How important is a "Packed" hive?

[SiWolKe]

The thymol-stuff in my eyes is not worth the effort.

IF I`d do brood-culling I`d do it after the flow. For wintering and spring-buildup, the loss of bees won`t matter. Not in our place at least - including yours. Your experiment with the Apidea can tell you that.

Culling one frame at a time seems quite useless to me.

Just barly surviving is not what an animal likes to do.

Every time I used thresholds to determine wether or not to treat a hive (treating individually that is) I regretted this later on as mite counts where a lot higher than in the treated ones and bee-population diminshing.

Thymol works well for Erik, who treats individually in a commercial setting. but next spring shifts the queen to a more resistant line.
He considers traits like honey, gentleness and coming out of winter strong besides resistance.

I?m not sure about the overwintering with a black forest flow. It?s rather late for the bees to breed healthy winter bees then, even if you treat with formic. So in spring this results in weak hives which must be combined so the first flow can be taken. I read this in our bee magazine, "Bienen und Natur", it seems to be a normal process. And to combine means one colony less.

But it must work for you which is fine for me.
 

 

[blackforest beekeeper]

We don`t winter the bees in the Black Forest. I look for it that when the coolness and dampness comes to the Black Forest - and the good flows of pollen and of a little nectar (from flowers) cease, I move to mild regions sort of like yours where the bees can still forage a little bit and fly long. That is where they make the Fl?lingsbl?tenhonig next April and May. This year I "ran away" mid-September from the on-going pine-flow. Usually I move October.
Only when and if the forest flows End of May, beginning of June, I move our bees to the BF again.
Just my little hobbyiest-setup by the house stays put all year long. Quite a different keeping of bees, I must say. Keeping bees in the milder, flower-flow-dominated regions is just so much easier.

So all in all, apart from us moving our bees, the conditions are pretty much the same for you and me.

No matter where and when I used thymol, the effect was to be neglected. A friend of mine - I got my first bees from him - used it with some effect. But he kept on loosing hives just the same, so....

What I mostly do, last honey-pull latest mid-August: Take ALL brood- combs away in the brood-box ( which has room for 9 frames Dadant, they hover around 6 to 8 usually), including the queen. Shake off maybe half the bees. Put the queen and about three good frames of brood in a nuc-box. Take it to another yard. Treat the nucs with formic acid (sponge cloth, a strong hive hardly has any damage from this as the treatment is over in a matter of hours - ratio of bees to room is what I mean with "strong"), as they have most of the mites.
Treat the leftover bees (which have been given a new queen by now and have no honey-supers any more) with oxcalic acid vaporization after a few days. This year I skipped that part.
If this is done in July still, I might get away with all natural comb in the brood-boxes of nucs and left-behing-bees (both having some combs - the nucs about 3 brood-combs, the hives about 2 honey-combs), which they build nicely at this time of year. But it stresses the bees at this moment. If this is done mid-August or so, I prefer foundation or a mixture of foundation-less and foundation, as the bees won`t have enough places to store feed otherwise.
Mostly, end of September, beginning of October at the latest, all get another round of sponge-cloths with formic acid. I worked with individual treatments in the last years, but now all get the same treatments, as the results where not good otherwise.

This year I only did the last treatment, as there where little mites and a honey-flow.

The next days I will vaporize once (if need be I would do it twice, not this year), dribble on some maybe.

I don`t cull any drone-brood and neither did I ever cull any worker-brood. I as yet always have been vigilant enough to be able to avoid that.

With this rough outline (flexibility is part of the plan) I haven`t lost a single unit to the varroa mite for two winters now. I don`t really expect any losses due to varroa this winter, either.

merry christmas to all - all over the world!

[SiWolKe]

That?s much labour, BFB!
Wow!

Happy holidays!
 

[blackforest beekeeper]

Well, that`s multiplying hives. 

[Acebird]

@ace: Do the just-survivors make honey for you worthwhile? Do they live another year?

More honey then I could sell, more honey then I could use.  I still have a case in the freezer and I brought down 20 gal of mead in two trips.
All foragers die in less than a year, yours and mine.  I think my queens were lasting two to three years but I have no way of proving that.  Initially I was working with one hive and in 3 years I was up to three making it through winter.  Then it went to six and I started giving hives away and moving them to other friends which turned disastrous.  Two out of the three I kept died in winter in the 5th year.  I was back to 3 in the sixth year which two made it through winter.  In early summer I sold the remaining hives because I was moving to FL where I can't have bees.  Hobby beekeeping is completely different than farming where the bottom line is important.  And I have made this statement before, "Beekeeping is the cheapest hobby I ever got involved in".  You can make your own equipment from scrap and the bees do most of the work.  People will buy your excess honey, bees, wax ect. to offset any initial cost.

