I am about through my second winter.  I have not treated yet.  First winter, 3 hives all lived no honey, fed about a hundred pounds of sugar.
Second year, poor swarm control.  Caught two swarms not from my hives.  Had one hive not swarm that I pulled two frames of brood from to tether swarms that I caught.  Ended the year with 9 hives and gave one very big swarm to a differrent bee keeper.  One of these never built up and died over winter.  Still have eight hives.  Got about 7 gal of honey but did feed the splits two hundred pounds of sugar. So fed three hundred pounds of sugar, got 7 gal of honey, have eight hives alive right now and I am pretty sure the one I gave away would have also made it if it was like the ones I kept.  I don't know if it is a good record or a bad record cause I have nothing to compare it to.  It doesn't seem too bad to me but who knows what happens this year.  The only hive I bought was from a 20 year bee keeper that does not treat.  I don't know how he does though, just that he had a hive he could sell me.

The hive that did die may have been sick but I also created a real bad situation for it from hiving on.  Gave it lots of space (like I did all of them).  I probly killed several hundred bees while hiving it due to roughness on my part.  I started robbing on it twice with a leaky feeder right off the bat.  (I started feeding it immediatly at hiving rather then let it go a day or two first.  I do know somebody that got 200 lbs off of a hive and had several that had about a hundred pounds and has only treated a few of his nucs and has been at it for four years and has only had two hives die.

What could I get by treating?  I don't know.  Will I have a 50 percent lose next year?  I don't know.  Will I make any honey this year?  I don't know.  Will I be able to control swarming?  I don't know.  Am I breeding for stronger treatment free bees? No, I just am not treating.  Am I against treating?  No but just am not doing it to see what happens.  It is the only way I know to find out what happens for me.

How would you count what is good and what is bad?  Swarming would be bad but being new, it could be my skill and not the bees.  (pretty sure this was some of it).

I look at some of the asking for proof to be a true wanting to add up but also sometimes as a sword that it must not be true because somebody won't give it.  If a guy says he is selling treatment free queens, somebody is going to say, "are you going to garrentee that my bees won't have problims with mites for the next twenty years.  Yet if they buy a 200 dollar I2 queen they will accept the testing that was done on the queen by the person who made it insted of demand it work in the yard it is going to.  

I am not trying to save the world and so even if my bees do real good, I am not keeping bees to go into the queen rearing buisness.  So it will always have to be that my word is good enough or it isn't.  Extra ordinary proof is only needed to be given if you are wanting something from some one else.   If you are happy with what you have regaurdles of what everyone believes, you will get what you really get.

But, I don't brag about the future, cause I know I am in an experment, I do know the past so far and can't even say what it is compared to others  cause I don't have any experiance to compare it with.  In my mind for now, so far so good.
This is why it is hard to give extra ordinary proof.  Most of us are not doing like randy does and making an experment out of it with all the checks and ballances that come with that.  When seeley talks about swarms, I have to listen cause I am unwilling to do the study myself.
Cheers
gww

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