Brian said:
>THe other half of my operation is after this season half VSH. My goal is no
>treatments. I
don't treat any of these two lines of bees for anything, not even nosema. I
will give
updates in the years ahead of my success or failure but even this past
winter my losses
were not unusual.

I will be interested in the nosema lack of treatment. Several of us have
found the Russian bee as susceptible to nosema as any other bee. Keep us
posted. Charlie Harper sent me an email saying the Russian bee is
susceptible to nosema awhile back.

Personally I would NEVER put all my eggs in one basket. I always only ran
yards with no treatments. After seeing others lose all their bees over the
years by running the whole operation under a certain philosophy I learned.

I put little substance in claims by those selling a product but I do believe
those which are following the advice of a seller of a product and having
success.

Been burned to many times!

Looking forward to your updates and best of luck Brian!

 I am interested in what you plan to do if you find a hive in a yard with
nosema issues or over threshold varroa load. In my opinion after a few years
you will see these.

I did.

 The USDA_ARs has said (for commercial beekeepers) that we should treat the
whole yard. What will you do?

Also not talked about (except in commercial circles concerning bottom line
cost) is the labor involved in testing each hive for varroa load and nosema
spore counts. How many times will you monitor these things
The reason I ask is many commercial beekeepers are finding treatments
necessary for varroa twice yearly ( minimum ) and nosema ( at least once a
year).

You are starting down a road many of us have been down for decades. Drop
your guard and varroa will hurt you. Russian or not. Ignore nosema and in my
opinion problems will arise.

I am surprised about your swarming Russians. With the close to 500 Russian
hives I have ran over the years  headed by Russian/Russian
queens swarming has always been a very minor issue. Of course after a
lifetime of keeping Italians out of the trees the Russians were easy.

Give the Russian queen room to lay ( frame of empty drawn comb) and she will
usually stay home. The fastest  way to get her to swarm is with foundation.
A common mistake beekeepers make is to try to open the brood nest for the
queen to lay by removing frames of brood and replacing with frames of
foundation. The queen stops laying while the bees draw the cells. After a
day or so she is able to fly! Off to the trees!

Whenever a laying queen slows egg laying she is moving towards being able to
fly. The two most common ways are not being able to lay because the bees are
plugging her laying area with fresh nectar or she has filled all her cells
with eggs/ larva. Think open brood nest!

bob

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