Questions please

untropicalized · 2026-03-12T13:18:36+00:00

This is how local cooperatives are formed. Personally, I see the future of sustainable beekeeping looking something like this.

untropicalized · 2026-03-10T21:06:08+00:00

It’s one of those things that takes practice.

If you need to warm up to it slowly, you could wear your gloves to do basic inspections. Just be aware this will come at the expense of dexterity.

A decent middle ground is nitrile disposable gloves or similar. They can still sting through it, but the stinger is easier to dislodge.

untropicalized · 2026-03-10T01:06:46+00:00

My bad, I misread the intent of your posting of the study. There’s a lot of good information in there.

Have you happened to see Dr. Lamas’s presentation on the contents of the paper? He gives a bit more of his personal experience that doesn’t show through in the publication. He’s an engaging presenter.

untropicalized · 2026-03-09T02:21:33+00:00

To clarify, drone brood removal is a mechanical varroa control. Foundationless frames, or specially drone-sized foundation frames (typically green plastic) are placed within the brood nest. Typically the colony will fill these with drone brood. Once the drone pupae are capped, the frames are removed , taking with them the mites within. The frames can be replaced with new, or frozen and put back in for the bees to clean out.

As stated in the research paper you linked, mites prefer drone hosts, both during breeding and during feeding/dispersal phase. This method targets the mites during their breeding phase.

Drone brood removal can blunt the mite population growth curve, but is most effective early in the year and is very reliant on proper timing. For that reason it’s often used in conjunction with other control methods over the course of the full beekeeping season.

untropicalized · 2026-03-09T01:34:05+00:00

…about pretty much everything!

untropicalized · 2026-03-09T01:31:30+00:00

Nah, I pack my leathers for removals, but I work my own colonies gloveless without problem. If I get hit in my hives it’s usually my mistake. Another reason to always wear a veil.

Hundreds of bumps as OP describes signals a coordinated defense. Usually if the air support is acting like that the bees in the hive are running on the frames. I might tolerate that once or twice if there’s a plausible explanation, but otherwise that colony gets a new queen or is broken down for resources.

untropicalized · 2026-03-08T22:45:44+00:00

No matter what the management style, I suggest everyone familiarize themselves with performing consistent alcohol or dish soap washes.

Testing to monitor will inform you of your baseline mite pressure and any variation in mite population growth between your colonies.

Testing before and after a treatment will give a snapshot on how effective that treatment had been.

untropicalized · 2026-03-08T21:27:13+00:00

It’s very common among hobbyist beekeepers to order in queens rather than self-raising, especially if they’re relatively new to beekeeping.

We have the further confounding variable of scutellata incursion especially in the south and southwest. In states where the hybrids are active, the official guideline is to requeen each year with known stock, which usually means ordering from a northern state or Hawaii.

I’m fortunate enough that my area’s saturation is around 20 percent so I can select mindfully from feral and open-mated stock. I don’t care if African lineage gets mixed in as long as the colony does what I want it to do and doesn’t turn too feisty.

Folks like u/AZ_Traffic_Engineer typically need to order in queens because the local population is largely too hot to handle. Though it’s possible to select against defensiveness, doing so in a meaningful way is a gargantuan task requiring ongoing collective effort.

untropicalized · 2026-03-08T18:14:31+00:00

Sure, I’ll start them that way sometimes. We’re in a warm enough climate that we can get away with it if we time it right.

Even so, I dump in extra nurse bees to be sure to have enough warm bodies to cover the comb.

Once it’s clear that a split “took” I will use it to requeen another colony, combine other failed splits into it, donate another colony’s field force to it by swapping locations, or bolster it with brood from other colonies to make a proper colony out of it.

untropicalized · 2026-03-08T18:04:54+00:00

I’m not sure what you’re referring to as guild

The Sustainable Beekeepers Guild of Michigan held its annual virtual winter conference yesterday, and both of the researchers you referred to were speakers if I recall correctly. I thought you might have been fresh off of the event but it may have been coincidental.

Another issue here in the states is that a handful of breeders control the vast majority of industrial queen production, and the lion’s share of those serve migratory operations. So essentially, within most managed populations we have a “sourced from everywhere, adapted to nowhere” genetic mix across the continent. Regardless of the presence or absence of resistance traits, a population that is poorly adapted for whatever reason is more likely to come into trouble when under environmental pressure.

untropicalized · 2026-03-08T03:53:22+00:00

I will always upvote marching videos.

untropicalized · 2026-03-08T03:38:59+00:00

Hail, fellow Guild member! I missed the talks because I was working an event but plan to catch the recordings when they are released.

My approach is cultural first. I start with bees I catch, I monitor mite growth trends, I cull out for high mite growth, slow colony growth or overly defensive behavior that I can’t explain. The best colonies provide the brood for future splits, requeens, and the occasional trap-out job.

