16.3.2012
There has been no cleansing flight, but all the hives which I have opened so far are in good condition.
9.4.2012
There has been no proper cleansing flight yet. We still have 40 cm snow! The weather has been very cold lately, but before the cold came, I removed the mouse guards and checked all hives: winter losses less than 10%.
I wanted to make this update because I got some new results from one of my test beekeepers in Finland. Toivo Koskinen has been co-operating with me for a long time. I really appreciate his knowledge, skills and scientific attitude. Toivo has got some Primorski from me earlier, and he has one remote area to make the testing. Now he has tested the 4 test queens from 2009. (It was his idea to put some control hives in the yards. No other test beekeeper bothered.) All hives had had a full mite treatment 2008 and earlier. The test queens were put to hives after the old queen had been removed. The control hives raised new queens for themselves. This difference in the beginning of the test shows in mite numbers. The test queens hives had 10 times more mites than the control hives in the start of comparison. The mites were monitored from hive bottoms, and it was taken care that no ants were present. If we look at the change in mite infestations from the autumn 2010 to autumn 2011, we come up with the following results:
– the infestation in test queens hives had increased in average from 4,9 mites per day to 8,1 mites per day (= +1,65x)
– the infestation in control hives had increased in average from 0,4 mites per day to 2,9 mites per day(= +6,32x)
– one control hive had to be treated in the fall 2010 because it had too many mites (with treatment dropped many thousands, uncountable)
– as consequence one test queens hive was also treated with oxalic acid (60 mites dropped with treatment)
– Among the test queens hives there was one hive (1/4) in which there was no increase in mite numbers at all.
These results are pretty much what I expected from 2009 queens. It is impossible in less than 10 years’ time to breed from various, unknown components, some of which are recessive, a 100% resistant bee stock. There is simply not enough time for the fixing work. In MTT Research Centres results (update 13.11.2010) there were also some queens, which showed no increase in mite numbers in one year’s time. In this respective the results are equal.
3.7.2012
The main honey crop has just begun. The hives are in good condition, some drone layers and superseding hives more than I wanted. Bees are acting calmly and there are no visible signs of varroa, but in drone brood it is easy to find mites. One exception: The queens from Jürgen Brausse from last summer have in the last few weeks turned aggressive. I have also measured that they might have some higher mite numbers than others. This is somewhat strange because this material is mainly my own. Jürgen sent some queens which were daughters to my queen from 2009. The insemination was done with material where there was some Anatolian blood.
My thoughts have turned to the next step: How to move this material to other beekeepers? It’s going to be tough. If a beekeeper wants to stop treating, the only way is to change resistant queens in all hives. Because it’s quite a demanding and expensive task, very few will do that. Instead, they buy one queen and have a look. If they are still treating, it’s ok, but if they stop treating, and for instance breed new queens from the purchased one, it’s going to end up with disaster. The new queens will mate with unsuitable drones, and they do not have the wanted qualities.
In this breeding effort it has been hard because it’s not enough, that you have one quarter of your hives resistant; you will end up losing them all it you are not skilful. If half of your hives are resistant, you have a good chance of surviving for some time, but only if you have control of mating of your new queens.
Epigenetic factors might be one explanation in varroa resistance. Genes turn on because of mite pressure or other factors. This might also explain why there have been so many disappointments when new queens have been bought with big hopes. If the conditions in the new place have been vastly different, the genes turn off and bees lose their ability to withstand mites.
15.8.2012
Last time I wrote, the main crop had just begun from raspberry. It lasted 5 days… This year is going to be the worst honey year in my beekeeping history (36 years), if measured in average crop per hive. However, if we look at the total amount, I´m going to harvest more honey than last year. This is important: Honey crop is the only real measure of the success of resistance breeding.
I have earlier written about how slow my bees are in their development, when compared to earlier years. This year this has become even clearer: It’s nowadays harder to make nucs, because the hives have smaller brood nests and because they need more time to develop. And if the weather is unfavourable, like this year, you must be careful to get the nucs strong enough for the winter. You remember that the winter lasts here in Finland 6 months. Drone layers are the biggest problem now. Despite difficulties, there are more hives going to winter than last year.
The first Lundén Resistant Queens were delivered to Europe and America.
