Contributed by Dewey M. Caron
Beekeeper interest in Treatment-Free beekeeping has never been stronger. Electing not to treat bees or seeking to move toward treatment free is a possible option in our colony stewardship. Bee colonies in the wild experience heavy losses. Our hives, with mites, viruses and other “issues,” have been experiencing heavy overwintering losses. I gave a talk at the annual Oregon State Beekeepers Association Conference in Seaside on the concept of working toward treatment-free in which I discussed 4 “keys’ for beekeepers not wanting to treat or seeking to reduce current management.
Tom Seeley, at the 2013 treatment free conference in Forest Grove, described his research on where and how bees live in the wild in contrast to what we “require” of those same bees when we site them in our apiary. He believes keeping bees more similar as occurs in nature is smart beekeeping. He is researching why bees in the wild seem to accommodate more to mites and begin to survive in a more balanced equilibrium with mites. In his forward to Steve Repasky’s recent book on swarming (Wicwas Press), Tom expressed this concept as follows:
“When we beekeepers put a colony of bees in a hive, we gain control over where they live and we make it easy to open their nest and do what we want, but we actually gain little control over the bees.” .
In the wild, escaped beekeeper swarms must find a suitable cavity, grow in strength and seek to store enough reserves to overwinter. They must also deal with mites and other diseases, as not doing so results in colony death. The strong survive. How can we make our managed hives survivors? As experienced beekeepers know, there is more than one way to assist bee colonies. Not treating or working toward not treating colonies, if you are currently treating and wishing to reduce doing so, or want to start new colonies without treating, can indeed be profitable and fun bee stewardship.
In my presentation at Seaside I stated that, from my surveying, the majority of small-scale beekeepers do not or do not wish to continue treating bees. To work and reduce colony losses, the 4 keys I discussed were – the bee hive, the apiary, the bee stock and finally our approach to colony stewardship.
THE HIVE. Our Langstroth hive is considered both the greatest advance in modern beekeeping and yet it probably helped contribute to great epidemics of disease (think the American Foulbrood epidemic in the early part of the 1900’s in the U.S. and in the late 1800’s in Ireland or Isle of Wight Disease epidemic in Europe in the 1920’s). The increased adoption of Langstroth movable comb hives of course was not in isolation with other advances in beekeeping that may equally have contributed to these disease epidemics. Could the Langstroth hive (combined with how we have changed our beekeeping) be a contributory factor to the current loss epidemic, ascribed as due to a combination of factors but most surely varroa mites and their transmission of viruses?
Treatment–free advocates often champion a different hive, such as top-bar hives. In the last 2 years, 4 books on top-bar-hive beekeeping have been published alone. Top-bar hives are seldom opened (particularly after they are larger), frames or bees are not moved (within or between hives), and treating for mites or diseases or even feeding sugar is not practical (although some techniques have been described to treat or feed). The hive encourages less intervention. A number of beekeepers now include both hive types in their backyard apiaries. Will a different hive make a difference.?
In reality the type of hive to use might be dictated by our goals of bee stewardship. Not all beekeepers desire or seek large populous colonies, with highly interventive management, nor do all beekeepers seek to maximize the potential honey surplus or use their colonies multiple times in planned pollination. Smaller colony populations, heavier swarming and losing colonies is considered part of normal beekeeping. Although the Langstroth hive is most practical for colony manipulations and larger-scale beekeeping, it is not necessarily the best one for all beekeepers. I do not advocate abandoning the Langstroth hive but it might be better utilized for beekeepers wishing to work toward treatment-free beekeeping by moving frames less, keeping colonies weaker and planned interruption of the brood cycle.
Distinctive hives (whether all Langstroth design or mixture of hive types) and distinctive siting in the apiary are practical, non-expensive things we can do to work toward treatment-free beekeeping.
THE APIARY: It seems clear that keeping bees in boxes painted similarly, 6 inches to 2 feet above the ground, in neat even rows, without distinguishing features helps disease and mite spread. Manipulations, siting, hiving bee colonies in a small area, all with a common bee stock, seeks to make colonies more similar than dissimilar, consequently making treatment intervention more likely a necessity to reduce heavy losses. Bees in the wild are ½ mile apart in different trees at different heights above the ground. Drifting and robbing are not common behaviors of wild colonies but they are in our apiaries.
