>
>
> The criticism of some of today's treatment-free hobbyists is not their good
> intentions, it is about their misunderstanding of how selective breeding or
> natural selection actually work, and the fact that they are actually
> screwing up progress in this direction by repeatedly flooding the landscape
> with mites.
>
> The next series that I intend to write for ABJ will be a vision of how we
> can start to work towards truly becoming treatment free beekeepers.
>
> Forgive me if I'm wrong (as I am more often than I'd like to be), but
isn't the majority of the country's packages produced by a handful of
producers?

If "newbes" (for lack of a better term, as I don't want to impress I'm
talking about hobbyists per se) buy packages, don't treat, allow their
hives to become mite factories and virus epicenters, which results in a
crash of the hive and a spread of the mites/viruses, who's really to blame?
The "newbes" that don't know any better, thinking that buying from a
reputable package producer (who surely must know better, and if they are
breeding from mite resistant stock the "newbe" should be fine) will be
their key to success? Or the package producer who assumes (and we all know
what that means) that the "newbe" will know their stock has no potential to
succeed without treatments, and makes little effort to truly become
treatment free themselves?

If the majority of the country's packages are produced by a handful of
producers, which group would it be easier to implement a change to, the few
producers, or the numberless "newbes" who buy their packages?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not pushing blame either way. Personally I think
it's equally shared. But from personal experience, I doubt the ability to
truly become treatment free. I tried it myself, and was successful for
nearly 6 years, until everything collapsed. I used genetics from
established treatment free commercial operators, using "verified" treatment
free methods. And it still failed. What works for one apiary in one part of
the country under one methodology usually will not work in another part of
the country, even if using the same methods and genetics. Why? I haven't
found anyone who can tell me the answer to that question yet. The
successful person in one part of the country is blissfully unaware of the
reasons why, and couldn't care less to boot (typically, from my experience,
pushing blame onto those who are not successful using their same methods as
they must have personally done something wrong).

But I digress.

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