> I recall that Marla Spivak, speaking in a session at Niagara Falls in > 2002, > suggested that beekeepers leave a yard or two without treatment and see > what happens. Myself , Dann Purvis & Bell Honey in Florida have been doing exactly the above long before 2002. I can not speak for the others but in my case the last of the last "leave alone " yards died last spring. All I ever had were "dinks' which limped along and were unproductive. The longest lived was a colony I removed from a horse barn. Although only on several frames of brood & bees the hive lasted five years with varroa and other issues. The last year I had to toss a super of honey on top for the hive to survive. The queen was replaced once in the second year. I marked the queens with numbers. > Marla is one who has quietly put years of sweat and brainpower into the > problem of hygiene, with amazing results. Marla in my opinion has produced the best results with queens commercial beekeepers want. In east Texas her queens are the most used. Beekeepers selling cells and mated queens using her breeder queens are in the majority. We raised over a thousand mated queens from *one* of her hygienic breeder queens years ago. Because BEE-L is a mainly hobby list what I say above does not apply to your hives. keep whatever line you want. Leave untreated if you want. I only give my opinion from a person which keeps bees for a living and talking to a retired commercial beekeeper (Allen) with a similar background. Allen and I are on the same page. The theme of EAS was keeping bees without treatments. Allen is conveying those researcher thoughts ( plus his own) and I am giving mine as I was unable to attend > Bob, I really have no idea how you find time to do everything you seem to > be doing. The bees this time of year the bees take most of my time. I get up early (very early ) and go to bed usually by nine PM. All outside calls are monitored and I only talk to people after they insist I talk with the people usually a day after they call. I am in contact by phone with other beekeepers daily and at times many times a day when problems arise. The phone works best for me. I work on average a couple hours before help arrives and many times hours after they leave. I am home today looking after my wife home from a week in the hospital which gives me time for BEE-L while she is sleeping. The crew is extracting and they work better when I leave the crew alone. They know that when I check their work at days end I will quickly know if they have been working or playing around. Due to health issues i may have to sell most of the hives before long but as long as I can find help like I have right now I will not. My new companion is a small bottle of nitroglycerin tablets. My doctor and I have been friends for decades. Actually the most important friend outside of family and close friends in my life. Our friendship can be embarrassing as when I went Monday for test results I walked into a room full of patients and my name was the next name called. my next door neighbor lady in the room looked at me like "What gives!" and shook her head . I certainly do not have all the answers to today's tough beekeeping questions but with forums like BEE-L and others beekeepers from all over the world can discuss today's problems and compare notes. One aspect of many national meetings I dislike is there is not always time for many questions after presentations and the researcher says he will be around the meeting all weekend to answer questions but many never seem to be. bob *********************************************** 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