the only types that think that animals of any breed are dependent on us to survive, are the same people who believe that humankind have all the answers!!! if we worked with others (both Hymen & Animal) you would find that the earth would just go about its business of moving round the sun and give heat, cold, water when its needed....
its only when we think we know better --- I for one have seen that when nature wishes to take back it will -
So with regard to Honey bees it is only since that we have been trying to control them to get more honey from them that problems started - think about it we rob them of there winter food (with all its extra bitsfor there survival) and give them sugar - just like we do with children --don't feed them veg, meat, dairy just give them processed sugar in a number of diffrent forms
sorry for the rant (but I believe strongly that we (people) are the cause of the majority of ills in both the animal and our world - and it is time to be honest that we don't know all the answers
You don't have to rob them if you don't feel like it ..you could for instance leave a full super on all hives but this will lead to swarming and not only losing half of the hives bees & a lot of the honey in one go it will keep on halving till there is just enought to carry on often issuing out six or more swarms .., if those bees are varroa infested or sick in any form you'll most likely lose the hive and it will be robbed out . Let alone bee keeping is not quite all it is made out to be.
The old Skep idea was OK for a while but they did suffer foul borrd and EFB ...just adding more skeps on top of the main one , slipping a queen excluder ring in the second skep and leaving the two lowerer ones for overrwintering the swarm .
Apparently if it was timed correctly the hive would requeen naturally and it would not swarm the next year.
This is what apparently led Snellgrove to develop his Snellgrove board for hives but it does take a bit of playing around to get used to it and a bit of courage to use it on all your hives. in one go .
My mate steve & I played with all sorts of ideas to see what worked best for us with the minimum amount of work for the maximum return of investment . Steve Huber ( a Canadian ) gave us some great ideas .
We checked all hives every tenth day and if queen cells were present , snufffed out all except the biggest one as by the time it hatched the old queen was usually dead . Occasionally we snuffed the old queen if she was easily found ...we didn't mark the queens ....far too much trouble .. just look for what is normal in a hive and she was easily found .We never purchased imported or bred queens and we always fed heavily with sugar syrup and thymol plus a bit of citric acid to start breaking it down ...all year round as well as treating for varroa at the specified intervals with the correct number of strips per hive .
All our wax came off out own meltings ... I made an electric stainless steel easy bee to melt all the comb that was not used for cut comb . We only ever ran a small bead of wax made from cappings along the top bar as a starter strip for the comb and let the bees do the rest at the expense of making honey .
Eventually we made six frame sixed inserts so we could take out a full one and slip in a prepared empty one .
I made simple cutter to cut out all six combs in one go and slip the comb into the melter a then slipped the frames into a steamer cabinet made out of an old steel locker to clean them off it off and sterilize them .
Prior to the varroa reaching us in 1994 we rarely lost a hive ,nd once it was with us we dreaded the keepers who didn't use it or decided that they would only use half doses ..it was not long before treatment resistant varroa arrived on the scene and started to knock out a few of our apiaries .
We didn't suffer from chemical posioning as far as we know , we did get hit by two inch long hornets a couple of times before we put smaller sixed mouse guards on the hives or used blocking bars but usually the ten day inspection sorted that problem out .