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Thanks Jim! I don't think a queen from Florida would do well in Ohio! People attempt to do that all the time but all they find is dead bees. Finding those good local bees is the best option, thanks for watching.

Mutts happen to be the best bees you can catch!

I've lost about 80 lbs over the last two years. Trying to lose another 40. Thanks for the comment! 😊

Thanks for watching!

Thank you I'm sure this is not the last we'll see of him!

Never heard of an "Old Sol" Bee, they must be the latest and greatest of Bee purchases! Hopefully I catch some in my next swarm. 😉

@SecureAcresNaturalBees apparently they're mite resistant, but need treatment. 😆

Hector Von Bee is serious about keeping Bees!

As I said in the video you can expand the living space for your Bees before swarm season and they will be much less likely to swarm.

Thanks Wendy!

Thanks brother!

Thank you 1745 and thank you for your amazing contributions and viewership. Bee activity is the best sign of colony health! 😊

Thanks for watching, The 64 degrees I stated was referenced by Lazutin's "Keeping Bees with a Smile". I have seen the 94 degrees mentioned for the deepest portion of the core. However the temperature drops as your reach the outside edges of the cluster, which I've read can get as low as 45 degrees. I think the 64 degrees is more of an average but I should have made that more clear. Thanks for pointing that out!

​@@SecureAcresNaturalBees You're clarification makes sense. Thanks for responding. TBH. I made it half way thru that book a couple of months ago and put it down. I need to finish it. Not the easiest read.

Thanks for watching. It's not really challenging at all, less work for us and less wasted money.

Thank you and thanks for watching!

It's too cold for mites up here, which is why we have a shortage on Varroa burgers.

We'll have to look into those plants!

It is true that aggressive Bees are healthier and these Bees were definitely in good shape. Their honey tasted delicious too!

@@SecureAcresNaturalBees Ah, well me and a friend have gotten into woodworking recently. I have been enjoying your videos very much. I built a langstroth hive last summer, but I think I am gonna build some layens. Much love brother.

@@Dan.Parker That's awesome, glad y'all are enjoying the videos and very happy to hear you're going to make some Layens. You will love them so much and the hives I crafted from five years ago are still going strong. If you need plans to craft them go to horizontalhive.com , there Dr. Leo has free plans for many Layens hives.

I don't necessarily care if people want to keep a bunch of bees in in a tighter area. But I want people to know you don't need to keep a bunch of Bees to be a successful Beekeeper. Keeping 5-10 colonies or 50-100 colonies, it doesn't really matter except maybe more honey, but there's a lot more work with it too. We don't really plan on going over 20, that the limit we've set and we're happy with that work load.

Thank you for that comment and thank you for enjoying our videos. ❤️

I have no doubt those Lazutin hive's get the job done. Tons of space for the Bees to winter on and lot's of honey for you in the fall. One of these days I'll build one and Ill be thrilled.

I made a HUGE mistake by not having my smoker in this video. It was the first time I had ever done that and will certainly be the last. When I went into the second hive in the fall to extract honey they we're much better. The honey was amazing!

Thank you so much and very happy you are enjoying our videos. I agree you can't get much better than a tree, but at the same time I know people that use square hives such as the Langstroth hive treatment free, and they find a way to make it work. Layens will always be my favorite but people can do natural beekeeping in other hives as well. Thank you for the input!

We do maybe one inspection a year, sometimes none; other than that we add honey frames in the spring and remove them in the fall. It has worked for us pretty well and we haven't needed to medicate in any way. I call myself a lazy beekeeper and not doing any work with treatment definitely supports that. 😉

Where did you hear of the Lazutin hive if you don't mind me asking?

That's a funny analogy but I hear ya! That's so cool you're using Lazutin hives, I really want to build one someday. Love the extra deep frames.

Swarms are the key to treatment free because local bees are as good as it gets. I think anyone wanting to do treatment free is almost required to catch swarms because as you said purchased bees come from commercial beekeepers that almost always treat. Besides, losing colonies stings ten times worse if you lose $200 with the Bees. Bees you catch are free so if you lose them it's not the end of the world.

@@SecureAcresNaturalBees Yes I have to agree.

I've heard of many people that use oxilic acid are using stronger doses as time goes on so that could be true!

I don't doubt you might live in a place that is less inhabitable for Bees however if Bees can survive in your location then swarming is possible even if unlikely. Even the managed colonies will swarm from time to time.

