Some people like their mizzle.
Some people like their mizzle.
what the heck is mizzle ??Originally Posted by Jon
What falls from the air and hangs in the sky and clings to your garments anywhere in the West of Scotland or indeed many parts of the island of Ireland.
There’s a serious debate taking place amongst the Orkney beekeepers at the moment about protecting our varroa free area. Legislation and education are seen as the way forward. Personally I think legislation will be a waste of time and effort. We all know what happened when varroa was first discovered in England back in 1992, lines were drawn on maps and statuary infected areas were declared. Legislation didn’t stop the spread of varroa and once it jumped the Caledonian Canal the Scottish government gave up on it completely. While I believe Andrew Abrahams has had success with the status of his Colonsay bees, Orkney doesn’t fit the same mould. Our Islands are spread out and with a population of 20,000 we have large numbers of people moving in and out the whole time.
Educating potential beekeepers and those intending to bring bees to Orkney about our varroa free status has been successful so far, but it will just take one beekeeper who doesn’t know or doesn’t care and varroa will arrive here by the back door.
The weather here in the past week has been windy and cold, foggy and cold, rainy and cold or a combination of all three I would stick with Hawaii.
Misleading article promoted on the forum front page
Hi GrizzlyThe news this morning has it that Dwarf Wing Virus is the world-wide silent killer of bees,spread by Varroa.There is no known treatment and infected hives would be located and dealt with ???.
You are right to put a whole lot of questionmarks to this article.
The first time I saw DWV was more than 20 years ago in Austria, and it was never a problem worth worrying about, except that it indicated that varroa treatment was needed.
The fact that it is now hyped as the cause of the bee decline just shows that anything seems to be good enough at the moment to distract from the real reason of the worldwide bee problems, the systemic neonicotinoid pesticides.
Unfortunately not everybody here is prepared to question these media hypes, some people even seem to want to reinforce them:
Gavin for example has left his position as admin again to cut and paste the whole BBC article right on the front page of the forum!
Not only did he take it on without questioning the message, he even changed the more benign title of
'Honeybee virus: Varroa mite spreads lethal disease'
to the much more misleading
'Honeybee problems explained'.
I pointed this out in a comment to the article, but my comment was made invisible nearly immediately.
How could it be, that the scores of scientists who investigated CCD and other bee problems should not have noticed huge amounts of bees with deformed wings?
How should bees with deformed wings have disappeared from their hives and left just an empty box behind, as they obviously can't fly?
We cannot allow misleading media hypes like these to distract from the real reasons of the bee problems any longer. The more of us object to this type of misreporting the better.
Maybe Gavin wants to explain what he had in mind when he posted this article so prominently?
Last edited by Stromnessbees; 09-06-2012 at 06:37 PM.
Doris. Go and read the paper. You have completely misunderstood the point of it.
The main finding is that when varroa is introduced to a new area, it vectors a single one of the variants of DWV which comes to predominate - at the expense of the other variants. There are many variants of DWV and the one which the varroa mite facilitates happens to be the variant which causes the most damage to bees. This study documented how the virus population changed over a couple of years and how it differed between islands which have mites and islands which do not have mites.
Re. Misleading article promoted on the forum front page
I have read the article and understood fully what it is about.
What I am pointing out is the misleading presentation of the article on the forum front page.
Furthermore I agree with Jimbo who pointed out that this research could have easily been done in the UK, thereby saving a lot of money that could have been used to investigate the real bee problems.
Last edited by Stromnessbees; 09-06-2012 at 06:36 PM.
Just a quick thought, other than when I've taken the roof off I don't think that I've ever seen a bee fly out of a hive.What I have seen are bees walking to the exit and then flying from the hive.
EDIT: on 8th July 2012.
I wrote, a month ago, "and then flying from the hive" to which, perhaps I should have added "...or continuing to walk from the hive because they can't fly.." perhaps my post was just too subtle?
Last edited by prakel; 08-07-2012 at 02:41 PM.
[QUOTE=Stromnessbees;11464]
How could it be, that the scores of scientists who investigated CCD and other bee problems should not have noticed huge amounts of bees with deformed wings?
How should bees with deformed wings have disappeared from their hives and left just an empty box behind, as they obviously can't fly?
QUOTE]
The deformed wing's caused by the virus I believe are only the accute tip of the iceberg (the only bit beekeepers can easily diagnose)and most bees with dwv appear normal, I may be wrong and cant find a reference to back this up, but I believe most of the damage caused by dwv goes unseen.
MBC. That is correct and it is mentioned in the paper if you have access to it as opposed to just the press cuttings or the abstract.most bees with dwv appear normal
So where in the uk have you got the equivalent of the situation in Hawaii where you can compare populations of bees on 4 islands, two without varroa and two with varroa introduced at an exact known point in time so you can compare how the bee virus populations differ between the two populations and monitor the changes longitudinally. This was a unique chance to study the initial impact of varroa on bee viruses and the changes the mite induces.Furthermore I agree with Jimbo who pointed out that this research could have easily been done in the UK, thereby saving a lot of money that could have been used to investigate the real bee problems.
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