Friends:

I pen this memo with a grave heart.

An ole hand in the trade, I have been keeping bees, as you might recall
through my Bee-L postings, without using any chemicals or any other
manipulations, such as small cell, naively thinking that I must assist my
bees develop their own resistance in time.  This is my third year of none
treatment, in fact, and I am, by all the signs I observe from my bees
crawling in front of the hive, on the “threshold,” if not over the
threshold.  Yes, I hear you say, “told you so.”  Yep, the mites are
kicking and alive.

Last time I treated my bees was in the fall, 2000, three years ago, with
CheckMite strips.  My home yard, all on SBB, seems to have been hit harder
or I spent more time observing them at home perhaps: many underdeveloped
bees with shriveled wings, more than what I used to observe under a normal
condition, crawl around the grass in front of the hives.  I saw one with a
varroa attached on the thorax, a reason why I said I could be over the
threshold.

My home yard (26 colonies), one of the three yards (total 50) I have,
consists of about 80 % NWC and 20% Italians, some of which comes from
feral sources and they seem to be doing better than the others according
to my casual observations.  No I did not bother to check the other yards,
and probably won’t.  My gut-feeling is that not all of them will succumb
to v. mites, probably a wishful thinking.  However, my heart is bleeding.
I want to go ahead and treat them with chemicals to nuke’em.  It is so
hard not to when I see immature bees die, right and left.  My hands are
shaking as I type this.

Would you please holler me not to?  I realize treating them is my
protocol, and my heart says go ahead.  Yet my head says no way.  My bees
are still foraging heavily on fall flow, and not a single colony has yet
crashed, but I know darn well they will around early winter.  Sure, buying
bees are expensive and it will take years to build up again.  But, as Andy
N. had once put it, I will be damned if I put any chemical in the hive,
again.

I would like to ask my shipmates to tie me up on the mast, blind me, bind
me, beat the day light out of me if necessary, shove and stuff wax in my
ears, and no matter how pitifully I cry, do not pay any attention whatever.


Going down with the ship.  Bring ’em on.

Ordinary Sunday, September 21, Circa 2003


Yoon

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