Look at the basswoods when they bloom if in southern Ontario.

The only thing I split is wood. I do it with the log splitter for the same reason I don't work hard on my bees, because I'm lazy. 😂

@SecureAcresNaturalBees * Treat my bees like pet 🐢 🐢 🐢 turtles. Really enjoy seeing which one wins the races.

Thank you for watching! We don't really do sugar shakes and our Bees do fine. Don't feel like you have to. Let us know if you have any questions going forward.

I wouldn’t shake them at all. I just want to sprinkle it down into the hive and hope the mites fall off. Thank you for your reply.

Right I meant that as well. Being treatment free means letting the Bees in your apiary adapt to diseases on their own. They can and will just as they do in the wild. 😊

I'll try to remember to take some pictures for you. It's been years since we took it down so who knows what it looks like. I would expect some wasp nests because I've seen them come and go out of it.

It's a done deal! 🤗's!

I hear you can make a mean Varroa burger.

🤣🤣

@@SecureAcresNaturalBees 🤣🤣

if you can put your hives with more insulation (8cm thick) and if you can put the hive on the ground so that the Pseudoscorpions and Stratiolaelaps scimitus can access, they will keep the varroa at bay... I'm not saying it will disappear completely, but your hive will not be a breeding ground for varroa and will be very limited by other insects and arachnids.

Thanks for watching! Never thought of putting the hive on the ground, I guess I would be afraid of ant's having easier access, but I wouldn't be completely against exploring the idea. 👍

@@SecureAcresNaturalBees ruclips.net/video/8YBQOgtPFhY/видео.htmlsi=qIXPsRGUlL1Pn5oR

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Not buying bees is definitely a plus, they can be pretty expensive. Glad you're having good fortune with the swarms!

Thanks for watching RTX, I have no doubt that people can keep Bees while using oxalic acid and grow their numbers in doing so. My argument is we have grown our numbers in our apiary without using it at all (and we don't do splits, we just catch swarms). So my question to you is what make's you think you absolutely need to use it? I understand you've found success while using it so you think it's a must. But what if you went a year or two without it and your Bees ended up being fine? You would save so much work and money and you wouldn't have to worry about all the cons of the the treatment (and there are cons, nothing in life is purely good or purely bad). I appreciate you watching the video and I hope you had a good holiday.

@@SecureAcresNaturalBees I check for mite drop thru a screened bottom board - 24 hours after applying OAV. When I see hundreds to, in rare cases, over a thousand mites on the counting board, I figure those bees absolutely needed it. If I went without it for a year, I'd lose at least half my bees - I know that because I see others doing it every year.

Thank you!

Sheeps wool is a great insulator and we've used it before. Good idea is to put it in an empty pillow case and put it where you need it. Give it a try!

Generally we've stored our comb in empty swarm hives we have and they have been ok. However sometimes the wax moths can get to them and if you're worried about that I've heard you can freeze the frames until Spring.

Catching swarms is basically a must. Packages come from commercial Beekeepers who generally treat and this already gives the person receiving the Bees a disadvantage. Many swarms are feral which means they've survived without medications and they are adapted to your climate and weather patterns. Catching Honeybee swarms is why we have been successful and anyone looking to keep Bees treatment free/Naturally should strive to catch swarms!

Not scared of mites

Your Bees are spreading diseases regardless of whether you treat them or not. On top of that, are you going to be a good samaritan and treat all the feral Bees in the trees?

I’m a commercial beekeeper of 30 years and can back it up when I say the bees that belong to my family are not spreading disease. I keep bees to pay my bills not to flip a coin and hope they make it nor do I consider them pets.. they are livestock! We use a strict treatment plan to combat against the mites from “feral bees” and bees that belong to people that do stupid crap like “treatment free”. Beekeepers that practice treatment free are irresponsible because you open a breeding ground for mites. Do you enjoy dwv, pms & ccd? Do you have routine inspections by the state or do you send off to a laboratory for studies?

@ why you deleting my comment? The truth was too much for you to leave up for other people to see?

You can't tell me you honestly believe you are eliminating 100% of every organism that is not Honeybee in your hives. Your Bees have diseases even after you treat and those diseases are adapting to your treatment and reproducing. Even people who do mite checks have an "acceptable" number of mites in their hives because it's literally impossible to completely eliminate them. I thank god I don't live in a heavy regulated state that requires inspections. I don't need the government to tell me how to keep bees. Treatment free has worked for us for half a decade and that's all the study I need. You better get started on treating those irresponsible feral colonies.

