LASI Hygienic Queens

[prakel]

Something which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is how well these bees blend in with the background population. It's fine sending virgins out to mate with the locals but if they aint compatible a lot of people are going to be very unhappy with their purchase.

[mbc]

Lassi queens, from the blurb on the website, seem to be open mated. So I suppose there will be a pool of drones flying about in years to come carrying lassi varroa resistance - hardly a bad thing. Its also very easy to churn out hundreds of virgin queens. As Jon says a tenner or less will create a lot of interest

Not sure dead brood cleaning hygiene extrapolates to varroa resistance.

Something which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is how well these bees blend in with the background population. It's fine sending virgins out to mate with the locals but if they aint compatible a lot of people are going to be very unhappy with their purchase.

This is why I think it's quite visionary to offer virgins, as Jon says, producing virgins is a dodle, and mating them in your air space will quickly show how compatible these bees are in your area.
I thought about ordering some, but again as Jon says, £20 for an unmated queen is a bit steep for me, but good luck to them and well done for starting from British stock.

[The Drone Ranger]

If people buy the LASI queens as an alternative to their usual supplier, I suppose that over time some of the hygenic genes will spread - but would they fade away if beekeepers just treated with apiguard and oxalic acid as they had done in the years prior. A better idea might be to encourage local breeding groups to buy a bunch of queens and actively try to continue the hygenic trait.

Introducing virgins is not always successfull; I wonder what percentage will be accepted.

Hi Adam
Hygenic traits won't be affected by thymol or oxalic treatment
They may disappear in subsequent generations due to open mating

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[prakel]

mating them in your air space will quickly show how compatible these bees are in your area.

lol.That it will.

I thought about ordering some, but again as Jon says, £20 for an unmated queen is a bit steep for me

In my opinion there's way too much talk on the net about these unmated queens when they're selling the mated version for £45 each. Virgins; fine if you're buying ten or more and then selecting from that initial pool but I'm seeing quite a few people talking about getting one to 'try them out'. Perhaps I'm way off track but in all honesty I doubt that I could be persuaded to part with £5 for one solitary unmated queen whereas I'd happily invest the £45 and then make a judgement call on whether I like their product.

[mbc]

. Perhaps I'm way off track but in all honesty I doubt that I could be persuaded to part with £5 for one solitary unmated queen whereas I'd happily invest the £45 and then make a judgement call on whether I like their product.

You're spot on, apart from having to wait for subsequent generations to asses compatibility, the most relevant attribute if you're trying to breed lines of good bees by open mating, I've given up on turning the whole drone gene pool on its head, settling for nudging it the right way these days.

[fatshark]

Hi Adam
Hygenic traits won't be affected by thymol or oxalic treatment
They may disappear in subsequent generations due to open mating

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I'm not entirely sure that's the case DR. If the hygienic trait only provided a benefit under selection i.e. the presence of high levels of Varroa, but was otherwise even mildly detrimental you might expect it to be lost if the selection pressure was removed by thymol/OA treatment. I suspect open mating would have a much bigger effect though ...

An interesting comparison is with Apistan resistance of mites. Evidence suggests that this is detrimental in the absence of selection i.e. if you stop using Apistan the deleterious mutation is mildly detrimental and is, over time (~3-4 years perhaps), lost from the mite population. In the absence of resistance Apistan is pretty effective ... perhaps its use should be banned for 3 years out of every 4?

[prakel]

The thing with assessing compatibility is that you need a lot of virgins on the wing to get a fair sample. Anyone can send out a single queen, get an unfortunate combination and then dismiss them as unsuitable (the converse is also true of course).

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If I remember correctly, these queens were being distributed to some of the beefarmers a couple of years ago (or, maybe it was just an idea which never took off). Any information on this -especially with regards to their performance in the field?

[The Drone Ranger]

I'm not entirely sure that's the case DR. If the hygienic trait only provided a benefit under selection i.e. the presence of high levels of Varroa, but was otherwise even mildly detrimental you might expect it to be lost if the selection pressure was removed by thymol/OA treatment. I suspect open mating would have a much bigger effect though ...

An interesting comparison is with Apistan resistance of mites. Evidence suggests that this is detrimental in the absence of selection i.e. if you stop using Apistan the deleterious mutation is mildly detrimental and is, over time (~3-4 years perhaps), lost from the mite population. In the absence of resistance Apistan is pretty effective ... perhaps its use should be banned for 3 years out of every 4?

Whitefly are immune to most garden sprays you get the blighters on various plants notably pelargoniums
Many years can pass without a sniff of permethrine and they are still immune

Some immunities seem to have a greater cost than benefit ratio for the organism and so once the threat disappears the resistance disappears as well

You and I are immune to measles a new born has no immunity usually
If we bred humans for immunity or resistance to measles a lot of them would die

On the other hand a controlled challenge to our immune system in the form of inoculation and we have the required resistance without any deaths

So I feel that the ever present threat of varroa treated or untreated is enough because at the end of the day the bees mostly are overcome by virus not bites

To put that another way a logical response to malaria might be to select for a really thick skin but because the immune system only sees the effect of the bite in the blood it ignores the source and true to fix the infection instead

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[The Drone Ranger]

Would the presence of chalkbrood indicate that your bees are not hygenic
Would replacing her with a lasi queen cure a chalkbrood infection stopping dead larva getting to the spore stage
That might be a better test of hygenic behaviour?

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