New to bee research, hoping I could have a couple questions answered!

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X_Eclipze

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1. What's the principal idea that all swarm prevention and control measures rely on?
2.What parts of a colony need to be in place before they swarm and what are methods of swarm control?
3.At what stage of brood development can you diagnose AFB and EFB?
4.How can you prevent and treat Nosema infection?
5.The frequency and time of year for a commonly used bio-technical control of varroa.
6.When is the best time to feed colonies for spring expansion and with what?
7.How often should you inspect a colony in in May and in January?

If any of these could be answered it'd be much appreciated as some of the research isn't entirely clear to me!
 
1. What's the principal idea that all swarm prevention and control measures rely on?
Ensuring they have enough space for brood rearing and storing food, then early intervention
either proactive such as Demarree (when your interventions avoid them making swarm preparations)
or reactive (such as Pagden artifical swarm, when they have started to prepare for swarming and you have to do something quickly to persuade them not to leave)
2.What parts of a colony need to be in place before they swarm
fertile queen, drones, plety of workers of all ages, ample stores and brood, weather
and what are methods of swarm control?
Pre-emptive/proactive (swarm avoidance) such as Demaree
Reactive - artifical swarm (Pagden) removing the queen to a nuc and reducing the QCs to one, 'splitting' the hive
3.At what stage of brood development can you diagnose AFB and EFB?
EFB - after eggs have hatched and before brood is capped
AFB - a bacterial infection of the larvae, usally evident in capped brood
4.How can you prevent and treat Nosema infection?
prophylactive treatment - thymol in their autumn syrup
5.The frequency and time of year for a commonly used bio-technical control of varroa.
whenever it's needed and practical (many treatments can contaminate the honey for human consumption) late summer/early autumn a must to ensure a light varroa load going into winter
6.When is the best time to feed colonies for spring expansion and with what?
no need for spring feeding unless you aim to boost colony numbers for OSR or queen breeding
7.How often should you inspect a colony in in May and in January?
In May, weekly
in January, not at all unless you are a complete imbecile - the colony should be left in peace after late summer, definitely once winter feeding starts

If any of these could be answered it'd be much appreciated as some of the research isn't entirely clear to me!
try reading a few good bee books
 
1. Separating the Q and flying bees from the colony .

2. (i ) 99.9% of the time sealed QC's are present. Lack of laying space /overcrowding or poor Q pheromones can lead to swarm preps.
(ii) SC types vary. I use Demaree when no QC's are present , other wise Pagden colony split or I may simply make up a nuc and monitor the main colony if only superscedure or less then three cells are found.
If I only find one/two QC ( superscedure ) I do nothing and leave the bees to it having removed one of the QC's.
As an aside I clip my queens to prevent an initial swarm loss.

3. AFB once brood is sealed. EFB prior to brood being sealed.

4. Not using combs from previous infected colinies.
Treatment is fumidil added to syrup or one can use thymol out of the forage season.

5. All year round for mesh floors.
Monthly sugar rolls from April to July to assess /monitor mite loads.
Queen trapping though means no new bees for a whole brood cycle and then treatment for the parasitic stage of the mite on adult bees.
Drone culling but this is a waste of the bees time and efforts and pretty senseless to use as ipm.

6. If winter provisions are adequate then there is no need to do so.

7. May weekly if the weather allows and forage is strong.
January never.
 
Ensuring they have enough space for brood rearing and storing food, then early intervention
either proactive such as Demarree (when your interventions avoid them making swarm preparations)
or reactive (such as Pagden artifical swarm, when they have started to prepare for swarming and you have to do something quickly to persuade them not to leave)

fertile queen, drones, plety of workers of all ages, ample stores and brood, weather

Pre-emptive/proactive (swarm avoidance) such as Demaree
Reactive - artifical swarm (Pagden) removing the queen to a nuc and reducing the QCs to one, 'splitting' the hive

EFB - after eggs have hatched and before brood is capped
AFB - a bacterial infection of the larvae, usally evident in capped brood

prophylactive treatment - thymol in their autumn syrup

whenever it's needed and practical (many treatments can contaminate the honey for human consumption) late summer/early autumn a must to ensure a light varroa load going into winter

no need for spring feeding unless you aim to boost colony numbers for OSR or queen breeding

In May, weekly
in January, not at all unless you are a complete imbecile - the colony should be left in peace after late summer, definitely once winter feeding starts


try reading a few good bee books
wow thank you so much! You've been such a help!!
 
