Hi all,

I have been meaning to post in re: to the "treadmill" thread because I have seen some interesting things the last few years
in regards to mite loads on bees.

I must say that although we run thousands of hives, I am not an expert on bee knowledge, but successful in getting by and surviving by pragmatism.

I do what I have to do to keep my bees alive to make honey and provide strong hives for pollination. I have learned from trial and error what works and what 
doesn't work and those parameters can change year to year. I'm all about getting off the treatmill. 

Let's talk queen stock... 

Allen commented(and I agree with his points overall):
"Agreed.  That is why beekeepers have not rushed out to buy the strains that 
have proven resistant.  Most are reluctant to take a chance on new stock 
which may require different management and which may not perform in their 
environment.  Any stock where important commercial traits were not held 
above survival are suspect.

The major marketing challenge for breeders is to prove to beekeepers that 
strains labeled as disease and/or pest resistant are also productive, 
reasonably gentle, manageable, truck-able, able to generate large 
populations in time for package production or pollination, good for queen 
rearing, winterable, economical with stores or whatever the buyer is looking 
for."

We have been supplying cells to beekeepers in the Florida panhandle and it has gotten a life of it's own. We started out making our own cells for our operation and the 
the local commercial guys have been beating the door down to get cells too. They have given us good feedback, but you have to take it with a grain of salt as we all  know even the best queen suppliers get some bad batches. We only make about 12 to 15 thousand, but it's enough to get a feel on a macro level. 

I will never get the time to fuss with artificial insemination and all the nuances of breeding, but I can pick out stock from our queens that flourish after two honey crops, and pollination in Michigan and Florida. I stick with queen suppliers(we buy lots of laying queens in addition to using cells in Florida) that raise queens that hold up well. Then I buy some breeders for VHS traits. We graft from about 12 breeders and use larvae from diverse stock as to not get too many eggs from one basket. 
We use Italians for our main workhorse, but have tiger tails too(you know what I mean). We need big clusters for wintering and California and big brooders for splits in Florida. 

Here's something interesting. Keep in mind all our bees got formic treatments(too cold to be effective at the time) and one miticide treatment as you read my observations. 

I was looking through our breeders as we were gettting ready to begin our cell operation. One of the Italians had lots of mites that were observable. We rolled it and found 35+ mites in the roll. I was somewhat shocked. It was thriving and brooded up with 9 combs of brood in late January. Robust layer. Even so, we flagged it, and took it out of rotation. I gave it a treatment of miticide and dropped about 800 mites. A week later I rolled it and there was 25 mites in the roll. So then I went over to the two best VHS queens I had that were laying down some nice brood and rolled them. One rolled two mites and the other one rolled three mites. Hmmmmm......






 Kirk Jones www.benzieplayboyz.com
www.sleepingbearfarms.com


greetings from Northern Michigan!

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