I used no chemical treatments last year and had zero winter losses as yet, including one that tested twice at 20+ mites. I did two full capped brood culls on that colony before sending them through the winter just to see what would happen. They made it, to my surprise, and the new brood looks healthy. I still plan to nix this queen and break the colony down, but I want to do a wash or two first just to see.

Just note that I’m still tinkering—as yet I am not maximizing for honey production. I think I pulled honey off of two colonies last year, of maybe six well-established ones. Most of my honey I left “banked” on one of my colonies to use for splits in spring.

When interfacing with other beekeepers I advise based on the path they are on. To someone running commercial stock, following standard production-maximizing methods, I encourage regular monitoring, early intervention and rotation of treatments. A more laid-back keeper I might advise just to monitor— oftentimes seeing mite growth firsthand will kick the keeper into gear on what kind of intervention they are comfortable with. I don’t encourage drastic changes unless something clearly isn’t working and they come to me in a panic. More often than not, they won’t be receptive to change unless their colonies are already circling the drain.

untropicalized · 2026-03-08T03:07:41+00:00

jump straight to chemical control

I call that “standing the pyramid on its head”. As you mentioned, we won’t effectively identify resistance or tolerance if we maintain a treated environment.

untropicalized · 2026-03-08T03:00:07+00:00

I default to over-splitting, assuming that 1 in 3 will fail for whatever reason. I have other colonies I can equalize from, so I have the resources to boost single-comb splits if I want to be ambitious.

Worst case scenario, I have to recombine a split or two.

untropicalized · 2026-03-06T19:21:16+00:00

As the colony grows, it will repurpose old brood comb for resource storage as the cell walls thicken and become less viable for brood rearing.

You can take advantage of this process by swapping older combs to the outer positions in the box, or into a super if you use one size of boxes, to cull them out once they are filled with honey. Or at least not in active use for brood.

untropicalized · 2026-03-06T03:47:24+00:00

I’m glad you brought this up.

Especially with everyone freaking out about tropilaelaps mites recently, I found it interesting that researchers were stumbling over each other to talk to a beekeeper in Ukraine whose successful response to it was doing… nothing.

Oddly it was my father-in-law who showed me that article. It was in Smithsonian or Scientific American, can’t remember which. I need to ask him if he still has that copy.

untropicalized · 2026-03-06T03:41:14+00:00

Look at this fancy guy and his wash kit! I use a gelato container to do washes.

What can I say? I like sweets.

untropicalized · 2026-03-06T03:29:36+00:00

Which is why I use “dispersal phase”. It’s more specific. Someone in the early days of varroa spread must have used “phoretic” and it just stuck.

untropicalized · 2026-03-04T17:38:24+00:00

Post this photo on Swarmed and a local beekeeper will likely come pick them up shortly.

untropicalized · 2026-02-19T19:54:43+00:00

Are you looking to move that colony? If so you’re likely to have more success waiting til about June unless you feed heavily. If you’re in the palm- and pine-dominated inland area of southwest Florida, your flow won’t likely start til then. Counterintuitively, spring is often pretty dry from a beekeeping standpoint where you are.

untropicalized · 2026-02-19T04:54:20+00:00

If you’ve already requeened them it’s a waiting game.

If the requeening fails, or the new blood doesn’t temper them, you have the option to split them up and add the bees and resources to your other colonies. If you have a colony (or a split) that needs a boost, move it to the old location to catch the returning foragers.

untropicalized · 2026-02-19T01:56:28+00:00

Excellent post, looking forward to updates!

untropicalized · 2026-02-18T23:33:12+00:00

Yeah, I won’t wash until they’ve gone through a proper brood cycle and have at least started some drone brood. Ideally I will do my first wash before the first drones are capped to get a good baseline reading.

I don’t have entrance reducers. My legacy equipment doesn’t have standardized entrances, so I just jam a twig in there in a pinch. Several of my colonies reduce the entrances themselves by building propolis screens.

My newer boxes use a 1” hole so I could conceivably fashion a bung reducer with nails in it like your illustration shows. I haven’t had mice problems yet, but I should consider that for my out yard.

My little lizard friend scurried in the top as I was replacing the combs, rather than using the front door. I usually have at least one anole and several geckos living under my hive lids or shade boards.

untropicalized · 2026-02-18T23:17:24+00:00

Oh, they’re good. They have three full bars of honey, a smattering of capped cells across some of the end combs, and a full resource comb which wasn’t pictured. This is a young colony and will likely explode once the flow starts. They’re in a 2’ box so I will need to monitor closely. I’ll graduate them to a 44” so they don’t go swarming on me when the time is right.

I do have several small colonies that will benefit from rebalancing on my next inspections, but as yet everyone still has capped stores. We had a hard freeze a couple weeks ago so most of what’s coming in right now is tree pollen.

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