Wednesday, October 16, 2013

What "No Treatment" beekeeping really means

I think there really needs to be a better understanding of the idea of "No Treatment" beekeeping.  This is very often associated with "Natural Beekeeping" because many proponents don't want to use pesticides or "intrusive" methods in bee hives.

"No Treatment" is directly related to breeding tolerance or behaviors for dealing with pests, diseases, etc... in honeybees.  This means instead of using man made treatments, the beekeeper is looking for the bees themselves to breed themselves into resistance to certain pests and diseases or behaviors that minimize or eliminate them.

This means controlled or uncontrolled exposure to the problem, thus "encouraging" natural selection to weed out the weak genetics in bees leaving only the resistant and hygienic bees to rebuild populations from.

In other words, you have to expect some colonies to die in order for the few survivors to be left and increase from.

The problem is, most "Natural Beekeeper" types don't fully get this, that they are leaving bee colonies to die out, on purpose.  They somehow have the idea that the bees will adapt and overcome with no deaths at all.

This is the kind of thing Dr. Marla Spivak has been working on for years now,  increasing resistant bees.  She has been working with "Minnesota Hygienics" for a long time now.  I'm sure she  has seen plenty of colonies with poor genetics face the same fate.  She is another big proponent of building resistance in colonies as a way to reduce or eliminate using "hard" treatments.

If you are a beekeeper and you are talking about using "no treatment" beekeeping, then you are talking about letting colonies die out.  Not allowing those weak genetics to propagate and then making new queens and/or splits from colonies that have shown survivor traits.

If you can't afford or aren't willing to let bees die, then you should change your mind about "No Treatment" beekeeping.

Perhaps instead, you should be looking into "soft" treatments and hive manipulations that keep bees  pest problems low so that they can fight the problems off on their own a bit easier.  Of course, even a "No Treatment" beekeeper should be trying to minimize pest issues to help bees adapt more successfully.

The biggest difference between a "No Treatment" beekeeper and a "Low Treatment" beekeeper is that eventually, a "Low Treatment" beekeeper will make use of some sort of chemical treatment to keep the bees alive where the "No Treatment" beekeeper will stop after the soft treatments and manipulations and if the bees still won't make it, then kind of like human healthcare decisions, they say that no "heroic" measures will be taken to keep the weak colony alive.  Chemical treatments, of course, being the "heroic" measure referred to.

Before you decide to be a "No Treatment" beekeeper, you really should think long and hard on if you can afford to be that way.  How do you plan to replace the colonies that die out?  They will die out, you can count on it.

Do you have the time and interest to raise queens or do regular inspections to monitor colony resistance and hygienic behaviors?

Do you have a plan of action?  Will you introduce resistant queens from somewhere and replace all your queens or at least the ones from the hives that seem to be losing the fight?  Will you raise your own queens from the colonies that show successful survivor traits?

There are lots of things to consider when you become a "No Treatment" beekeeper.  Being "No Treatment" doesn't make beekeeping necessarily easier.  it just makes it different.

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