Scottish tracheal mite survey - Bees needed !

[emcampbell]

I have had a great response so far including a number from on here. Still looking for more samples though especially from : Moray, Angus, Fife, Dumfries and Galloway, East Dunbartonshire, West Dunbartonshire, Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire, North Lanarkshire, Falkirk, Clackmananshire, all the Lothians and Stirlingshire !

Keep them coming !

Cheers

Ewan

[The Drone Ranger]

I have heard that too but recently I collected some young bees to put in queen cages with virgin queens I had in an incubator.
I had the bright idea of immobilising them in the freezer and I put a plastic container with the bees in the freezer for 10 minutes.
When I took it out they were stone dead and I did try and revive them without any luck.

We have a PhD student from QUB starting a nosema survey which involves extracting DNA from samples.
I have to collect a sample of 50 older bees from 4 different colonies every month for him.
His instructions were to put the sample tube in the freezer and then cover them with ethanol once dead.
he even supplied a litre of ethanol but I have not made any cocktails with it yet.

Best get some hardy hybrids I put mine in a freezer for 24 hours then took them to a microscopy course at Stirling uni.
As the course progressed more and more of them revived and started flying around the room
All they needed was an apidea and a queen and they would have set up home in the lab

[Mellifera Crofter]

... especially from : Moray, Angus, Fife, Dumfries and Galloway, East Dunbartonshire, West Dunbartonshire, Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire, North Lanarkshire, Falkirk, Clackmananshire, all the Lothians and Stirlingshire !

Keep them coming !

Cheers

Ewan

I'm glad Aberdeenshire doesn't feature in your list. It makes me feel a little bit less guilty for not having offered to send you a sample yet - particularly after Drone Ranger's post.
Kitta

[Jon]

Best get some hardy hybrids

LOL
That's heterosis for you. Spawn of the devil near impossible to kill. Must be like a zombie movie in your apiary.

Out of the woodwork or awakened from his crypt, the Drone ranger rides again.
I was looking out for Silver in the car park at the Scottish centenary but you obviously had a more pressing engagement.

[The Drone Ranger]

LOL
That's heterosis for you. Spawn of the devil near impossible to kill. Must be like a zombie movie in your apiary.

Out of the woodwork or awakened from his crypt, the Drone ranger rides again.
I was looking out for Silver in the car park at the Scottish centenary but you obviously had a more pressing engagement.

Busy time of year for beekeeping might log in more during winter but I don't have much more to say without just repeating myself.
Re Centenary I am not a member of SBA now so could spend £30 down the pub instead
Still check out the forum to see what people are saying but I don't post often these days.
Wonder how many tracheal mites have survived thymol treatments interesting stuff

I use IKF from brunel microscopes on the rare occasions when I want to kill a bee or two before taking off their head or abdomen etc.
But it feels wrong -- Bad Karma Tonto

[gavin]

There was a [name deleted in the interests of privacy, but it was only a letter or two different from DL's] in attendance and sporting a name badge. Jon's blurry vision after the excesses of the night before got him excited for a while but there was no Tonto to be seen anywhere so I was always suspicious.

All in the name of science, DL. The freezer treatment just subdues them so that they can meet a watery end in a molecular biology reagant. 20-30 bees in a matchbox should slow down significantly in that time. Yes, I too have had bees coming into life after 24 hrs in a freezer. Bigger numbers of bees in bigger containers can fight the cold for a while, poor souls.

I have my package from Ewan and it is a nice day so maybe I'll be trying it out today if I can find a matchbox or a Rennies or something similar.

Get your request in Kitta - Ewan needs the numbers, especially as tracheal mite isn't that common. Yes, OK, miticides might have cleared it out from much of the East but there could be miticide-resistant types around, or maybe they are not as susceptible as Varroa to some of the treatments. I almost started more east-west speculation there but thought better of it.

[marion.orca]

That's it - dastardly deed completed with a heavy heart, but needs must sometimes. I used a plastic container and just swept some off the entrance where they were nicely warming up in the sunshine, only to go into a cold dark freezer. I got 41 in total, so have put the remaining 11 into the sunshine to see if they possess the same remarkable traits that DR's have after an hour being frozen - I somehow doubt it, but we'll see.

[gavin]

First of my two lots done - I'm doing one set of my own and one from the association apiary. Little cardboard Tesco aspirin box, so it ought to cool quickly in the freezer. They were still walking about and buzzing after 15 min but had gone quiet and looked dead at 40 min. The extra ones started coming back to life after 20 min warming up again.

Bit of a squeeze getting the sample into the tube but with a bit of shaking they ended up more or less submerged.

[Mellifera Crofter]

That was probably not the way to get me to do the 'dastardly deed', Gavin ... Ouch.
Kitta

[marion.orca]

My spare 11 that made it to the freezer, but not the tube, are well and truly goners. So no remarkable powers in my bees. That made me feel really bad after reading Gavins post of his coming back to life, so to rid myself of my guilty feelings, I rescued a Hover fly from drowning in the water butt and gave it a drop of syrup - am I redeemed in the insect world ?