A Few Words about the Inhumanity of Allowing Weak Colonies to Die

I would like to take a moment to address the idea that letting weak hives die is "inhumane."

Firstly, everything dies. We can all agree on that. But it's an important point that gets lost here. So all bees are going to die, the question is when and how.

Secondly, bees are insects. Insects don't have a long lifespan. Honeybees live about six weeks. Their life is short and full of hard work. Unlike humans which are adapted to live many years and with high intelligence, bees live short lives with a limited number of learned behaviors.

Third, they don't feel the same way we do, they have different nervous systems, different lifecycles, and they're cold blooded to boot.

Fourth, letting a hive die is not at all like letting child or a pet die. A hive is a collective organism. And as I said above, it is cold blooded. A hive that dies in winter simply slowly ceases to function. A hive that dies in summer, the workers will find new hives to join. But eventually they're going to die anyway.

Fifth, in fact, I'd say it's probably more inhumane to requeen a hive, to physically go in and kill a long living insect with your own hand.

Sixth, bees short reproductive cycle allows them to adapt much more rapidly than people. And they have to because they don't have the brain power to learn things and they don't have a long life in which to learn them. They are entirely unlike mammals, most especially humans.

It is not inhumane for a creature to die in a natural way. It is not inhumane for a gazelle to be brutally killed and eaten by a cheetah. It is the way things are. It is how our planet works. Inhumanity comes from how we treat people and other animals, causing them unnecessary pain in the process of controlling or killing them. It is not inhumane to allow a colony of insects to cease to exist under their own power because they don't have the genetic tools to deal with their diseases. It is nature. It is not only the way things are, but the way things ought to be. Treatment-free Beekeeping seeks to return that natural balance to the bees and not interfere in dealing with things that they should deal with on their own. And the feral bees from which we glean our wonderful survivor bees are already doing that.

How Many Mites?

Here is a picture of the bottom board of a hive I took apart on Saturday.

If you right click and select 'View Image' you may be able to see the number of mites there are on this bottom board.  There are tons, hundreds, maybe as many as a thousand.  This is what I would expect to see on a bottom board from a hive that had died from varroa mites.

But this hive not dead.

This is the hive that I expected to die last fall due to an extremely high mite load.  I remember inspecting this hive and seeing mites everywhere.  I saw them crawling on bees, in cells with brood, crawling across the comb, everywhere.  There were hundreds.

I expected this hive to die.  But it didn't.  Remember, this is a completely treatment free hive.  No treatments ever.  And yet it survives, even with a massive mite load.  Admittedly, it's not doing great, but we shall see what happens.  This is one of the reasons I let hives die on their own, to see exactly how much they can take and if they have what it takes to survive.

A Long Hard Summer and New Developments

Here's the most recent photo...

Business has been good.  I just sold my first two nucs last Saturday.  A gentleman drove up from Texas to purchase some late season nucs.

As you may be able to see in the picture, the grass is green again but it hasn't rained in two weeks.  Here's about the worst it got.

Here, I recorded temperatures of 114.8F and went from June until August without significant rainfall.

Fortunately, the temperatures are far more reasonable than they have often been throughout this warm season.  Since I last posted, I have set up my second outyard at a local organic free range chicken farm.

This pallet is on the bank of a small pond which is often dry.  I put extra bricks on top in case the local goats decide they want to play king of the hill.  With that many bricks, it's quite stable. 

In preparation for the move to mediums, I have been buying equipment that will fit.  As you should know by now, Mann Lake sells 4.95mm (PF-120) plastic frames which look something like this:

You can also see one of the medium division board feeders I bought and am currently using even though they're being used in deep hive body equipment.  In fact, two hives have two each due to the fact that I sold those two nucs.  And one could go even further if one wished.

Here are four feeders in a box just for fun.  That would total about five gallons of syrup if you really wanted to pound it down.  However, the drowning of bees could very well be quite significant.

I also purchased a little batch of Walter Kelley's foundationless medium frames.  As is my custom, I trimmed the end bars to 1 1/4" and as you can see, eleven fit in a box.  The box they are in is a former deep box which I trimmed down after the lower part rotted.  There are five more that I have marked for this same modification.  I did notice that the space between the topbars is pretty small, but I think it's still large enough for small cell bees to fit through, especially after the endbars have been propolized a bit.  In the future, I think I may trim the topbars a little bit so as to maintain a larger beespace.

Here you can see the beveled edge of the Kelley frame.  I was expecting more of a sharper edge, but we'll see how this works.  I have heard good things.

I am going to have to make a financial decision on which direction to go.  These frames are priced a little bit lower than Mann Lake's medium frames (which are standard types, not foundationless).  On the other hand, Mann Lake's frames are clearly superior in quality.  Mann Lake will be getting my business for the PF-120's which I plan to offer at a ratio of about 2:1 to foundationless frames.  Kelley also offers cheaper boxes as well, but I am not sure which direction to go on that either.  But that still may be in the future.  I still have to cycle through all my large cell equipment and systematically sell it as nucs.  10 frames down, 600 to go.

