Thomas Gfeller’s Thesis.
Last year, Thomas asked me to proofread his final diploma thesis before it was published during the process of gaining his Swiss Federal Beekeeping Certificate. He recently sent me a hard copy of Treatment-free Beekeeping–A systematic analysis and invited me to share some of it with you. Thomas designed a detailed questionnaire to gather data and capture a picture of treatment-free beekeeping across Europe. I know that some readers took part in this survey some years ago and will already be familiar with Thomas’s work.
I first met Thomas 15 years ago when he was beginning his 25,000 km cycle journey across Europe to meet and interview like-minded beekeepers interested in having honey bees that could cope without varroa treatments. I’d forgotten how Thomas found me, till I was recently reminded that Professor Tom Seeley introduced us. Back then, I was far away from even contemplating treatment-free beekeeping. The idea was fantastical. However, I keep an open mind and a willingness to learn more. The visit from Thomas was the starting point of my own journey.
Having little knowledge of the subject, I didn’t have much to offer Thomas so I took him down to the river Nairn to see a colony of free-living honey bees that I’d been watching for a while. I knew a beekeeper who kept bees in a hollow log so I invited John to join us.
A year later this tree blew down in a storm and was chopped up. The police called me to ask if I could rescue the bees. I’d already figured that the tree was unstable and had a plan to rescue the bees with a team of friends when the weather improved. The weather was foul on the day of the 2016 rescue but the colony survived. You can see our rescue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QaLs4Qwd_E
Back to Thomas, and what happened next. We all had afternoon tea at my place then the rain started. I couldn’t bear the thought of Thomas cycling off south towards Wales and camping under a hedge so I invited him to spend the night here. We talked bees all evening and I was inspired to investigate treatment-free beekeeping. By the time Thomas pedaled off in the morning I’d decided to stop using synthetic varroacides. I’ve stuck with that plan since then, and also collected swarms from free-living colonies so I’m further along the track to having colonies that can better handle varroa.
Thank you, Thomas, for sharing your knowledge and enthusiasm with me back then, and for sharing the following summary with us now. Congratulations on successfully completing your treatment-free journey and gaining your Swiss Federal Beekeeping Certificate.
Thesis Summary.
‘In bee science there is consensus that the invasive mite Varroa destructor, which is now widespread across the globe and originates from Asia, poses the greatest biological threat to the global beekeeping industry. The ectoparasite is considered to be the main cause of colony mortality of the western honey bee Apis mellifera through its role as a vector for deadly viruses, in particular strains of ‘deformed wing virus’ (DWV) and ‘acute bee paralysis virus’ (ABPV).
Since the arrival of the mite in Central Europe in 1985, bee colonies have been treated at regular intervals, initially with synthetic substances and later with organic acids, called miticides, in order to stop the development of mites in a bee colony. The paradigm exists that a bee colony without varroa treatments will collapse within a few months, or at the latest after one or two years, due to exponentially reproducing mites. Treatments have had to be constantly improved and intensified due to the development of resistant mites. The treatment agents have devastating side effects, which have a very negative impact on bee health in a variety of ways. The complexity of detrimental factors, including the varroa mite, has led modern beekeeping into a precarious vicious circle.
All over the world, individual beekeepers have been able to avoid the use of medication in the long term, using various strategies. The result is ‘normal’ beekeeping, with a stable balance between host and parasite. Although the mites are still present in the colony, they cause no, or only minimal, damage.
On the other hand, the bees utilise innate abilities, e.g. decimating mites through targeted biting of limbs and bodies, thus reduce the infestation. Today, these beekeepers enjoy beekeeping as in times pre-varroa.
My diploma thesis systematically summarises information on beekeeping practice, bee hive systems, nectar resources, colony losses, concepts and beekeeping ethics. The results of this report allow the following conclusions:
1. Treatment-free beekeeping represents a sustainable solution to the varroa problem, which can be implemented locally with an appropriate strategy and comparatively little effort.
2. The numerous factors that determine the success or failure of discontinuing miticide use cannot be conclusively defined. Many questions remain unanswered. However, the report leads to certain conclusions.
3. Current beekeeping practices must be transformed into sustainable and future-proof ones. In this respect, the majority of beekeepers who took part in the survey believe that natural solutions and adaptation processes, as well as considerate beekeeping, are essential.
4. The scientific consensus and paradigm that frames varroa mite as the greatest and insurmountable threat to beekeeping resembles a collective ‘blinkered perception’ which urgently needs to be redefined.
A practical implementation proposal by renowned bee researcher Prof. Tom Seeley, together with my own strategy, developed over years of research, seamlessly integrates theory and practice. Finally, a beekeeper portrait summarises survey findings and conclusions.’
Fridolin Hess.
Thomas’s beekeeper portrait gives the history of a mentor, Fridolin Hess, who has been successful since 2010 with his system of treatment-free beekeeping. Fridolin has over 40 years beekeeping experience and lives in Emmental, Switzerland. He keeps around 20 colonies and has an average winter loss of 8%, and variable honey yields of between 1–30 kg per colony per year. Fridolin monitors varroa drop vigilantly and has maintained detailed records for 14 years. He examines varroa under his microscope for damage to body and limbs and his photographs are superb. You can see many of Fridolin’s pictures in the thesis and he has published a biology book full of detailed bee images: https://www.beelistener.co.uk/book-review/anatomy-book-review-queen-attraction-research/
If you’re interested in reading the full survey report and thesis you can contact Thomas at tom.g1@gmx.ch It is expensive to send out hard copy (£41:56) so a donation will be welcomed by Thomas.
