There has been one constant on this list for the many years I have been
here. When someone fails when trying a new, "proven" method of keeping bees
healthy the response is:

"You did not do it right."

This comes up even when there is a study or a series of studies that
disproves the "proven" method. Then it is "They did not do it right".

Classic was FGMO. (Faith Grade Mineral Oil).

If you are a non-believer, you are castigated.

Most forget that Dennis' studies did not show it was small cell but he
showed that it was a range of cell sizes. Small cells were mostly winter
cells in the center of the frame and they and the bees grew larger toward
the edges of the frame as the year progressed. He was raked over the coals
by the small cell crowd.Yet he continually is brought up here as a pure
small cell beekeeper. BTW His were the best trials I had seen to date, but
you could argue that it was the bees and not the cell that led to tolerance.


All beekeeping is local. So you can have bees in one area that do just fine,
but shift the techniques elsewhere, where the pressures are different, and
they die. To ascribe local methods of beekeeping to the universe when the
data is lacking and the results are anecdotal is foolish and misleading. But
that has never stopped FBB (Faith Based Beekeeping).

I have kept bees for some 17 years. I was the editor of our state newsletter
and trialed many different treatments and equipment, just so I could let
beekeepers know what I found so they would not waste their time. I am very
successful in overwintering my bees here in Maine and seldom lose a hive,
but during my three year small cell trials I lost them during "regression"
to 5.1 and finally on 4.9. Every one of them. In all the trials I ever
conducted that had never happened.

Obviously, I "did not do it right".

Last spring I started fresh with four (two different queen sources- I never
stop experimenting) colonies and treated them as I have in the past with
only OA in the fall/early winter. I was interested to see how they would do,
Last year, when I started my colonies, a new beekeeper came into the area
who does not treat, so I would probably have a Varroa source. She lost her
three colonies.  All four of mine are alive and well, even a runt that I did
not expect to make it.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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