8.11.2012
The hives have been prepared for winter. They are not as strong as they were last year, but even the small ones are sitting very tightly in the cluster. Many of them look like dead. This is always a good sign; the reason for their weakness is not mites or any other disease, but the lack of pollen. The summer and autumn were very rainy, 2-3 times normal amounts of water. Big areas (about10%) of field crops were not harvested, which has not happened for decades.
Drone line for 2013 has been selected. B147 has a lot of unrelated genes with my present main stock. There is a lot of new material, including VSH, for grafting, too. So, there are hopes that many new lines will be born next year.
10.6.2013
Winter losses were a bit bigger than expected, about 37%, this including drone layers. Spring came slowly, but then it suddenly turned into summer and very hot weather in end of May. Bees have difficulty to keep up with the blooming of flowers. In fact, raspberry, the most important honey crop in our region, has just started!
Infestation rate (mites/ 100 bees) is from 2-7%. (Powder sugar testing)
Breeding for varroa resistance will make the hives smaller and slow down their ability to develop. That why nucs have to be made much earlier. This will have a negative impact on honey crop, but as they say: you can´t win it all.
4.8.2013
The year turned out to be a very peculiar one. Flowers bloomed too fast, and the hives were small in the beginning. As a result of this the honey crops are not satisfactory. In our case it was even so bad that the median hive (hive in the middle) produced no honey at all. The best 50% of the hives produced a normal crop for this year.
I have had some fears, that inbreeding is slowly having an impact on our stock. But because the stock has changed its character and is making much smaller hives nowadays, and they all are taking out brood, it’s hard to say, when there is inbreeding in case. There is however one sign, which has made the alarm: this year there has been quite many hives, which have a free mated queen AND they are the best hives on their yards. This has not usually been the case previously.
First twelve years I spent on making the stock resistant to Varroa. I have the feeling that I need at least 12 more years to make it gather the same amount of honey it used to do. I hope I´m wrong.
By the way I got the third report, that this Lundén Resistant -stock withstands mites in another country: Ezequiel Reyes Ordaz, a beekeeper with 600 hives from Mexico, wrote, that some daughters of my queens, even when free mated and not treated, produce more honey than his normal treated stock. The earlier reports of resistance of this stock came from Luxembourg and Italy.
28.9.2013
Hives look good and they have no visible symptoms of Varroa. Only 2 hives of one line had some disformed wings in early august, but generally the hives look like they used to look 15 years ago. They are not as big, but big enough.
These wingless bees were daughters of the line 153, which is by half imported material. This is typical: imported bees have not adjusted to the viruses of the new home country. And this is interesting, more queens were killed by the bees from this same line (153) when putting them into the nucs. This has happened before, too. Bees seem to know which queens are genetically good and which are not. The weak lines have more losses when putting new queens into hives.
Many years I have been forced to make the maximum amount of nucs, desperately trying to maintain the amount of hives. Now it seems, that it’s time to change that. All these years I have realized, that making 1 nuc of this hive and 3 nucs of the next one is making a huge error in my results. But I have had to. In summer 2013 one nuc was made of each hive, if it was big enough. This will favour the smaller hives, which are big enough to make a nuc. On the other hand, it is making an extra test on the bigger hives, because they lose, in relation, less mites than the smaller ones. I think this change will make my breeding system more precise.
26.3.2014
Some surprises did happen over winter. Although we had an exceptionally mild winter, the winter mortality is 17%. In addition to that there are some hives, which for the most part, were weak already in autumn 2013, when I made the last check. I then estimated winter losses can be up to 20%.
Being a beebreeder I always get some extra losses because of old queens. If I have a three- or four-year-old queen, which has not been used in breeding yet, she will always be overwintered. It is a risk, but surviving my beekeeping methods, makes her a real survivor and a natural death is a thank for that.
29.6.2014
After a fairly good spring there has been record cold weather. Snowstorms in June are no big deal in Lapland, but I don´t recall of experiencing one here in Southern Finland before 2014! New unmated queens are sitting in mating nucs waiting for the weather to get better. My stock is developing so slowly nowadays, hives consume less, so I have not been forced to feed my bees, in fact they all have good stores. They simply refuse to die, but unfortunately a big part of them is making unbelievable slow progress.
Varroa infestation levels were quite high in early June, up to 10%, and bees somewhat angry, but they calmed down in the end of June. Some of them are workable without gloves, some not. Some of them come and start walking on your fingers, which makes it quite tricky to work without gloves, even though they are not stinging.
After several years without any troubles with bears we lost three hives this spring.