Haven't deleted any of your comments

Thanks for visiting! We don't introduce queens into our colonies because while she might have good traits she is not going to be accustomed to our climate. Queen Bees lay eggs based off the environment and weather patterns of where they are born. A queen brought from an outside area could begin laying eggs when it's still too cold outside, or not lay eggs during the proper honey flow of the area. That's why we only choose local queens and we acquire them by catching swarms. Hope that helps!

Thanks for watching! Treatments became popular after they we're used by commercial Beekeepers who we're taking their Bees all around the country collecting many different diseases. After that many hobby beekeepers saw it necessary to use treatments in their own apiary for common bee diseases. So long as a Beekeeper keeps their bees in a sustainable manner (not commercially), treatment free is the way to go.

@SecureAcresNaturalBees Absolutely correct. You might find the transcript below interesting. Tom Glenn had a part in breeding the line of "VSH Italians" that I have today. "Beekeeping in the 21st Century" *Transcript from a talk presented at the EAS meeting, Cornell University August 2002 My name is Tom Glenn, and together with my wife Suk, we operate Glenn Apiaries in southern CA. I'm here to represent the commercial side of this endeavor to breed bees resistant to Varroa mites. We have been raising queens for 25 years. Twenty two of those years we raised naturally mated queens, but for the last three years we have sold only instrumentally inseminated queens. We turned to dealing strictly with inseminated queens in response to the arrival of the Africanized bee in San Diego county three years ago. A side effect of controlling the mating of the bees, was that we were in a good position to make a serious attempt at breeding bees that were resistant to both mites. Our goal is to apply the latest advances that the scientists come up with, and try to bring them to the beekeeping industry. I can honestly say to you that the only reason I'm up here today is because of the good work done by all three of the other panelists (Marla Spivak, John Harbo, and Sue Cobey). So I'm very proud to be on the same stage as them. I hit a low point in my beekeeping career a few years ago. The varroa mites in our area developed resistance to Apistan. The Apistan strips seemed to suddenly just stop working and we took heavy losses that winter from the mites. As much as I disliked the idea of using an organophosphate pesticide, I felt forced into treating with coumaphos, Checkmite strips. The low point came that next spring when one beautiful day I was just about to take a bite out of a luscious piece of burr comb dripping with fresh honey. But then I suddenly realized that I had Checkmite strips in the hive and that this honey was probably contaminated with something I really didn't want in my body. I thought this was really pathetic, a beekeeper afraid to eat his own honey. It was very depressing, it wrecked my day, I wasn't even sure I wanted to continue beekeeping. Maybe some of you have had the same experience. Later that year, I was privileged to be able to work on a scientific experiment with Marla Spivak, Tim Haarmaan, and the Weavers. We were studying the effect of fluvalinate and coumaphos on queen bees. Apistan proved to be fairly benign, but coumaphos was a different story. We found that it did indeed have a negative effect on the queen cells. We had a hard time even coming up with a small enough dose that we could raise queens. Some of the queens that did come to maturity had deformities of their legs and antennas. As a queen breeder, this was the last straw for me. How could I continue to use something that I knew could harm the queens? It didn't make sense to throw money away treating with Apistan if it didn't work. And I'm not interested in playing around with any illegal treatments. I think a lot of us feel the same way, trying to keep up running on the chemical treadmill just doesn't feel like the right thing to do. We had been hearing reports that a few other beekeepers and researchers had stopped treating for mites and were apparently getting away with it. We had been selecting bees for hygienic behavior and had linked up with Marla to propagate and distribute her MN Hygienic queens, as well as using some of the Russian bees. We felt that maybe we had enough resistant bees that we were ready to give up all routine treatments and go for broke. The next year I was thrilled to hear Dr. Harbo speak about his SMR trait in bees, and the dramatic results he got in controlling mite populations. Happily we were able to enter into a cooperative agreement to help distribute these bees to other queen breeders. So now, with three different modes of resistance we felt even more confident in challenging the bees to go without treatments. So how has it gone? Well this is our third year without any routine treatments, and I'm pleased to report that we just finished our summer survey and, knock on wood, we can hardly find any mites. In our quick and dirty test of looking for varroa on 100 adult bees, by far the majority had no mites. The worst colony had 4 mites per hundred bees. To be honest, this is not a controlled experiment, and I can't say that other factors besides resistance may not be involved. We are having a severe drought right now, and also I can't dismiss the possibility that after years of using miticides, residues in the