Our Beekeeping Method on the Island of Terschelling by Harmen van der Ende

[@jvanderende1836]

Thanks! Always interesting to hear what's happening with the Bees in other parts of the world!

[@gregmonaghan]

Great! I've been looking forward to watching this year's lectures.

[@HeartPumper]

That's an awesome upload! Very professionaly recorded (audio & video wise), important in such important thing :) I'm beekeeping in The Netherlands as well, and indeed preserving native bees (and also research of varroa resistance) is big thing over here! Thank you so much !!

[@michaowepszczoy7918]

Very interesting. I'm doing something similar, too short time and not on an island, to talk about it.

[@badassbees3680]

How about some NUMBERS..Like I had twenty hives in 2015,I stopped treating and lost .....how many hives.. EACH hive that does survive,is it a Parent Colony?How old are these Parent colonies now tf.Or are you still having losses?How many,what percent? Are the only ones dying old Parent/Production colonies and the younger splits are surviving. Or are you making splits every year and these are making up for your losses? Are you making nucleus colonies out of your survivor bees and selling them? See I can't stand videos like this I really think this is a disservice to new Beekeepers.Why?because you don't talk about any losses or give any numbers -you say I stopped treating and my bees are living... I am not saying it is not impossible for bees to transition, and it could take years. You say you stop treating, no more mortality. So what none of your hives die to Varroa now? And all you did was stopped treating? So anybody's ever dealt with varroa knows it factors viruses such as deformed wing virus, parasitic mite syndrome, can help cause European foulbrood and on and on and on... But you mentioned nothing of the bees having these problems, you don't give any warning to new beekeepers ,that these things definitely will happen and your bees will die,instead you say oh you only have to treat if you want them to make honey, if you only want bees you don't have to treat.. that is total bullcrap, videos like this should be banned if they're not going to give numbers . AND explain to new beekeepers that you WILL watch your bees die a terrible death and it will take many generations before you start seeing change,VSH and Broodbreaks DONT BEAT VARROA ALONE, but you do not mention this to any new Beekeepers.. Well u can say this is only mentioning what I done with my bees , yeah well that don't cut it because these videos are how new beekeepers that truly want to be a help to the bees learn.Im not against tf .I am against acting like all I done was quit treating my bees and they stopped dying,that's Total Bs and completely irresponsible of you to not give any warning about the Losses and Disease before they Transitioned.Like Michael Palmer said,tf people don't give numbers,they don't tell you how many losses,how much honey they made,how many splits...there's a big difference between Thriving Healthy Bees and I have bees that are still alive....

[@JM-nd4kt]

Small cell foundation is the starting point for going treatment free but to just stop treatments on standard large size foundation which is 5.4mm will ensure your bees die. You have to downsize your bees first. Thornes sell 4.9mm foundation for sale. Bees today are 144 times bigger than they should be. This means that the bee hatching time is longer allowing the mites to breed and reproduce in worker cells because the hatch time is 21 days against 19 days for a smaller bee from a smaller cell size. Varroa thinks that the worker cells are drone cells so breed freely in them causing hives to crash if treatment up to five times a year is stopped. Our bees are to big and this is what is killing them we need to get back to smaller bees that we had in the past before varroa and man's greed for more honey from a bigger bee. If we didn't have mites we wouldn't need to downsize our bees as we do isn't it time we started.

[@ben-fe3zy]

144 times bigger! Let me know where you live so I know not to holiday there! ;)

[@JM-nd4kt]

@@ben-fe3zy 144 times bigger than they were. Sorry l can't provide you with my brain as l still need it.

[@JM-nd4kt]

Drone cells are home to mites in small cell bees and the cells the bees are hatching from are so large that the mites are confused and are breeding in them now which means that the bees are born deformed and full of viruses and cannot be useful to the hives wellbeing. Mites are less likely to try to breed in a small cell they will chose a drone cell. Each frame has a small area of drone cell to attract the mites so the workers hatch out normal. Being smaller the number of bees is greater so more bees are able to do less work each and they live longer as the work is shared by more bees. This increases the chance of brood being uncapped and the cell cleaned if the bees do detect a mite breeding within that cell. This the mites chances of reproducing offspring are greatly reduced.

[@badassbees3680]

To each their own,but that has definitely not been my experience catching truly Feral Swarms and letting them build natural comb,I often wonder how it is that these tactics don't work here,mites win EVERYTIME, Feral bees are Absconding and Swarming to leave the mites behind ,their not actually beating them.I put this theory to test lots of times,last one was 9 lb Feral swarm on natural comb this past spring,workers throwing bees with dwv out at end of August, tf here means gruesome pms death..