tbone writes...
'All this to say that I will certainly not preach against treatment or non-treatment.'
tecumseh...
I would suggest that folks not throw out either option and be ready to implement either or both.
a crofter snip...
How do the feral bees that survive differ from the ones that don't
tecumseh...
there are some differences 1) since they were in some form or fashion first created from a swarm this is mother nature grade A certification that they have also been successful and healthy 2) generally they must build their own comb < downside here is that any pollutants in the area will also be in the bees the wax and the honey 3) they have no offensive intrusion from beekeepers.
at this point in time I suspect the largest difference between the two is the decades long contamination of wax by beekeepers in their struggle against varroa.
a lazybkr snip...
WHY does treatment free work in one location, and when attempted using identical methods/bees in another, it fails miserably?
tecumseh...
I suspect most folks if they would read about THE GENETIC SOLUTION to american foul brood decades and decades ago would come to the same conclusion that I did not so long after (perhaps a decade ago) when I began investigating varroa and alternative approaches to varroa control. looking back on the history of ANY program to build genetic resistance to american foul brood the first thing people often overlook is the LARGE NUMBER of hive that you will have to let die in order to get to even an approximate solution to the problem. I would suggest that anyone who informed you that they were developing a bee resistant to varroa and had less than 1000 hives was either fooling you or themselves or both. It does take a lot of guts and a lot of bees to go down that path < hats off to my good neighbor for taking on this challenge.
and then their is INITIAL CONDITION thingee..... which is how I by accident arrived in the no treatment camp... that is to say by luck of the draw <and again ain't it great to have GOOD neighbors? this does suggest that if you begin with bees that have been highly treated suddenly deciding to not treat these will mean you are setting up these bee to collapse and die. if you wish to go treamentless I would FIRST suggest you begin with no treatment stock. this does not mean some of your bees will still not die from time to time... but at least you are not adding anything to the problem to contaminate the comb or make the varroa a nastier bug than it already is.