wax may be a factor. But from my own experience, the experience of others, and the growing body of scientific evidence, I'm willing to say this. I think that if we play our cards right, we now have all the tools we need to start backing away from chemical treatments. The only question is how we go about doing this. I think we are at a real crossroads in the bee industry. I'm grateful that we had the chemical controls to get us through the initial blows of the mite infestations. But now that we are catching up with more sustainable genetic solutions, we need to reevaluate our practices. My fear is that the use of miticides has become so ingrained in the recommendations and conventional wisdom of beekeeping culture, that it may be difficult to turn things around. Beekeeping is a unique part of agriculture because it is comprised of both commercial beekeepers and hobbyists. The commercial beekeepers, like other farmers today, are an endangered species. To survive they feel forced into an agribusiness model of production. Agribusiness tends to have high inputs of labor and material, and acceptable levels of pesticide contamination. I don't think they are going to be the ones to lead the way back to a more natural way of beekeeping. The hobbyists on the other hand, are into beekeeping more for the love of bees and the craft of beekeeping. Of course they are also interested in economics. But they have the freedom to also be concerned about being good stewards of the bees. I've spoken with enough beekeepers to know that a good number also believe as I do, that our number one priority should be to avoid the contamination of honey. For thousands of years honey has had the reputation of being one of the most wholesome foods in the world. We can't let our generation of beekeepers be the ones to screw this up. I think we should view the recent problems with contaminated Chinese honey as a call to arms for us to do everything we can so that the same thing never happens to American honey. So what practical things can each of us do? Our real goal is to influence the population genetics of the country, so that there is a critical mass of resistant bees. This point will be some years away, but the only way to get there is one beehive at a time. Every beehive in the country contributes to the gene pool. The infrastructure is now in place so that anyone that wants to try the various resistant stocks can readily obtain them. A quick look at the ads for queens in the journals will show that there are now plenty of sources of resistant stock to start experimenting with. One of the most powerful forces in the world is self replication, and bees are truly masters at this. And beekeepers are very good at directing this replication by way of raising queens and drones. I think one of the healthiest things we could do for this industry is to have more people raising queens in different areas of the country. Not only would this help conserve the genetic diversity of the bees. But we would also produce bees that are better adapted to local conditions. There are classes every year on how to raise queens, including ones offered by Marla and Sue, and also here at Cornell. With all the resources we have in different queen rearing kits and bee stock, I think there's never been a better time to be an amateur queen breeder. Even if you don't want to raise queens, a lot of good can be done just by raising drones. Drones have always been under appreciated. Maybe it's the name drone. I'd like to propose that we change the name, instead of drones, call them "studs". The drones in your hives will mate with queens for miles around including feral bees. So by encouraging the raising of drones from your resistant queens instead of always discouraging them, we can take a trick from the Africanized bees. They raise huge amount of drones, and this is one reason they have spread so successfully. So by keeping just one or two drone combs in the brood nest you can have a big influence on your local population. Beekeepers have gotten quite an education these last few years. We have seen first hand how varroa mites became resistant to Apistan. Now we're hearing that some have also become resistant to coumaphos. Not to mention American Foulbrood becoming resistant to Terramycin. We know how resistance to these chemicals come about. In fact we now realize that resistance is almost inevitable. The process is simple, by weeding out the susceptible individuals, only the resistant ones are left to reproduce. While this may sound like bad news, I'd like to suggest that it really isn't. Because just as these parasitic organisms developed resistance through genetic means. So too can our honeybees develop resistance by the same process. And that's exactly what we are trying to help them do. The point I'd like to leave you with is that knowledge is not power until it's applied. The scientists have done a great job coming up with the knowledge, but it's up to all of us beekeepers to put it into action. I think everyone in this room can do something to get us to the goal of getting back to chemical free beekeeping. As Margaret Mead once said, "never doubt that a small group of dedicated individuals can change the world, indeed it's the only thing that ever does".

Using the sugar water with thymol mister that puts bees into cleaning mode. They clean the hive and each other. I do that beginning and end of brood break with queen cage. I don't use a smoker. Just the mister and a feather. But my top bars touch too.