1. What's the principal idea that all swarm prevention and control measures rely on?
2.What parts of a colony need to be in place before they swarm and what are methods of swarm control?
3.At what stage of brood development can you diagnose AFB and EFB?
4.How can you prevent and treat Nosema infection?
5.The frequency and time of year for a commonly used bio-technical control of varroa.
6.When is the best time to feed colonies for spring expansion and with what?
7.How often should you inspect a colony in in May and in January?

If any of these could be answered it'd be much appreciated as some of the research isn't entirely clear to me!
You have been offered comprehensive answers to these key questions - but limited to ’conventional ‘ beekeeping in UK, which is well developed but arguably ‘stuck in a rut’ , perhaps due to the fully developed education system of BBKA that is inevitably slow to adapt to new science - and its followers will probably say because it is perfect, so cannot be improved.
However, bkprs do agree that two beekprs will offer 3 answers to every question! So let me offer some thoughts from my position that, while a vertically extending hive is most practical for commercial beekeeping, a ‘horizontal hive’ is easier to manage and so less disruptive for the bees. Horizontal hives such as the nearly million in Ukraine at one time , and the million Layens hives in France/Spain today, did not have supers. (My type of ‘long hive’ does, so is a ‘combination hive’, to use the Victorian description). So there are three conformations of hives in use, and users may answer your questions differently.
You mention ‘research’ but not on what. Assuming it is into beekeeping practices, perhaps as now and perhaps looking futuristically, we need to consider what is best up-to-date practice today. As I am not a scientist I cannot access/understand journal articles so am limited to books. I list some I find most interesting and up-to-date - and would like to compare with your sources for whatever your research is.

Here goes! As BBKA training courses promote the vertical National, the best up-to-date introduction is The BBKA Guide to Beekeeping, 2nd edition 2015. I believe a solid manual is still ‘Guide to Bees & Honey, Ted Hooper , 2008. But science has moved on - and new perspectives reached from research (which you allude to) seem to come mainly from abroad, with the rxception of The BEE: A natural History, Noah Wilson-Rich, 2014, 222pp.
Translated books that I suggest are interesting, but not exclusively, and not yet fully read, include: Bees
1. Honey Bee Biology, Brian Johnson, 2023, 481pp, from USA - this embraces but updates all previous books on biology
2. The Lives of Bees, Tom Seeley, 2019, 353pp, USA - explores how bees live/have lived for millennia, in tree cavities, a completely different shape and character from modern commercial hives.
3. At the Hive Entrance, H Storch, 2010, 68pp, Germany - a very poorly translated list of possible external observations/monitoring of a colony in a hive
4. What the Beekeepers DIDN’T KNOW, Peter Kocalka, 2020, 160pp, Bratislava - what can be monitored using electronic gadgets inserted inside a hive
5. Keeping Bees respectfully …, German - have mislaid my copy - describes a new shape of hive to take taller, narrower frames/combs nearer to a tree cavity
6. Communication between Honeybees, Jurgen Tautz, 2021, 165pp, Germany - how complex methods of communication between bees are
7. Highways and Byways of Beekeeping, Alan Wade, 438pp, 2023, Australia - unread so far but very wide ranging about modern beekeeping.

Turning to your questions, from my position:
1. All life on Earth, including humans, is guided by two instincts: first, to survive, which depends on shelter and food - second, to reproduce, without which the species goes extinct. So swarming is a fundamental instinct that can only be guided, not frustrated.
2. Instinctively, a colony expands in spring as much as food supply allows - when sufficient food has been stored, and the population is large enough to split into two viable units, the instinct to swarm can develop. If weather is unfavourable for swarming, instinct reverses to survival, and queen cells are broken down. (Humans do this - young adults leave the family home and couple up with a stranger to form a new family. That raises children if there is enough money to serve the primary instinct to survive - if not, child rearing is delayed or foregone).
3 - 6 Anserved by others
7. Ideally, a colony should never be inspected - progress should be monitored externally. Opening a hive loses the nest-atmosphere that is full of pheromones which guide bees to where action is necessary - ie feeding/capping grubs , extending comb. The bees are in different groups in different places in the nest - queen attendants, nurse bees, wax makers, comb builders, guards - these all get mixed up if the hive is opened, the pheromones lost, especially if the bees are panicked by smoke they assume to come from a threatening forest fire.
Best to monitor the growth of the colony to a state when swarming is viable - then insert a ‘swarm block’ in the entrance such that the queen cannot join the swarm and it returns. At that state, the beekeepers can open the hive and divide the bees into swarm and parent , relying on to the Taranov principle that at swarming time every bees knows if it is a swarm bee or a parent bee. Just brush off all bees in front of an upturned box,, the swarm goes into the protection of the box and the parent bees fly back. In the eve, run the swarm into the rear part of a horizontal hive, separated by a divider board. When the parent left at the front has raised a new queen - and the swarm has drawn new combs, just remove the divider to unite the two halves. Mother and daughter queens do not fight - this is induced super-cedure. When settled, move the new combs in front of the old brood combs which then become store combs and are removed in autumn - an acceptable second invasion but which does not require lifting out brood frames and losing the atmosphere - the drop of brood cappings onto the varroa bord reveals when the new queen started to lay 3 weeks earlier and by now is fully settled.
Only works with a horizontal or combination hive of course. As I said, they are easier to manage - and better for the bees.

