?
Is it by not treating them the second year, after they survive the winter?
Or quit cold turkey after they supersede?

I am looking for good direction/instruction

[forrestcav]

check with micheal bush, he's on here and has a link to his site. He doesn't treat.

[VolunteerK9]

This is my second year keeping bees. I started with packages last year and never treated with anything. If they survive they are what I want, if not, Ill find some that can. I believe a large part of survivability is genetic diversity and good, clean comb.

[Michael Bush]

>As a hobbyist my focus is keeping two healthy bee hives and not to have them keeping me!
It is my intention to do this with the minimal amount of treatment possible.

Minimal would be none...

>My inexperience along with the area/climate where I live, it seems to be a challenge to keep bees. And after two failed attempts to have a hive survive winter I am opting to treat for Nosema with a Fumagilin treatment in September/October to help with overwintering.

Once you start killing the microbes in the hive you have upset the entire system.  Fumigillan is an antibiotic.  The microbes that would displace the pathogens in the hive and that ferment the bee bread (pollen that is fermented) get killed off.  Other antibiotics (TM and Tylosin) kill off the bacteria, while Fumigillan kills off fungus.  Both bacteria and fungi are necessary for the fermentation of bee bread and to live in a healthy hive and a healthy bee.

>Is it by weaning them by dilution of the fall treatment?

The sooner you stop treating the sooner you'll be off the treatment treadmill.  Using any medication other than as directed is a bad idea (leads to resistant microbes) and is against the law.

>Is it by not treating them the second year, after they survive the winter?

Buy bees that have already survived the winter in your location with no treatments.  That would be the best start.  Part of the issue is just bees that are acclimatized to your location and the other part is bees with healthy microbes already and good genetics.

>Or quit cold turkey after they supersede?

Supersede?  Why would they supersede?

[ccar2000]

Buy bees that have already survived the winter in your location with no treatments.  That would be the best start.  Part of the issue is just bees that are acclimatized to your location and the other part is bees with healthy microbes already and good genetics.

My first nuc came from a beekeeper in the next county over. I have not been successful in locating beekeepers in my immediate area. I believe I am getting good genetics, just not local. I know they are currently on a treatment regiment. It is getting expensive replacing the bees every year. I am not discouraged. I am just trying to get some options here. The point about the microbes is well taken.

[VolunteerK9]

Also try phasing out the frames that your nuc came with by placing a frame or two of foundationless when you can.

[Finski]

.
Sad to see, that a beginner starts with "treatment free bees". The whole  world is looking for that but...life teaches.

[hankdog1]

Biggest problem with buying package or nucs not from your area most have been treated with god knows what.  Most of the stuff used to treat mites is actually just as hard on the bees.  So you have two choices catch swarms/cutouts of feral bees or buy from a local beekeeper that doesn't treat.  That should up your chances of overwintering your bees.  Still going to be work though early feeding and going into those hives around every 2 weeks so treatment or not you need to get in there to see what's going on.  I suspect your problem being from California may be failing queens (my 2 cents worth).

[cam]

A lot of information here:
http://kirkwebster.com/

[backyard warrior]

To be honest i haven't met a beekeeper yet from my bee association or whole area that isnt loosing bees everyone is loosing bees, michael claims he isnt; but he is one of the very few that claims no mites.  I had 4 hives last year that were fresh packages with undrawn foundation in a new bee yard.  All four hives died with 3 inches of bees on the bottom board and the one that made it to spring had k wing so i am guessing tracheal mites.  With the varroa mites, tracheal mites, brood diseases, pesticides that the bees are up against it really doesnt take that long for the mites to wipe out a colony. The best thing you can do is keep checking your bees for mites with sugar dust rolls, change out your capped drones, if your  mite count is high treat to knock down the numbers.   I agree with Finski  we arent that far along with hygenics and natural controls of these problems to walk away from a bee hive and think its going to be alive a few years from now i wish that was the case id have lots more hives to set out to make me honey that id just go to in the fall and pull honey supers those days are gone for now in my opinion, from what i have seen over the last few years in my area. :

[Michael Bush]

I have Varroa.  Just no losses from them for some time that can be discerned.  No significant numbers of Varroa.  No losses where there are any number of Varroa dead on the bottom with the bees.  No Varroa feces in the cells.

http://bushfarms.com/beescerts.htm

We all have losses.  Winter can be very harsh in Nebraska.  You get some -27 F for a couple of weeks and you lose a few.

[backyard warrior]

See even Mike loses bees its just the nature of the beast

[danno]

.
Sad to see, that a beginner starts with "treatment free bees". The whole  world is looking for that but...life teaches.

