gm charlie
>This is not about honeysales or facebook gloating its about real discussion of the sciene, genetics, and potential mechinisms.  For that we need a firm line>
Now just why do we need such a fine line?  If the ideal of keeping bees is some kind of production (wether polination or honey or other) and so bee health has an impact on that and its profitability and lots of treating keeping more pressure of a parisite off on a bee does not allow for the bee to adjust and more pressure does make them want to adjust, isn't there gray areas and levels of helping more then only one way?

If after 30 years of treating people that used to get by with one treatment a year and could let the bees go to 5 percent mite infestation but now 2 percent is almost sure death and so are having to treat and treat with differrent stuff cause the stuff that first worked doesn't, are the bees getting weaker or at least not getting stronger?  These are things I have read that are happenning.  So in the forest of seeley it goes one way where bees are picked by death or randys way where he is looking for those that do best, the end result is a weeding out of what does not handle mites.

So if the ideal is finding the bees that come into equilibriam with thier parisite and a person can keep them in a profitable way and one that still weeds out the weakest and leaves the strongest and does it in a way that the mite can not become immune to the method, would this not be better then the alternative?  Also if pressure is what makes a host adjust to a parisite, then there would be levels of pressure that would make a differrance in the speed of that adjustment.  We can not say that treating makes the bee weaker and then say not treating won't work.  So making a split that might remove 30 percent of the mites might leave more to work with as far as having to adjust to then 90 percent chemical kill would.

It would be easier to say that we are just looking for what is already there and not creating something more cause then presure would not be forcing an adjustment but would just be highlighting what is already there.

The problim with just highlighting what is already there is even where the bees have made some adjustment, they did not all make the same adjustment and that is why we have mite biters, hygenic bees, some that reduce mite reprodution and other things we probly know nothing of.

It can't be that you can't do things that bee keepers have did for the history of bee keeping and so if you manage your bees like langstroth or doolittle or miller that you can't call yourself a treatment free bee keeper or that that is the thing that sets back the bees natural inclimation to make adjustments to presure.  Since the only reason to have treatment free bees is so you can manage hives profitably like you would with out mites is the goal for humans and if not using cheimicals does not set that goal back and maby even improves the goals chances of success,  it has to be considerred something differrent then just treating with chemicals.  I am not going to let my hives swarm or not catch the swarm if I am unsucessful in swarm management just so I could have a title of treatment free and it is already reconized that the improvements of bees them selves that are showing signs of living with mites does not come from comercial chemical run aparies.  

The bar can not be that no one can keep bees profitably and be treatment free when the goal is to run bees profitably and not have to treat for mites.  For one thing, if you couldn't do things to bees to make them most profitable, we would leave them in the trees.  My opinion would be that the first level is treating with chemicals as treatment.  Everything else is a level of treatment free and so when looking at those levels and comparing them to treating, you could see if they are advances past culling brood, excessive spliting, ect.  If one begain to add up worth it for the time involved compared to the outcome.  This would be the beekeepers part.  The bees part would be when the least had to be done to get the profit to make you take the jump.

All problims will never go away.

Of the levels, one has to be shifted from, chemical intervention, if you are one who believes that it has not helped move to better bees, I am not saying what you have to believe though.  Just if you believe, then it is simple that that is not the way to strengthen bees.

I keep seeing parallels to how micheal palmer has solved his problims to become sustainable.  Now michael is a treater.  He makes nucs to cover any loss, to have brood factories to strenthen hives and make queen making easier and for banking queens and on and on.  He sees the hive that is small enough that it is not going to produce honey but can be broke down to increase the nuc yard.  There are other treaters that don't do nearly so well.

If a person kept bees off chemicals and used them in a simular fassion and could pull a profit and it give the bees a chance to adjust faster to mites then throwing chemicals at them, how could you not consider it treatment free and if profitable, good treatment free.  It could be any factor that the bees find to fight the mites if they have them and this surly gives them more oppertunity and nobody is sure of everything they may use in this fight if they have a higher level of pressure.  Do you select from what is there or do the bees adjust?
Cheers
gww

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