[blackforest beekeeper]

DO teach my bees and me to make more honey then I could sell!

And You go treatment-free all the time? No culling of brood?
NY...that`s where Seeley made his discoveries in the forest? Maybe one of those areas where it would work out?
Around here, most would die or at least not develop well next year or die then.

[SiWolKe]

Well,
it?s Ace you asked, BFB, but I want to chime in:

I have treated one hive out of 11 in 2018 all others are completely tf since 2015, I?ve had losses but always survivors.
Losses were: first winter zero, next winter 10 out of 14, next winter 5 out of 11. That was when I did "live and let die" but I believe it a success with respect to the bee density of my environment.

4 of my todays? colonies are purchased newly as VSH bees ( treated by the seller). I did not do the summer treatments on them.

I winter 15 colonies, which right now are still alive.
And the friend in bavaria I got my elgons from, he is tf since 2013 last treatment was 2012. Loss: 30%

My oldest tf queen is going into her third winter tf. I keep a "feral" hive of AMM descendants, never opened since 2016, they still live. Surrounded by +-50 hives of treated bees.

But I have no commercials around me, only small sideliners. That?s because we don?t have a main flow but a small but constant flow. Beekeepers around me who have more hives leave in spring to migrate to the fields.

I have more honey than I need for myself too, I sell a part of the surplus and feed the rest to the bees.
I have fed with sugar only in case of emergency, which was this year feeding the package bees and one small split I introduced a pure bred resistant queen into late in year.

[van from Arkansas]

My oldest tf queen is going into her third winter tf.
I have treated one hive out of 11 in 2018
I keep a "feral" hive of AMM descendants, never opened since 2016,

Ms. SiWoLKe, I am impressed with you and Mr. Forest.  You, Lady SiWoLKe, know each hive in your Apiary, I mean each and every hive as if it were your only, even your queens {oldest tf queen will be 3},,,,, do you know each and every queen?  I am always impressed when a beek can describe individual characteristics of a particular queen or a hive.  That tells me you adore the bees, pay close attention and care about each hive well being.

Also with you Lady and Mr. Forest there is definitely the ability to observe little things, adapt make changes as circumstances require to maintain healthy hives.  In a word IMPRESSIVE.

I have a two queens going into 3rd year and I can recognize Alpha, my breeder queen, unmarked but unique coloring, Cordovan.  I have one bronze colored queen, subject to a breeder she is and another 14 itialians.  I submit to you that Alpha, my breeder queen, recognizes me and struts on her brood filled frames showing off her marvelous daughters that can be gently petted.  Sounds like I been stung one to many times as some may say,  others like yourselves I imagine would believe me.

Keep up the good work, across the pond, share your knowledge and thank you both for your time and thoughts.
Blessings
Blessings

[SiWolKe]

Ms. SiWoLKe, I am impressed with you and Mr. Forest.  You, Lady SiWoLKe, know each hive in your Apiary, I mean each and every hive as if it were your only, even your queens {oldest tf queen will be 3},,,,, do you know each and every queen?

Also with you Lady and Mr. Forest there is definitely the ability to observe little things, adapt make changes as circumstances require to maintain healthy hives.  In a word IMPRESSIVE.

I have a two queens going into 3rd year and I can recognize Alpha, my breeder queen, unmarked but unique coloring, Cordovan.  I have one bronze colored queen, subject to a breeder she is and another 14 itialians.  I submit to you that Alpha, my breeder queen, recognizes me and struts on her brood filled frames showing off her marvelous daughters that can be gently petted.  Sounds like I been stung one to many times as some may say,  others like yourselves I imagine would believe me.

Keep up the good work, across the pond, share your knowledge and thank you both for your time and thoughts.
Blessings
Blessings

Thanks again for your kindness. 

Yes I?m conducting a journal and know about every hive. Hives are marked. Robber screens are on all season so drift is reduced 40%. I placed them apart some m.
Every colony has a life of it?s own.

