Does anyone else beelieve-
-we are going about bee breeding totally backwards. Any bee emerges with all the tools it needs to work, but must learn to express the genetics and pass the talent on to other bees. The evolution is linear to the whole bee colony. In this talent show, every bee is the Super Bee, if you let them bee.
- The reason Russian and pockets of wild bees are thriving is because they haven’t been messed with as much as domestic US bees, and still aren’t messed with by beekeepers who don’t treat or requeen their hives. They are treated nice.
- High rates of supercedure have always been there – especially in the process of requeening, as bees are creating a lineage when conditions allow. Beekeepers today are just paying more attention to their bees, for better or worse.
- We don’t need better bees to put up with the farming, but better farming to put up with the bees. Wild gardening. Not control but cultivation.
- Breeding and promoting the “super bee” before has led to the destruction of a lot of diverse genetics already on the healing path, especially as today it would serve large scale beekeeping interests – methods that are agreeably unsustainable. By unsustainable, I mean older beekeepers wanting to retire and not feeling ok trusting their beloved bees to just anyone.
- I’ve been applying this by linear splitting the last two years – while the bees raise their own cells by emergency or swarming, I’ve busted up and requeened weak hives with natural cells on the comb of brood with the bees that made the cell from strong overwintered hives. So a lot of breeding hives are used for a lot of cells, each with little swarms. I do this in every yard, and yards or about 12 – 20 hives are about 1 - 2 miles apart. I don’t have to graft, or let nucs sit queenless a day. I already don’t use foundation or extract honey, so I’m really lazy here. The top bar hives make shuffling cells especially easy. Until about summer solstice I let them build new brood combs towards the entrance, and the best cells are made on newer combs. For the freshly inoculated hive, it’s like hitting the reset button on the Nintendo, only now instead of Mario you get to be Princess Toadstool, who can levitate. I think this will work as long as there is electricity (moveable frames) for the Nintendo. After that, the bees are on their own again and the sacrilege will cease.
- I don’t claim any success in these methods – the long term goal here is to work down to 6 hives. 6 hives, a fishing pole, and a network of beeks with a few hives in the backyard who can provide an extra swarm or two to their neighbor each year. Definitely more hives than televisions.
- Of course the idealism meets the reality, and I’m getting my second graft in right now cause I need queens for nucs and we are 3 weeks behind in florida. The avocados are blooming - so much for me posting for a while. Gotta go to WORK.
Getting on the Anti-Breeding Program.
Nothing for sale.
-sam
anarchy apiaries
stop Looking and start Beeing
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