After reading some books and watching a few hundred hours of talks and other videos/podcasts I have settled on my first pass as to how I’ll transition to not treating. From everything I’ve seen, heard, and read it’s going to be a painful 5/7 years process. Luckily I’ve had some great help and encouragement along the way.
I have a concentration of bee yards in a few mile radius that I’ll be able to add queens I graft off of my VSH stock from Jason Bragg, USDA Polline Project, as well as VP Queens Polline 2.2. I will start to graft the second to last week of April from my Bragg queen and get as many (20-30) mated and laying by the end of May. Once the other queens arrive I’ll split them by yard and establish nucs in those yards to have them all mate and intermingle. Every colony will have a frame w/ a half piece of foundation so there is plenty of room to make drone comb to provide great VSH genetics. I’m optimistic by the end of June I’ll have 60-70 mated and laying queens that have been after it for around 6 weeks.
To kick of this project and find queens that I think will be good stock to keep around and potentially graft from I will have a process to track mite wash numbers. The only yard I’m going to apply spring treatment to is going to be the yard I’m using for all the donor hives to make queens from. I’m going to hit only the queen rearing colonies early with Formic Pro to get mite levels at a low level and feed them heavily with probiotics to try and keep the mite/virus loads as low as possible. On the queenless builders I will be applying OA Vape on a cycle to continue to keep the mites in check throughout the year.
There’s a mite/bee life cycle that causes some fluctuations over the season that’s typical. Early in the spring the mites that are around will find their way into the brood and hide behind the cappings. So in the middle of each month starting in May I will be doing washes on all the colonies I have (starting with those that overwintered, adding nucs in June) and recording their mite levels and other characteristics on cards I had made for each queen that will sit on the front of the hive. I will wash all colonies again the next month and look for a rise in the overall number of mites. Colonies that are exhibiting VSH behavior will keep mites low over the course of the year except during a heavy flow or when they are completely broodless. It’s typical for there to be rise because they are too busy dealing with all the nectar so they shirk on their brood monitoring. Once the flow slows they get back after the hygiene so the mites will then fall back off.
Any colony that see a continual rise will have the queen removed and a queen from one of the nucs that shows hygenic behavior and her card will carry over and monitoring will continue giving some grace to the colony starting with a very high level. I have not ruled out hitting any mite bomb hives with a heavy formic dose and then requeening…
I will be cheating a bit as well….I’m hoping to Instrumentally Inseminate 20-30 crosses and then leave them untreated to see if they are survivors. I can then use any that make it in production yards to flood drones in the mating area.
I will be taking all the hives that have the best potential and consolidating them into the yard I have the most overwintering success in and leaving them untreated. I will leave the other 5 yards on the standard treatment rotation unless it’s showing for sure signs of VSH and super low mites. I will try to only not treat around 20% of my total colony count so that I have plenty of survivor stock to pull brood from to back fill losses. I will select from the survivors for queen mothers to breed from next year and repeat this yard by yard until I have gotten through all the apiaries.
If time/resources allow any potential breeding stock will have a Harbo VSH test performed.
American Heritage Apiary 