My oldest queen we ( as a tf group) used to breed daughter from. One of them is a commercial beek keeping bees like BFB does, he has made some daughters and owns one carniolan colony which is tf for two seasons, he claims, in midst of his treated hives but it?s never migrated. He migrated with the other ones but now wants to test the elgon genetics in his setting.
The new queens out of those tf hives are artificially inseminated with tf drones, diversity by using mixed drones of our two colonies. I look forward what will happen.

Plus, he ordered 4 pure bred elgon queens of different lines, which I brought in from sweden. If all goes well we will mate the descendants in an isolated mating place his association provides for us.
Past showed that the F1 are the most resistant and tolerant. They still have the genes but are adapted to the location.  And the queens are northern bred which means they are used to harder climate.

Blessings to you too. As our countries drift apart in politics it?s nice to still be united by beekeeping.

[blackforest beekeeper]

I sure wished TF-beekeeping was possible - on a larger scale, too.
When I still had only 5 or 8 hives at my house - no migration - I knew them all pretty well, too. I loved that. Nowadays I can`t know them all. We wintered 80 hives and they are 2.5 hours drive away. Some I know still. Breeder-queens from a friend or "monsters" of last year. I don`t keep cards anymore, i didn`t get done with the work.... I jot some notes on the lid and work on from there. I try to keep track of which "line" is in which box. But this year I put my best 12 or so queens in nuc-boxes (as described before) very late in the season and then I mixed up the lids.....  I noticed when I stored some boxes for winter....
O well - anything in nuc-boxes should be breeding-quality - spring will decide. The rest I put into the big boxes in late autumn.

If treatment free was possible with a small-scale-commercial outfit, I?d do it. We are Bioland-certified, we use a lot of natural comb, we use as little treatments as feasible and use a lot of the swarming-tendencies. TF would be a welcome step, but I can say: Losses of 30% or even 15% are not bearable. I don`t want to go into the ethics of animal-keepings as the goal of a resistance line is more worth than all the steaks on the plate.
Every year I have some failing queens in spring, that are the "losses" - the bees are put in somewhere else. I don`t exchange my queens unless they really are behind in colony-buildup and honey-production. So they do get quite old. Usually I don`t have enough queens at the end of the season.... although at times I don`t seem to be doing anything else.....

As to politics and world-wide understanding:
I don`t have any resentments against US-Americans. I know quite a few, like I know or knew quite a few other people. But the US is the only foreign place I really lived in for some time. I met a lot of friendlyness over there.
Nowadays I live in a very remote part of Germany. Foreigners are rare. Some very few Turks, some Polish or Russians live here. The occasinal odd European having married here. Not many migrants, practically none. Still I meet most foreigners with a large interest. With US-Americans I can chat nicely, I love that. Others are interesting because they are different. When I was at university a lot of my friends where REALLY black Africans. I often was the only white face at parties. There is so much wisdom and knowledge and difference in all the people of the world. I still love that, although I don`t get to meet many around here, where I am off the grown rock, so to speak.

I think we could all get along just fine in this world, if we only tried more. Maybe it`s about a deeper sense and satisfaction in life. That everyone has to obtain for him- or herself.

Like bees - being human is basically the same all over the globe. Minor differences in circumstances.

merry christmas again!

[blackforest beekeeper]

Another thing about TF...
...Si-Wo, Ace, STinger...

that are Your honey-yields compared to Your neighbours, who treat (and also know how to keep bees....)

I usually calculate the average like this:
Summed up honey-yield.
divided by the number of colonies (all units) going INTO winter the year BEFORE.
That way I get to 45 kg for 2018. Which is some more than would be average over the years. Also I had a growth rate of 1.6x, which is part of the yield. In this calculation are my hobby-hives, too, but they make less honey than the others, as they see spring so late.
Of course, these yields are only comparable for the same areas.
(@Si-Wo: migration in summer did hardly yield any honey, main flows are spring, fir (fluid and melizitose) and pine. Chestnut, Bass-Wood and Summer-Honey where very little)

[Acebird]

A TF hobbyist with such a small hive count as I had is not going to have a good average.  In times of recovery you are trading honey for bees.  In general honey yield has a lot to do with location which is why commercial beekeepers move their bees.  For me 200 pounds of honey out of a hive was a reality but not in times of recovery.  TF is very possible as a side liner but averages might be lower then treated hives.  That is not to say income is better for those that treat.  There is such a premium for TF honey.

