a Charles Linder snip... 
While fully understanding the above,  the question is does that really make you a beekeeper,  or are you just playing a middleman's money game?

Splitting ahead of the mites,  and then selling them off to newbies/others as TF seems to me at the very least to be deceptive.  The goal as a serious beekeeper is to have TF stock capable of honey production/ pollination.

my comments.. 
you may say you do but my gut says you do not.  much like your view on small hive beetles (ABF) your view on this matter seems to  be an inch deep and a mile wide < not a criticism but an observation.

The math... after the arrival of varroa the data says a hive will live two years (although it appears to me in manipulating other folks very treated stock the average is likely now much less than one year) this mean in each and every year you would need to replace half your numbers each year just to keep you total hive count totals level from year to year and season to season.  At the current time this 'replacement' rate for ALL known, documented and thereby predictable causes for me  is 1/3.  Sounds like a lot but in the old days we killed off 80% of the stock at the end of the season.  If I do have extras then I sell these off to anyone that is willing to pay the tab... evidently someone might profit from educating themselves on the structure and definition of business and marketing and recognize anyone producing an item directly and selling it to the end consumer by definition is not a middle man in any sense of the concept.

But actually NO Charles the goal of any non treatment beekeeper should be to have bees that simply do not need to be treated with chemicals and antibiotics constantly (and I suspect at a constantly increasing rate) just for them to survive.  What you do to make money after you have jumped this hurdle is a personal decision... you could make a honey crop or pollinate a crop or do absolutely nothing with them at all and you would still be a treatment free beekeeper.

What makes anyone a beekeeper?  Well I have never seen a real good definition of that but I do not go from year to year and replace a lot of my stock from buying hives, nucs or packages from others as it seems a lot of treatment folks do when their treatment fails and their hives die.

just another uninformed non treatment beekeeper... ET Ash

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html