I hope this interests. What are your own views?
 
1. What's the principal idea that all swarm prevention and control measures rely on?
2.What parts of a colony need to be in place before they swarm and what are methods of swarm control?
3.At what stage of brood development can you diagnose AFB and EFB?
4.How can you prevent and treat Nosema infection?
5.The frequency and time of year for a commonly used bio-technical control of varroa.
6.When is the best time to feed colonies for spring expansion and with what?
7.How often should you inspect a colony in in May and in January?

If any of these could be answered it'd be much appreciated as some of the research isn't entirely clear to me!
Your questions assume the beekeeper is running lots of hives which they move around for pollination etc. In reality, most beekeepers have few hives, which stay in one place. Let me give you another perspective. I populate my hives from survivor colonies' swarms as I don't want varroa:

1. + 2. Let them swarm

3. I don't stress my bees so they've never had these. But in theory, it is easier to diagnose AFB because when a hive has it, AFB becomes symptomatic very quickly. EFB is very slow and stealthy and may not be obvious for some time. It varies during the year too - in Spring, there are relatively few nurse bees to clean things, so dusease spreads more easily.

4. Don't feed sugar! Seriously, my bees never have dysentry, nor do wild nests.

5. Never. I just let the bees do it, continuously. I don't see deformed winfs or varroa.

6. Never.

7. Never in January. For May, it depends. If you are a beginner you should inspect at least once in May, and other summer months, to learn what looks normal. If you are experienced you rarely need to inspect, you can observe the hive for a few minutes without opening it. This isn't an option for a time-pressed commercial operator.

There is more than one way to run a hive.
 
This thread shows the range of practice of beekeeping and the range of participants in this Forum. One of the best threads I've seen here for a while.

If you're to make sense of it, you have to work out where you stand; how and why you want to keep bees. The purpose of your research will also direct you towards a particular set of answers above. The fact that you asked these particular questions suggests that you are more of a 'traditional' rather than 'natural' beekeeper, but that's conjecture.

As an example, and apologies to those who have heard me say this before, my position is that I cannot keep bees unless my intention is to take a honey crop. I have gone to some lengths to keep my bees in hives which have some of the properties of nests in natural cavities like hollow trees. But this takes second place to my requirement to harvest honey from the hive with as little harm to the bees as possible.

For me it is wrong to keep bees in a natural state. It's a contradiction, because of course there is nothing natural in 'keeping' them. They are wild animals, barely domesticated after millennia of contact with humans, and keeping them for our pleasure cannot be compared to having pets which seem to thrive on their contact with us. Some will say that their aim is not their own pleasure but the welfare of the bees. That argument doesn't hold water for me.

I'd be interested to hear how you sift through the range of material in the answers you've received. Everyone who has written is experienced and knowledgeable in their particular approach to beekeeping.

The last thing on my mind is to change your (or anyone's) philosophy of keeping bees. That's about us, not the bees.
 
Well, hopefully, with all the effort you have all put in to reply the OP he will return and give us some feedback ... as he hasn't been back since he joined and posted I live in hope ...
 
Most of us who are in it for beekeeping sake are normally looking to take honey as part of the experience as well as the welfare of the bees, look after and care for your bees ( husbandry) and one often gets the reward because of their primal instinct to forage.
How you go about keeping the bees and which hive type is down to the individual.

I find if one wants bees but doesn't want to manage or bother them , then it is best just to leave them to prosper or not and let them be feral colonies .
We choose to keep them so I believe we should also be managing them and not simply have them because it looks good or ethical.
 
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I checked to see if he posted in the other place …… no.
Anyway, he has lots of good info here. I hope he makes good use of it.
 

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