[blackforest beekeeper]

A TF hobbyist with such a small hive count as I had is not going to have a good average.  In times of recovery you are trading honey for bees.  In general honey yield has a lot to do with location which is why commercial beekeepers move their bees.  For me 200 pounds of honey out of a hive was a reality but not in times of recovery.  TF is very possible as a side liner but averages might be lower then treated hives.  That is not to say income is better for those that treat.  There is such a premium for TF honey.

if there was a market for it, sure. I don`t see it. Not if You have tons to sell.

[SiWolKe]

When I was in sweden the average was 35kg in a good year without a drought. It was too dry for heather honey this year so it was probably not as much.

I can?t say about my colonies because I`m not keeping bees like anyone else. They always have 20kg of stores inside besides the broodnest stores. I take only surplus but give much to splits.
No excluder.

The swarms I did not harvest and fed them ( with honey comb).

The splits I always made strong and only two out of a colony, I needed more comb and did not want to feed, out of lazyness. 

This season I did a small split with queen and a big one was the mother hive. I splitted again one queenless because he had nice QC on different frames. One of the queenless splits swarmed on me.

You see it?s a little chaotic. I have extracted 15-20 kg out of 2 colonies, donated all other honeycomb. I?ve not fed the established hives. Maybe I can harvest some in spring if it?s not crystallized.
The harvest came out of queenless splits.

I must admit most of my honey harvest came out of the deadouts, which died before eating it. My colonies go into winter having +-30kg of stores.

I have not and never will have production hives. I try to follow nature and split once. Perhaps I will let them swarm in future or copy by a similar multiplying. I don?t know yet. I have to see if I have any survivors and then evaluate the results of my beekeeping, comparing the journaling with what happened and then deciding how to go on.

[blackforest beekeeper]

@Ace: 100 pounds per hive is  a good average. It would be in most parts of Germany at least.
I know people who claim they have 200 pounds average. I don`t believe them. Or rather: their calculations. They probably count only the ones they put into the flow and the rest - dead or dwindling - are left out of the math. Well.

I have had one hive with about 200 pounds, some with a little less. So there were the ones with maybe only 50 pounds, too. I don`t equalize them (haven`t as yet).
We try to make some money with honey  because I can`t work on my learned professions any more. And DO like producing foods like honey and mead better than teaching or making machines. So TF might be some way out still.

I just treatet my hobby-hives with oxalic acid (dribling). Was a famliy thing, all boys trotted along, (step)Dad did the work. 3 out of 5 would not have needed the OA, 2 would have lived without and might have went to the threshold coming summer. I treated them anyway cause I can`t fiddle with them in spring and summer. They gotta run by themselves. I sort of charged the batteries for that today. 4 out of the 5 are very satisfying in strength. Too much honey in the fifth, so got sort of squeezed in the front of the bottom box. The 4 will make honey, the fifth will live and make honey if there is a late flow. If there is a flow at all...
 Two days from now I will go to the other hives and OA them, too. That will be a full-day-job.

[blackforest beekeeper]

@SiWo: 35 kg by my math is a good average for me, too.

[Acebird]

I know people who claim they have 200 pounds average.

I don't know anyone that claims that no matter what math they use but I think a hobbyist looks at averages differently.  A commercial beekeeper is always comparing the bottom line so will look at the word "average" more like what you are using.  A hobbyist wants to know how much honey should be expected in a hive should the hive produce.  So they are more likely not to include all their hives.  They know splits, nucs, and dead hives don't usually produce a lot of honey.
That being said some commercials may leave out hives because they classify their yield as production hives, meaning honey producing.  Splits and nucs may be classified as bee producing hives but I have never seen an average claim for pounds of bees.

[Acebird]

if there was a market for it, sure. I don`t see it. Not if You have tons to sell.

If you have tons to sell you need a broker.  If a broker is involved then you are selling honey @ 2 bucks a pound not 12.  It almost doesn't matter what the honey is at 2 bucks a pound.

[SiWolKe]

I agree with Ace.
The highest I heard of out of production hives was 60kg, but I believe you can have 100kg by migrating.
I?m quite sure my best producing queenless spit made 60kg if I had taken all, but it was an exception. I planted two flow fields near them this season and they produced much more honey. Weather was good too. At my elgons there was no drought.
Honey harvest is influenced immensely by climate, or not?

[SiWolKe]

Ace, if BFB is Bioland certified he can sell honey for a very good price, I believe.