Going into fall, situations surely could be better.  I harvested no honey and many of the hives, in fact all the new ones, are either very low on stores or have none at all.  I am usually against feeding artificial feeds, but in this case, even if I had all the honey I ever produced, it might not be enough to get these hives through.  So I have to feed.  The heavy splitting I did earlier in the season allowed an increase in hives but a massive decrease in honey.  Such are Arkansas' seasons.  I am considering the fact that in the long run, it may be far more profitable to produce nucs rather than honey.  We shall see.  Until then, I need to get these bees through the winter.  Lately, every week I have been taking two and now three five gallon buckets filled with four gallons of 3:2 sugar syrup to the yards.  That's $15 a bucket.  No bueno.  Soon, I'll fill the feeders up with granulated sugar as the bees will stop taking syrup.  Then, it will be up to them.  Gotta keep a little survivorship in there.

Don't forget to check in at parkerfarms.biz from time to time as I continue to add content there as well.  Suggestions are always welcome.  Visit beesource.com where I am the moderator of the Treatment-Free Beekeeping section of the forum as well.

What is "Natural" as far as Beekeeping is Concerned?

I recently posted at Beesource (where I go by the handle "WiredForStereo") about what is natural.  The discussion was about using foundation-less frames instead of foundation, small or large cell.  You'll find that post weaved into this post.

 

For the uninitiated, many years ago, beekeepers decided to start having bees grow on larger cells with the expectation that larger bees would equal more honey.  Many years later, this led to problems with mites, both varroa and tracheal, or so is the view by some.  While the cell size itself has been proven in university studies to have no direct affect on mites, some including myself view small cell (4.9mm cell diameter) to be part of a holistic approach to beekeeping.  While some of the small cell fervor has waned, it still has its proponents.

Now, more and more, there seem to be beekeepers raising bees without foundation like in the olden days.  Essentially, they put in an empty frame into the hive and let (hope) the bees draw out something useful.  Often it works wonderfully, with the bees drawing out beautiful worker brood comb at a high rate of speed.  Likewise, often it goes horribly wrong with bees drawing out terribly messy, crossed, or crooked comb, or full frames of drone comb.

I'm starting to see foundation-less as a fad-ish kickback to the small cell crowd. There's been large cell popularity, then there was small cell, and people thought this one thing was the panacea, but it isn't, and university studies prove that. Then people get all philosophical and decide "what do I know, I'm only human, certainly the bees know better than I do." Then we get this crosshatched mishmash of natural and unnatural methods where you get a couple great combs of worker, and then a bunch full of drone.

Trying to do something "natural" inside a sawed and planed nailed together painted fully dismantle-able and often mobile "hive" with movable frames is like pretending jumping out of a plane and flapping your wings is "flying." You're lying to yourself. Whether there is foundation in there or not, you're lying to yourself. It's unnatural. It's unnatural. It's unnatural. Deal with it. Keeping bees is unnatural. Hacking down a tree and stealing the honey out of it is natural. So if you want to do it "natural" go, be my guest. But if you think owning a hive is natural, you're simply lying to yourself.

Bees are animals. When we use them for our ends, they are livestock. Should we next decide that cows should not be fenced in because it's "unnatural"? Surely the cow knows better than I do about in which field she belongs. Right?

That's the whole point. I want that cow in my field. I want those bees to build comb in my hive on my frames so I can get in there and make sure these wild "tamed" (get it, because they're gentle) are doing what I want so I can get honey and wax out of the deal.

On top of all that, I want them to do it without me having to dope them up to keep them alive. And I don't want that dope in my honey either.  How do I pull this off? Then I hear about people using "natural" treatments. What is that supposed to mean? Are you telling me that FGMO naturally occurs in hives as a miticide so we should use it too? Nonsense. Hogwash. Hose-water. Load of hooey.

My great uncle did foundation-less, and all his bees are dead, he's dead too. What does that have to do with anything? Nothing, but I've seen more better believed in correlations around here.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm gonna keep using small cell because it's like being foundation-less, ONLY WITH FOUNDATION!!!! Those of us on small cell know for a fact that bees on small cell build whatever they want because we spend a good portion of our time making sure we give them foundation at the right time of year so they will draw it out well. Then we take the poorly drawn and excess drone stuff and use it for honey.


Another aspect of my beekeeping is survivorship.  I do my best to let bees die that can't hack it in the real world.  Bees have been the property of beekeepers for so long, that they have been weakened genetically, or so is my thesis.  I know it hurts to watch a hive die.  I have seen so so so many do it.  But that's how it works in the wild.  Bees that can't live within their means in the winter die.  Bees that can't move around in the cold die.  Bees that can't fend off disease die.  Bees that don't raise good queens die.  This is how the world works.

[It's a discipline, it's hard to do.  Now that's not to say I won't help them at all.  This last year for instance, we had a bad year.  There was no rain for 7 weeks and the bees were not able to bring in much honey.  That wasn't their fault, they would have had enough had I not robbed them in June.  I can't force them to die for something I did.  And I wouldn't have robbed them had I known they were going to be short.  So I fed them some.  As it turns out, they were able to survive without my help thus far, but they may need a bit of a jump start to raise spring brood.  I'm not heartless.]

The survivors go on to the next year to swarm and reproduce.  Their genetics go on.  This is the process of natural selection.  While I freely admit and promulgate the idea that beekeeping is not natural per se, the best solution for keeping them as livestock lies in keeping their genetics as close to natural as possible.

Doing all that allows me to market "organic" or "natural" honey.  That honey fetches a premium price because it is free of chemicals, local, and unprocessed.  It also allows me to keep bees for much less money and headache, though as I mentioned before, watching hives die can be quite stressful.

Next time, my plans for increase this year.  I'm attempting to go from 5 to 16.