>How Allen can go from reading BS and then extrapolating his losses to NT is beyond me. Reading about and doing it are two different things.

Actually I did that a few years back and did not treat at all and went from about sixty hives to three and they were the base of the current bunch which crashed entirely.  To that remnant I had added some NWC and some VHS and some Saskatraz splits.  They died, too.  

I also had a natural comb hive which did fine for a few years, then I saw mites and then it was dead.

> And his whole splitting/expansion protocol over the last two years, which includes routine treatment is not even close to IPM let along no treatment beekeeping. Allen must have missed something in his reading, if he equates his beekeeping with no treatment beekeeping.

I guess it comes down to whether you believe it is all or nothing and whether trends can be seen from partial commitment.  Science usually tries to isolate specific aspects of a problem and to test them and to try to extrapolate the results for further testing -- assuming there are survivors.

Most who have been down the no treatment road in the past say that they were doing fine for three years, then "Bang".  we all keep hoping and many of us keep dipping a toe into the water.  I recall Marla suggesting in Niagara Fall back in 2002 that beekeepers leave a yard without treatment now and then to see what happens, and many do.

Some say that cannot be done in some situations and we have been through that here before.  It is an open question.  We are open-minded on that and FWIW, I have debated that question with Dee until the people in the back seat went to sleep.

I acknowledge that one cannot simply take pieces from various systems and throw them together and expect the parts to work together, but a good chef usually can make a good stew with what's on hand and no recipe.

you will notice that Ii have repeatedly asked here if anyone has any notion as to whether adding antibiotics might have exacerbated the mite problem.

No matter.  You and I both have experienced a scourge that takes no prisoners.  Treatment or no treatment, it seems to wipe out all hives, survivors, specially bred stock and all.  

>A more accurate conclusion is that Allen ran his bees in a conventional way. Pushed the bees for maximum colony expansion and routinely treating with oxalic acid. Now he has 0 hives left. Conventional beekeeping works until it doesn't. It's a religion, not a way to manage bees.

My point is that *I did not practice conventional beekeeping*.  I was out teaching conventional beekeeping and those who listened have good bees right now.

>Sounds like he had a nice little rant as well. An BS axe to grind and a little whining as well, which is excusable. After all he just lost all his bees. And I'm not surprised by it.

Granted I am not too happy about BS due to the censorship and altering of posts practised there, and the habit of the owner jumping in when discussion might get too balanced or his pet ox might get gored.  I worry about the misinformation that goes unchallenged.

As for the loss of the bees, that is all in the game.  I had few losses as a commercial and since then, I have been less careful and taken big losses several times to prove things to myself, if not to people like yourself.

>But, what surprises me is that no one here even applied the least bit of scientific principal or questioning to that post's conclusions. It's usually the first stripe applied to others that make such unsubstantiated leaps.

Well, we have spent a lot of time on these things here and people pretty well know the story.  Besides some have been down the same road and reached the same conclusion.

>Those who have experienced these kinds of losses know that they are not due to treating or it's lack. Something entirely new is going on. Has anyone been reading Randy Oliver's stuff?

Agreed.  Jerry has been talking about it here and everywhere anyone will listen and I've talked to Hack and other large commercials about it.

I have also looked a some of Merimac's bees that have been run without treatments under the oversight of Bob Danka and we have stood together looking through them.  Obviously running without treatment works, but it is something like driving without seat belts and good tires.  It works until it doesn't.

Is IPM any better?  The verdict from those who have practised it is that it does not eliminate losses, but it certainly minimizes them.  we have seen that here in Alberta in the programme that was distracting me from my own bees.  Word is that losses are higher this year, but then again, winter is not over yet here.  We still have drifts from the winter and this is highly unusual.  Maybe IPM won't prevent the total losses that seem to be going around, but it is the best we have for now, and the thresholds have had to be lowered to where it looks more and more like prophylactic treatments again.

>I had expected more from the other Bee-L members! Am I wrong?

Probably.  Maybe you haven't been keeping up, but as it happens, you are a BEE-L member and you said what you think, so were you expecting others to express your opinion for you?  

Seems you can do it quite nicely without help.  What took you so long?

             ***********************************************
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

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm