From: RSBrenchley@aol.com
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2001 04:49:46 EDT
To: BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Hygienic behavior

Dee writes:

> To me this is unnatural and disruptive to a colony and can only serve to
> stimulate cleaning by destruction of damaged combs and larvae that
> have been
> physically killed. It is also quite a different scenario from what the
> varroa in the cell picture is.

I basically agree with this; I've been trying the freezing method, and I
wonder if the bees are reacting to the physical damage as much as the
decaying larvae. As I understand it, hygienic behaviour was first spotted as
a means of resistance to AFB, in which case the ability to remove decaying
larvae would have been exactly what was needed. I've read, for instance, of
someone in the UK who managed to breed bees that were highly resistant to
AFB, as they would strip down infected comb and rebuild it. I'm not sure when this was done; it was before the law required burning of AFB hives.
Regardless of resistance to varroa, which would be a bonus, this would be a
characteristic worth having.

It's only in the last few weeks that I've been seeing much about varroa
in this context. How would we test for the ability to remove a varroa mite?

Regards,

Robert Brenchley,
Birmingham, UK.

RSBrenchley@aol.com