I agree completely!!    Beginner spend a bunch of money to get started.  Buying one to five colonies.   First year treatment free most or maybe even all make it.  These are now survivors right.  Wrong!!!!  2nd year they all die and the beginner starts over with another bunch of money only for the same thing to happen.  He or she then just figures this is not for them and quits.  If you do enough research you can find as many or more "experts" that treat there bee's and although are still have many problems they are at least not starting over every year.  I agree that if everyone would quit treating that the bee's would mostly die but the ones that don't would be the true "survivors" but unless you have alot of money, great patients and a bunch of time on your hands this is not a reality.  I'm 53 and dont expect to see true survivors in my lifetime

[skflyfish]

2nd year they all die and the beginner starts over with another bunch of money only for the same thing to happen. 

I tell you what Danno, you posted something similar to this last year. Those words haunted me all summer. I kept checking for varroa and thought I really didn't have a problem. Even when 3 second year hives crashed in the fall, I still couldn't see that many mite drops on the inspection board. I really thought I had some other issue, like nosema ceranea. To be honest, I was shocked that high varroa numbers were the only thing that came back positive in all the tests I had run.

So now I will be even more discerning of the condition of my hives.

On another note, Oberlin in Shelby lost all his hives this winter. He lost 13 in the fall and the remaining 31 this winter. And he is a 75 year old beekeeper who had as many as 600 hives at one time. I guess it happens to everyone.  He has been letting a southern pollinator keep a good number of hives on his property in the summer. One wonders what that brings to the mix. Another southern pollinator brings large numbers of hives to my area also. Some less than 3 miles away.

Jay

[danno]

Jay
I had a colony that was going on 5 years old.  It sat 100yard behind my house and was the 1 of 5, 5 years ago.  Because they were so close I did check drop on them after treating.  It never had many on this one colony.  Less than 50 while the others had to many to count.  I know of 2 times that it swarmed which I caught and moved and I'm sure that I missed a couple of other times.  I just let them make a new queen each time.    This year when I treated it with organic acids it dropped 1000s.   The sticky board was red.  Point is this colony was doing something to handle the mites but the new queens mates didn't.  It died this winter.  By the way I still have 1 back there of the original 5.   

[Hethen57]

What Dano said!  What gets me is everyone thinks they are a mini Darwin because they survive the first winter (I did too).  I think the genetics of bees adapting to pests and environment are alot more complicated than people think.  Survival may not mean adaptability...it may just be dumb luck, management, environment, etc. and you will have a difficult time duplicating the bee genetics because the queens mate with lots of different drones, so the bees in the hive have lots of different genetics, until the queen changes and then you start over....eventually there will be some bees that will adapt or they will all die, but probably not in the short time period that people are expecting, in an unscientific manner of walk away splits or whatever....let the flaming begin...but i had to say it....

I think the guy with Varroa resistant bees could make a fortune selling them to the rest of us so we could quit buying packages of questionable genetics....

[Scadsobees]

Yeah, never had a problem with nosema, never treated, I've been cutting back some of the varroa treatments.

Then we get a really long cold winter with no thaws, and I lose hives to nosema.

It has to do with intelligent management, not natural management.  Hopefully the intelligent part of it can eliminate the better part of the medicine treatments, but when it is needed....

I'd rather be an intelligent beek with bees than a all natural survivor beekeeper without them.

[BlueBee]

everyone thinks they are a mini Darwin….let the flaming begin...but i had to say it....

Too bad Darwin didn’t keep bees, it might have saved him a trip to the Galapagos islands  :)

I’m still waiting for some beek to claim their bees have evolved to the point of doing calculus. 
At the rate people talk about evolution occuring in bees, that can't be far off....

[organicfarmer]

If you do enough research you can find as many or more "experts" that treat there bee's and although are still have many problems they are at least not starting over every year.  I agree that if everyone would quit treating that the bee's would mostly die but the ones that don't would be the true "survivors" but unless you have alot of money, great patients and a bunch of time on your hands this is not a reality.  I'm 53 and dont expect to see true survivors in my lifetime

CDD has shown us that many of those who lost 70% of their stock were treating. What i see around is: you treat, you dont treat, loss is quite the same.
As far as seeing survivors, i am very optimistic. Let's remember that when England saw tracheal mites arrive in their land, they had no treatment available and in about 10 yrs (with big losses, true) the bees left were the resistant ones. And no treatment needed anymore. In the US, when the mites came, drugs had been developed and became the answer. Now ~25 yrs later, we start to see less talk about tracheal, less need for treating. So even if it takes 25 yrs - hopefully less, bees will become adapted (resistant?) to varroa and all associated problems.
i have a hive going on at least 3 yrs (maybe more, i did not keep good record before that unfortunately). i couldn't believe how clean the bottom board was on my first spring visit compared to others of my hives. Spotless, you could have eaten on the floor - if the bees had let me share their plate !! Gonna have them make some queens for me.