< Will I be willing to take a hit on performance in
order to control mites without chemicals?
I do not sell queens or bees. I have no agenda. I have tested close to 500
Russian queens. Hard to count the number of NWC and Minnesota hygienic
queens tested
An inconvenient truth:.
In a COMMERCIAL setting when the hive is being moved from one pollination to
another and placed on up to five flows in a season there is not a bee on the
planet which can survive varroa without chemicals in my opinion!
If a member of BEE-L thinks they have such a bee please send and I will
test. However I will report me findings to my fellow beekeepers and may even
publish me findings.
So far no queen breeders have wanted me to test the bees for which they make
all these claims other than the Russian breeders.
In fact some hives may need a treatment up to four times in a year . Also
what David Vanderduesen said concerning Miteaway two.
Sadly there is the real world of commercial beekeeping and the world some
researchers and beekeepers live in.
Now there are bees which will tolerate treatments *as often* but have
serious drawbacks. The Russian bee needs to be in yards of only Russian
bees. When placed in holding yards with other bees the Russian bee tends to
not be able to handle varroa as well (personal testing). Next when the
Russian bee out crosses with mongrel bees the varroa tolerance soon drops.
If (using USDA-ARS research) you lose 10% of queens each move ( and some
hives are moved 10-20 times a year) then how could you keep a Russian
commercial migratory operation pure? Next what would be the labor costs of
finding and only treating those needing treatment.
Also;
The long standing advice of the USDA-ARS has been to test a few hives in a
commercial yard and if you find some needing varroa treatment then you treat
the whole yard.
A test was done a few years ago on 38 NWC queens by adding varroa pressure.
Only one hive survived.
I might add that my Italians would most likely fair about the same. Sooo we
treat NWC and in most cases Minnesota Hygienic bees for varroa if we find
what we consider a varroa load needing treatment.
Now most commercial beekeepers do the above but feel trying to convince
hobby beekeepers on bee lists we are doing a sound business parctice is a
waste of time. Still I keep posting!
bob
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