Guilfordbeekeepers.org

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One on Making sense of Medications!


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Medication = weaker bees, stronger pests. This is not just a beekeeping problem, we have seen the same dynamic in agriculture and human medicine. It seems to me that medication is a dead end serving only short term goals and delaying the evolution of stronger bees while at the same time hastening the evolution of stronger pests and diseases. Beekeepers have the opportunity, if not the responsibility, to breed stronger bees. With the increased availability of resistant queens, queen-rearing techniques, and more easily (physically) managed hive designs, beekeepers should be able to manage their stock without relying on dangerous or unproven chemicals. Nature's way is for only the strong to survive and advance their genetics to the next generation. Does that no longer hold true? Just sayin'....

You made the same point in another post. I disagreed with you then and still do. We imported bees to the U.S. We imported pests they were not exposed to. We have the ability to treat and allow the bees to adapt to the new threats. Don't we have some obligation to remedy the ills we have brought forth?

Are you practicing the same approach for yourself and your family. Are you avoiding all medications and supplements as well as processed foods? Are you prepared to let nature take its course with your own family when reasonable steps to protect life and health are available?

DITTO what Jacobs said.

Have you not spent even one dollar on medical for you or your family in the last 5 years? If not, then you might be credible. Otherwise, you say one thing and do another.

1) People are not bees. To speak of improving the genetics of humans is to travel the path of eugenics which leads to the darkest places in human history.

2) Medication is not adaptation. Medication is outside intervention in the normal process of evolution. The strong survive and the weak fail. Artificially supporting the weak just leads to inevitable failure when the support is withdrawn.

3) Medication - and pesticides - only strengthen pathogens. Diseases develop resistance to medications to the point that hospitals harbor some of the most virulent germs there are - they have evolved resistance. Roundup-ready crops allow ever increasing amounts of herbicides to be dumped on our farmland to combat increasingly resistant weeds, and on and on.

4) Look at the feral bee population. It is there that beekeepers can demonstrate any sense of responsibility they may have. The wild population - un-medicated - will become resistant, eventually. A few colonies will evolve hygienic behaviour or some other genetically driven mechanism to deal with Varroa mites. If successful, it will take tens of thousands of years in a more or less stable environment. More than likely far too slow in our rapidly changing environment.

5) What to do? Medication and use of pesticides in a bee hive makes sense only as a short term strategy to protect the keeper's investment, although the products of the hive may well become contaminated in the process. That will not sit well with increasingly health-conscious consumers. Long term survival of the honeybee (and the honey market) comes down to evolution and it is there that we humans do have a role. We have the ability to speed up evolution by the use of selective breeding. We can and should breed bees that are "naturally' resistant to pathogens. Moreover, and this will be heresy to some, we should be willing to release these resistant bees back to the wild. Bees are not the exclusive domain of honey sellers and crop pollinators, they have a critical role to play in nature.

6) Therefore - if you care about bees, if you feel a sense of responsibility to care for your bees beyond their ability to generate cash or honey for you, you will focus on queen rearing from your more resistant colonies and you will requeen from resistant stock any colonies that require constant medication to survive. That, in my opinion, is simply good management.

We find ourselves living in an era where change is happening at an ever increasing rate, whether we want it to or not. We must come up with new strategies, question conventional wisdom, and move from being at odds with the dynamics of nature to a position of cooperation. Or we will share the fate of the bees.

Bees are living organisms, same as humans. A small amount of pest or disease can be resisted and the resistance can be increased. A large amount in the beginning will kill the host before it can build that resistance.

If we introduce new pests and diseases to our bees, we should assist them in fighting a large influx of the pest/disease until they can build that immunity

We treat for smallpox, to keep the person alive until he develops his own immunity to the virus. We should treat the bees the same way.

Yes, treatments should be considered temp. steps to use until genetics can take over, but if the bees can't stay alive long enough to develop resistance, immunity will never be accomplished. It takes both, not "just" treatments, and not "just" breeding genetics.

Just found out my second and last hive is dead. Plenty of stored honey still left. I never treated any of the three I have had since starting this experience 2 years ago. So what has this taught me? It might not be possible to keep bees without some sort of medication. I think Wally’s thoughts are correct it takes both treatments and breeding genetics. I can tell you that in my limited experience as beekeeper that doing nothing does not work as I am now 0 for 3. I am so discouraged by it all that I may be giving this up. Can’t keep buying new packages and nucs every spring.