Are Saskatraz bees an answer to colony collapse?

When you know the bees, you can optimize for any dimension among many.

Depending on the needs around our farm, we'd optimize for honey production, for pollen, for pollination services, for bee or queen production among others.

Now, my dad optimizes for joy. A bit of honey to give the grandkids, friends and neighbours. Pollination services for the berry farms (those farmers are his buddies) in that critical time when blossoms must be pollinated or there will be no berries, nukes (what we call fresh new bees with a queen, the nucleus 'nuke' of a colony) for other beekeepers that need more bees, teaching at the local community college.

Sometimes, we go into the bees with no protective gear. If you know the bees, you can do that. There is a sense of calm/zen/awe you get when among the bees that is hard to describe.

All this is to say, it is misleading to think of colony collapse as a problem. Rather, it is a choice some beekeepers increasingly make to optimize other things. Death rates under 10% are quite possible with a different set of choices. We get single digit death rates, even near zero, but getting there gives up a lot of other dimensions.

Bee production itself is so effective that it often makes economic sense to, in effect, stress a colony to death and replace it with a fresh one, rather than give the colony the space or attention needed to make it through.

The economics is clearer if you have dozens or hundreds of colonies. Then, you have to handle them en mass and accept higher losses as a result.

If you are going to hit peak pollination time in Florida, then truck your colonies across the continent to catch the sweet pollination money from California, you are going to stress your colonies far beyond what they can handle and lose a lot as a result. But, the oranges and the almonds will be pollinated and what you make will more than cover the cost of buying fresh new colonies.

Running the bees to burn through them is not a choice I'd make, but I understand the math even as I don't need the bees to support my family.

I've been really curious about maintaining a beehive for honey (and as an interesting project), but the amount of conflicting information online about raising bees in a suburban environment is unreal. Everything from, "You are doomed and also the honey will poison you because there's a rhododendron within 10 miles" to "Everyone should raise honeybees in their backyard! Totally maintenance free infinite honey!"

A lot of the sites are super, for lack of a better term, "woo-woo".

I wish there were more sites that focused on the mechanical elements, broke down the costs and what to expect, and really took you through the bootstrapping process. (Maybe these sites exist and I just haven't found them yet.)

http://www.saskatraz.com/pages/review.htm

The article content does not match the title. The title should have been about the answer to varroa mites, not colony collapse.

It seems that beekeeping has exploded in popularity around here in the last, say, decade or so. Driving around, there's a huge number of tents set up in canola and alfalfa fields to support colonies of Leafcutter Bees.

This is just my anecdotal experience and it may mean nothing, but I was truly shocked by the differences in what I see.

https://beemushroomed.com/

Extracts from certain medicinal mushrooms have been shown to have surprising efficacy against the leading viruses responsible for colony collapse disorder. You can participate in the solution by purchasing and using a simple bee feeder in your own backyard. Thanks to Paul Stamets for figuring this out and providing the means for all of us to participate in the restoration of bee populations.

Save the bees, secure the food supply, and all of us will benefit.

https://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/2019/caring-for-bees/

We also capture around 50 'wild' swarms around town or year - some of these are from backyard hives but many are from well known, well established wild colonies living in trees or houses.

In all cases the wild swarms outperformed Saskatrqz in terms of growth during the summer. But this is almost always the case that swarms outperform packages. We will do mite counts headed into fall and then will have a little bit of information.

Colony loss from mites is over 50% yearly in town so it's #1 cause of death and a big concern for backyard keepers (in all the USA #1 cause of death is winter for backyard keepers, but here we don't have much winter). Varroa is #1 cause of death in industry as well. This is largely a human-made problem at this point.

A local expert (UC Davis) told me that if industry quit treating for mites, 95% of hives would die which would be catastrophic for food. However the resulting stock would bounce back with strong Varroa resistance. I understand that in South Africa they undertook a practical application of the let nature run her course strategy and it worked.

However in the USA at the heart of the big commercial AG industry, it's all treatment, all the time. That mentality bleeds into the backyard culture - the extension program which trains backyard beekeepers statewide teaches that if you don't treat for Varroa then you are a nuisance - the model says that when a hive dies from Varroa it's infected bees don't so die, they abandon colony and move into nearby colonies. I attended a conference once where they compared an untreated have to an atom bomb - the speaker had a huge screen behind him and there was an atom bomb video on loop. After his presentation they were giving away mite treatment strips from a major brand - this was an academic speaker, not an industry rep.

The trouble with treating heavily for mites follow similar models which are well documented and fail: the rather pest gets resistance, the host gets weaker. Here in an small city in AG land where we are surrounded by commercial keepers, we have zero chance of developing local mite resistance. Our good survivor queens mate with drones from treated colonies where the is no selective pressure on bees to grow tolerance and higenic behavior. Likewise those commercial drones are a death sentence for wild bees.

Even so, we continue to have colonies that persist year after year, generation after generation in town, and although most colonies for each year we end up with as many swarms as lost colonies, so break even. Many of my colonies across town count fewer mites than they did a few years ago. I think that in spite of industry, the small pocket of organic keeping going on here in town is having an event. I think as well industry is buying hiegenic queens.

That's all speculation, although more informed than average. Mite resistant queens have been on the market for a decade - Russians, Carniolans, even a breed of blond Italian that was billed as varroa resistant was being sold in this neck of the woods. I tried all of them and lost them all to mites eventually. Before these breeds because available a local professor and breeder had developed an all black bee with reported excellent resistance. Saskatraz are only the lastest and the greatest. Maybe they will be the magic bullet.

What's important is that the hiegenic genes remain in the population. To that end marketing like this when it's backed up by evidence is a positive thing. However what remains the most effective response to varroa is to do little and let nature run her course: let it bee.

It talks about a hybrid bee (Apis melifera) that has resistance to varroa mites. It does not explain how they achieve this resistance and just hints that maybe it is due to the longer legs of this hybrid. Or, they produce more propolis than other bees.

While the article is titled about colony collapse, it talks about a hybrid that is somehow less susceptible to mites. Does not mention neonicotinoids, which mainly cause the colony collapse.