Many new beekeepers have high ideals and do not like the idea of controlling mites with chemicals; either natural or artificial. By doing nothing these beekeepers will inevitably lose their bee colonies due to mite infestation. We call these beekeepers the "Live or Let Die" crowd. Usually after losing their bees for a few years in a row they drop out of beekeeping.
There is another path they could follow. They could do what is called biotechnical control of mites, which keeps their populations at an tolerable level. This methodology is labor intensive, but does yield acceptable results. It involves drone trapping of mites, brood breaks and finally a fall split of the hive and overwintering the hives in double deep 5 frame nucs. A beekeeper named Adrian Quiney in Hudson Wisconsin has been using this methodology for several years now with excellent results. He regularly has 90+% winter survival of his nucs.
Its a matter of harnessing your idealism and putting it into the extra labor needed to apply all three mite control methods. Remember all beekeepers are simply trying to survive until the bees or beekeepers develop true mite resistant bees. Note that mite resistant bees to date have only partially addressed the mite problem and are not a guarantee of success.
Here is link to him describing the biotechnical mite control at the 2017 Bee Seminar in Wausau, Wi.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyAZ_kTHvM8
You can also do a search while on YouTube for the name "Adrian Quiney". The search will bring up numerous videos on the topic of overwintering 5 frame double deep nucs instead of the full size 10 frame double deep hives most of us use.
No comments:
Post a Comment