Ann, What a lovely story of beekeepers sharing knowledge and learning from each other. Congratulations on your own progress towards VR bees. Interestingly, in the Westerham project, we found low or no correlation with mite mutilation (following grooming). Indeed quite the opposite, and concluded that mites are being damaged when cleaned out of cells and monitoring beekeepers enthusiastically jump to the wrong conclusion (as we did initially🙄). Steve
Hello, Steve. It’s great that you have done all this work and share your experience here for lots of readers to learn from. Thank you. I need to look for uncapping, recapping behaviour and chewed up pupae this season rather than get too excited about mutilated varroa? Ann.
Things are changing. I’ve been to a conference organised by BIBBA today on TF beekeeping. 180 people, speakers like Steve Riley on practical methods to move in this direction. It really felt like TF is no longer a niche interest.
Great to have had you there! Very inspiring to see treating and non treating beekeepers sharing a room with open minds. Thanks for attending and let’s hope it’s a sign of progress to come.
This is reassuring Paul. Thank you for sharing. It sounds like it was a great day. Ann.
I have been privileged to have been given this book together with your recently reviewed book by Steve Riley and have to agree that they are both excellent publications on the subject or TF beekeeping. For me they outline several key points on the subject based on practical experience and beekeeper’s own management plans, desires and, for me, their background information.
In my opinion the best take home points are on monitoring, your location and your local bees.
Briefly, throughout your TF beekeeping experience always monitor you bees for daily mite drop. I do this simply by quickly recording 0, low, medium or high (over 10 per day) on a weekly basis from April to July and then monthly in the winter just by quickly scanning the varroa board. I can confirm hat for some reason my mite drops are always 0 to low now after about 8 years. I can’t say if they are bitten as my microscopy skills are not great but from what I have seen I don’t think that they are biting the mites.
Location and local bees can be grouped as one item for now. To make this work for me I collected swarms locally, within 15Km from some of the many wild/feral Amm colonies around me for which I am lucky. These had been through the bottleneck caused by varroa and have survived for about 25 years before I collected them and I have now started to breed form them to increase their docility and productivity which was reasonably good from Day one.
What I have always thought is that my local drones, who are either form the surrounding resilient colonies or my own, are necessary for the continuation of the traits as with all breeding programs. Having read both books I can now make a good assumption that I was correct in this. I have also read that many of the varroa tolerant bees which have been produced in America including the Promorsky bees, and the ones being bred in Europe do not appear to survive outside their breeding areas, presumably because the desired genes are absent in other areas.
I do not know yet how far my bees can move and retain their characteristics but we hope to find out through the Irish National Apiculture plan over the next few years. My own opinion is that within Ireland where we have unhybridised Amm the traits will continue on. I have many colleagues who have been treatment free for between 12 and 6 years all over the country so it will be nice to think that we have the capability to breed TF bees all over Ireland. This will probably depend on the local bees own management of their traits for becoming resilient so we will wait to see.
Back to my first point, ALWAYS monitor your bees to see if you need to treat them for varroa in the first place.
Hi Alan,
Arrigo Moro and others have been looking at the genetic shifts of varroa mites by geographical region and by co-evolution with mite susceptible and mite resistant colonies. Genotypic changes have been found particularly by colony management cohorts. Aside from adaptation to location and the stresses of long distance movement to new environments detracting from mite fighting ability, could we be forgetting that introduction to a non co-evolved parasite be part of the picture too?
Hi Joe,
I caught on to the local bees and drones early on and I will start to find out now about how any of my bees are doing on the TF front. I had completely over looked the fact that the mites might be evolving differently depending on how the bees are reacting to them. I will push this up the ladder to see if we can look at this in the future
Thank you for all this superb information, Alan, and for taking the time to write about how you monitor varroa and achieve TF status. It is inspiring. Ann.
My pleasure Ann. Let us hope that we can help both the bees and the beekeeper cope with this problem without using treatments.
Wonderful round up Ann and a cracking story. Thanks for reporting on Thomas’s work. I am thankful to have contributed to his thesis and similarly shared a couple of very thought provoking conversations with him over the years.
I have to agree with other commenters that I don’t think mite biting is key to VR but that’s not to say it isn’t part of a honeybees repertoire of defensive behaviours.
As always, a pleasure to have you approach the VR topic with an open mind and promote Thomas’s overall message of a paradigm shift for sustainability and future proofing beekeeping for the benefit of beekeepers AND the honeybee.
Thanks, Joe. It is always good to know that you are out there contributing to all this great work and reading my blogs. I’m a novice on the TF track, but at least I can contribute something by means of the blog platform for sharing good practice. I’ll be sending you a private email soon to ask if you could help someone up here who wants more information on free-living colonies for an environmental degree thesis. Ann.
Wow that does sound interesting. I’m looking forward to it. Joe