One hive is having serious AFB.
11.10.2014
Summer turned out to be a fairly good one. If June was record cold there was maybe too much heat and lack of rain in late July.
Same type of problems continues as previous years. Hives develop very slowly, and it is hard to make nucs because they are not strong enough. Nucs develop slowly and some more evidence of inbreeding has shown.
It seems that the fact we only make max one nuc out of one hive, has made life harder for the bees. Before 2013 we made 2 or even 3 nucs out of one strong hive.
There were AFB (3 hives all together), bear damage (7 big ones plus 86 mating nucs!!) and some mysterious dwindling of nucs in one bigger nuc yard. For these reasons, although I made nuc out of every hive when it could be done, the number of wintered hives is little less than last year.
I have made up my mind to change the whole managing system in 2015. Details are still to be worked out, but the main thing is that I give up using Haukkamaa isolation station as main component in our system and start with natural matings and more inseminations. I´m creating the first varroa resistant drone area in Ruovesi.
25.9.2015
Sorry not to make an update for a year!
Winterlosses were unbeliavable 70%. I changed the bottom air circulation radically, closed almost the bottom back entrance. I left small holes in the back corners of the bottom back entrance, too, but for some reason these little (5mm) holes closed during the winter. Front bottom entrance was open. Hives have plastic sheets on top, so no air is going through the ceiling. Air circulation through the bottom is crucial to get moisture out of hive interior.
Most of the winter losses happened not because of the bottom structure. The main reason for the losses is that our bees are not yet totally resistant. As I have written earlier (11.10.2014), the change for worse was clear right then when I started to make just one nuc out of one (good) hive. Making a lot of nucs helps bees, that seems to be clear now.
Year ago, I thought things are going for the better. That was a mistake. Because our bees are not totally resistant, and we have not been making enough splitting, mites have been accumulating little by little from 2012. In 2013 and 2014 only one nucs was made from each strong enough hive. Unlike many treatment free beekeepers in Europe and USA we have not been collecting swarms, the bees we have are the same stock all the way. We do not collect swarms, but one swarm of black bees came into our building wall! I have absolutely no idea where they came from! Not my bees.
On top of the winter losses, most of the hives which survived the winter, did not develop but dwindled down and died. I have had some thoughts for many years now that maybe the isolation mating in Haukkamaa mating station is not good anymore. Maybe the change into free mating should have been made earlier. Who knows.
If there were not enough difficulties, the weather brought some more! The summer was exceptionally rainy and cold until August. Because of that honey crop was minimal and new queens had difficulties in mating properly. They mated somehow, but bees wanted to change them right away. Mite load has dramatic effects on drones’ ability to mate, mite infestation makes some drones don’t hatch, some have so sperm and some cannot fly. This all together with poor weather made a nearly total disaster! Without well mated gueens there are no good hives, it is as simple as that.
Some good news too, we got new beematerial: treatment free bees from Kuortane and one new line of Columbian bees.
5.8.2016
Winter losses were about 20%, which is about the same all beekeepers in this region had. But we are down to 12 hives! The main obstacle today is that queens did not have proper mating flight weather 2015, so nearly all of them were replaced last autumn or latest by July 2016. Even the best hives and queens which I thought were ok, are replaced. And because this summer has been another very rainy one with poor mating flight weather, it is good that I decided to start to inseminate most of my queens. For variation and comparison, I left some queens to mate freely. Insemination success has improved markedly after the learning years.
When summer weather is so poor that queens don´t mate (of course partly because there is a shortage of qood quality drones) is is hard to judge if there has been progress made in the last couple years in terms of varroa resistance. If you don´t have well mated queens, all beekeeping becomes impossible, no mater treating or not. Today there are no mites to be found on bees or in the hive bottoms or entrances, like it used to be. Brood areas are small, but somewhat their spottiness has decreased. Bees are edgy, but only the new Colombian hive is stinging.
Again, this year, it is unbelievable to notice that almost all new bee material gets by me AFB. There must be pretty strong disease pressure in my yards. Makes me wonder how much harder this has made my varroa resistance breeding. Bees must withstand AFB as well! No one of my own old stock got AFB. One of my queen customers reported that from his honey samples were found so many spores of AFB that the veterinary told him that there must be visible symptoms! But there isn´t. He has been buying and testing my material for decades. I have previously reported of another beekeeper who reports that my queens cured his AFB problem. Sounds good to me!
naturebees 