I’ve been keeping bees for about 15 years and I have never treated for mites. Feral bees. Not purchased bees. There’s a significant difference.
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Hi Dean. Are there other beekeepers near you? Or are you somewhat isolated? Forested area? or agricultural? How many hives do you keep? And what are your winter loss averages? Thanks for more info. How do you run your hives? Singles, doubles, triples? 5x5?
You are the exception that proves the rule, I guess. Can’t remember the details, but in one of Dr Tom Seeley’s books he discussed trying to naturally select bees for mite resistance and the losses were enormous.
A few years ago I read about a professor who was commissioned to count the number of feral colonies and the number of kept colonies. The details are fuzzy but what I remember is that there are 9x more feral than kept.
The feral bees are mite resistant. They had to learn and adapt to survive. If we get out of their way, the bees will be fine.
I use top bar hives. I’ve had as many as 30 hives, but then I learned how to manage for swarms without making splits. I moved at the end of 2021, and rather move my hives from Texas to Virginia I gave some to friends and sold some. I have swarm traps out now and I’m patiently waiting.
As for winter losses, I’ve never been much at record keeping so I can’t give you a number, but my losses have always been lower than for for my friends who bought queens and treated for mites.
Some people don’t believe me and I don’t really care. Some people are looking for alternatives to chemical beekeeping and want to know what the possibilities are.
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Once upon a time I could find a bee tree…observing the flight path of the bee at / leaving some sugar or syrup. But during the 1990’s and early 2000’s, you hardly ever had a feral colony in these parts of the country.
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Yep, that’s when the varroa collapse happened.
Sounds like Thomas Seeley. I heard him speak to a more than full house at a special meeting of the Finger Lakes Beekeepers Club.
Here is one of his papers.
Impressive!
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I’ve got a lot of bees quite interested in a woodpile I have (firewood). The wood is about 5 years old.
It looks like they are focused on two areas of different firewood storage racks. I’m seeing them going into and coming out of a few hollows between the logs. I am not seeing the development of any kind of structure, though given where they are that might be difficult.
I don’t have a big enough yard to warrant having bees (and my wife is dead-set against it as one of the kids is allergic).
My yard is the greatest treasure for them right now as I have a plum in full bloom, a couple honeyberries blooming (including a lonicera fragrantissima) as well as a few hundred daffodils, hyacinths and other spring bulbs. (and buds ready to pop on a couple pears, apples, serviceberries, etc…)
wish one of you keepers was close by. I’d love to make sure they are off to a good home.
Scott
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I have seen speculation that bees can get ??? from fungi, maybe there’s a rotten log in there? Or they are just checking things out.
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A fair amount of swarms arrive with two queens. If the box is full take the exterior bees and put in another box. If no queen in 4-5 days place a purchased queen with them and you’ll have two colonies.
(or put a brood comb containing some eggs…and they’ll make a queen if they have to)
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Mason bees colonize holes in firewood logs in my log pile. They look a lot like honey bees. Maybe this is the case for your log pile too.
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First swarm of the year officially moved into a bait hive today. I saw a lot of scout activity 3 weeks ago. Today it was a lot more than scouts. One key thing to look for with a new swarm is to see if the workers are bringing in pollen. About 1 in 20 were loaded.
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One of my college roommates is into beekeeping. I have often thought it would be an enjoyable hobby. It would also be a good compliment to gardening I figure. Anyway, my state requires registration of hives.
My question is, how bad would it be if I did not register a hive and did it rouge? Would that just be like not paying taxes, or is there an actual beekeeping reason to do so? Last 2 years I have had a wild honeybee nest built in the roots of one of my blueberry plants. Right along the creek bed. I thought I may convince them to move by buying an empty hive to coax them into. Is this silly of me, or should I let suburban nature just be bees?
Ps, I just picked those berries after sunset with a head lamp. Yet the kids never listened and never got stung.
Also, I have a large local population of golden digger wasps. Their favorite thing to grab were bees from this honey bee hive. Would me moving them put them more at risk to the digger wasps?
There are several reasons for registration of hives. Honeybees are subject to several contagious diseases and pests such as American Foul Brood, European Foul Brood, varroa mites, etc. States that require registration usually have a bee inspector who will look at hives to see if they are infected and provide instructions to handle the problem. There are also areas where the bee population is very high with lots of migratory beekeepers moving into the area to harvest a honey crop. When bees are registered, that location is protected preventing anyone else from moving bees into the immediate area. I’m not going into much detail with this. If you want to know more, there are dedicated beekeeping forums that can provide much better answers. Beesource Beekeeping Forums
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@Fusion_power is correct on the reasons for bee registering. Biosecurity isn’t a joke! In my state (Pennsylvania) it’s $15 per year, no big deal. The money funds the inspectors and education. I’ve been registered for 4 years+ and have never seen nor heard from an inspector. I believe they focus on larger operations (I have around a dozen hives in 2 locations).
You can’t really convince a hive to move to a box, but you can put up swarm traps and catch swarms. There’s lots of good plans online for swarm boxes, add some swarm lure and you should do well.
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Thank you for your input. I see what you are saying.
