2011 varroa levels

[Adam]

How much do other bees/beekeepers contribute to your own varroa levels?

My guess is that 'third party' bees will cause varroa to move from apiary to apiary over time - as has happened of course - but I would not have thought that a few extra varroa mites entering the hive on the backs of drifting bees would tip the balance so that a varroa tolerant hive then becomes susceptable.
Unless there are different strains of mites - more clingy ones perhaps.

More likely is that varroa levels were building up slowly and only became noticable after a certain period of time.

You do read of people saying that they "haven't got varroa" and then find out their colonies have dwindled to next to nothing or died over winter due to varroa.

[Adam]

Alan Teal said much the same thing in an Email to me a couple of years ago when I suggested the SBA mag was leading beekeepers up a blind alley by printing so many articles suggesting non treatment was a route to resistance.

Things went from bad to worse with a certain contributor encouraging the release of swarms which once they were feral bees would breed resistance ????
How the -### is that supposed to work ??
You can't keep them alive in a protected environment but they are going to become super bees left to their own devices ?

It did happen with rabbits and myxy. In that the disease - imported from abroad deliberately to reduce the rabbit polulation - killed off 95% of the population of rabbits. They now don't nest in warrens much as they used to so they changed ther behaviour and some that were lease susceptable bred and produced rabbits that can now cope with myxomatosis. Its sad to see them in the countryside with bulging eyes but at least they are there to eat our bedding plants and carrotts. Thankfully numbers are increasing as they are genetically getting more resistant.

You could argue that if honeybees were able to cope with varroa unaided, they would have done so already as there were ferel colonies before varroa invaded our shores.

I have written this before as advice from a Master Beekeeper near me. He simply says "If you don't treat your bees for varroa they will die". Can't be plainer than that.

[The Drone Ranger]

Adam I live in the country about 2 miles from where I was born I'm 58 now.
when I was 4 years old they found me holding my new pet rabbit it was a wild one blind and dying from Myx
Every three years or so I watch the rabbit population collapse again its a cycle of population growth and disease
This year there are lots of infected rabbits again
Rabbits don't learn other than possibly to avoid the really sick ones.
After 54 years of breeding they still don't have real resistance let alone immunity.
If we killed off their fleas the disease would disappear though.

Thats why your right the varroa have to be killed

[Jon]

Les Bailey "Infectious Diseases of the Honey Bee" recognised hygienic behaviour exits but says that it is a recessionary trait.

They beg to differ with that statement in other quarters but you may get one of the geneticist geeks to adjudicate re. who is correct.

Are the genes for suppressed mite reproduction dominant or recessive?
The VSH trait is thought to be controlled by more than one gene, just how many is uncertain at this point. These genes are neither dominant nor recessive. They are what is called "additive" which simply means that the more of them that are present, the more strongly the trait will be expressed. This works in favor of beekeepers since a queen with VSH genes can mate to any drones and still have the trait expressed in her colony enough to reduce the mite population. So naturally mated queens produced from pure VSH breeders are mite resistant.

http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/vsh.html#anchor107505

[Jon]

I think the combination of autumn treatments and OA might have more to do with it. I've not applied a winter OA treatment for the past two years and we're definitely starting to see the mite counts increasing. Yes Thymol knocks a good number of them down, but this year is the first that we've seen colonies showing signs that they aren't coping very well with the varroa.

I have done apiguard followed by oxalic for two years now. My mite drop this time is far lower than 12 months ago so I think there must be another factor, maybe the cold winter and longer broodless period as Jimbo suggests.

[Neils]

I have done apiguard followed by oxalic for two years now. My mite drop this time is far lower than 12 months ago so I think there must be another factor, maybe the cold winter and longer broodless period as Jimbo suggests.

Is it too optimistic to think that it might also be partly down to increased awareness amongst the beekeeping community. Anecdotally during the IBRA conference it was suggested that the re-infestation levels from outside apiaries could be considerable, especially when treatments aren't being co-ordinated. Even in the time I've been keeping bees I've seen a marked increase in the amount of coverage and hence level of activity from beekeepers taking a more (pro)active stance in their IPM schemes.

I concede at the moment we could take any number of possibilities, chuck them in the air and pick one that we like the sound of. This year I've seen my mite numbers skyrocket. Is it that I haven't treated with OA (so why a problem now and not last year when I treated my colonies with apiguard in the spring again as I did last year)? I've just got a generation of queens particularly susceptible to varroa and related conditions? The no treat crew a few hundred yards away? More colonies on the apiary giving the varroa more colonies to reproduce in? A combination of everything?

[Jimbo]

In our association our Oxalic acid treatment is co-ordinated and has been for the last 3 years. I know that every member treats within a two week period as we make the Oxalic acid in bulk and distribute the required number of doses free as a service to our members. There are no beekeepers in our area who are not members of our association that we are aware off and there are no 'No treat people' so re-infestation would not be a problem. This year some people are seeing low drops with there preferred Autumn treatment but other's are seeing high drops. We suspected varroa resistance at first but some colonies were treated with thymol or apiguard where there is no reported resistance. The same was seen with Apistan strips some colonies gave low drops and others high drops. My money is still on a weather effect

[The Drone Ranger]

They beg to differ with that statement in other quarters but you may get one of the geneticist geeks to adjudicate re. who is correct.



http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/vsh.html#anchor107505

Hi John
The difference is Glen apiaries sell queens
Les Bailey was a scientist researching bee health
Line breeding can fix any trait.
They sell Cordovan coloured queens
That's recessionary and can't be fixed in open breeding either

[The Drone Ranger]

Jimbo
Predicting the total drop is hard to predict, I hope you are right, certainly if you all treat together you will have good data but could log the whole period to get a full picture.
Some of the drops in this table of my hives might were a surpriseScreenshot.jpg

[Jon]

Hi DR.
I know they sell queens by the thousand but in general the information about bee breeding and be genetics on that site seems to be very accurate.

VSH behaviour is a relatively complicated trait so I am not in the least surprised that it might involve several genes.
If you see the behaviour in all the daughters of VSH queens it is unlikely to be a recessive trait.
What year did Bailey do his research. It could have been superseded by more recent work.