Distinctive hives (whether all Langstroth design or mixture of hive types) and distinctive siting in the apiary are practical, non-expensive things we can do to work toward treatment-free beekeeping. Colonies facing different directions, with different numbers of boxes, each distinctly colored or patterned, spaced apart as the site allows, elevated off the ground or otherwise made distinct from every other nearby hive all represent smart beekeeping. In our apiaries, mites, disease, drifting bees and competition all come from nearby neighboring colonies. Reducing such factors, when practical, is good bee stewardship.
BEE STOCK. We can train bees to visit certain crops and to detect landmine chemicals. We have bred a better alfalfa pollen collector, bees that are more resistant to AFB disease, bees that are more hygienic (and fight mites more effectively), bees that are more productive and we have bees that use less propolis. We have imported bees into the US that are better defenders against varroa mites. Why then, do we persist in purchasing bees from the same source to replace overwinter losses or simply divide survivors and allow them to raise their own queen?
Everyone agrees that our eventual mite “solution” will be bees that can live in better harmony with mites. We have bees that, to a limited degree, resist mites. It is possible for individual beekeepers to breed from survivors that have better mite resistance. Bee breeders are working toward the better bee but we still have a ways to go. If we are going to work toward treatment free or do not wish to treat our bees for mites, it seems clear we will continue to suffer heavy losses (30+% annually overwinter, 45% annually, from our national surveys).
Our role should be to support those programs and purchase those queens/bees that are the better stock. Treatment free means using better stock. As with much of beekeeping there is no one answer, no one stock that meets all our needs, including the ability to resist mites. For some beekeepers this might be Carniolan bees, Russian queens, or hygienic stock, coupled with seeking to raise our own survivor queens.
HIVE MANAGEMENT: We can change our apiary and make our hives look different for the occupants, less carbon copy-like, plus we can seek a better, more appropriate stock but it is our management that we can change most easily if we wish to treat less or not at all.
What can we change? Nothing will be easy – change takes us out of a comfort zone. We can seek to raise drones as a mite trap and cull capped drone brood as a management. It can help reduce the growing mite population. It is work. We can seek to keep colonies growing by dividing colonies and introducing the improved stock. Growing colonies give the bees the opportunity to “grow out” of their mite problems. This too is work. We can seek to inspect and understand the needs of our individual colonies rather than seek to make them all the same. Less transfer of frames (unless we more honey to help bolster colonies with fewer stores improve overwintering success) is better stewardship. Quicker, more directed inspections can as well.
Not all beekeepers need or desire large populous colonies. Smaller, growing colony populations and keeping weaker colonies, with fewer inspections, may better serve the beekeeping goals of many smaller-scale beekeepers. No single change will solve all beekeeping problems but we should evaluate how we keep our bees and what we do to them as a first step toward less interventive, more successful beekeeping.
NOTE: Southern Oregon beekeeper Kat Nesbit will organize a 2nd Treatment-free conference in OR (the first was in Forest Grove this past summer). The 2014 conference will be at Dunbar farm, west of Medford, August 2 and 3. You can get information at www.blisshoneybees.com. Announced speakers include Lynn Royce (bees in trees), Sam Comfort (check out his website at: www.anarchyapiaries.org), Maryann Frazier of Penn State (bees & pesticides) and Stuart Green, Warré hive beekeeper from Ashland, among others.
Dr. Caron taught at the University of Delaware for 40+ years with teaching, extension and research with honey bees (and entomology and wildlife conservation) and now holds an Affiliate position (volunteer) with Horticulture Dept (the bee unit specifically) at Oregon State University. He is active in Eastern and Western Apiculture societies and national bee groups. He is the Vice President of the Oregon State Beekeepers’ Association and served as President in 2010. He serves on the board of the Western Apiculture Society. He is an honored speaker at SOBA programs whenever he is available.