A feral bee story

[dickm]

Hi All,
This is not THE feral bee story but it's a good one. I was priveleged to hear Tom Seely in a presentation at our bee club last night. As some of you know he's been tracking some feral bees in a Cornell forest of about a square mile. He was interested in finding ferals in that forest and found some in 1978. In 2000 or so he found 8 and in 2004 6 were still alive though there had been some deaths and replacements. These bees were somewhat isolated from other bees. They had mites.

He set up bait hives and captured swarms and did mite counts. These were 20' up in a tree. No small feat. He carefully raised queens from one of these hives just before the bears killed off the others. There were 3 baits in all.

The question: Did the bees have resistance? the answer? They did slightly worse than the yard bees in a careful, controlled study. The work continues in looking for how these ferals survive, because they do. Hypotheses: Small colonies swarm often; The mites have evolved to be non virulent, i.e. they don't kill off the host. The test was done with "yard" mites.

Lots to think about but these weren't magic bees, at least, so far.

Dickm

[Jim Fischer]

He was interested in finding ferals in that
forest and found some in 1978. In 2000 or so he
found 8 and in 2004 6 were still alive though
there had been some deaths and replacements.
These bees were somewhat isolated from other
bees...

The work continues in looking for how these
ferals survive, because they do.This question has been addressed before, see
this post by Lesli St. Clair from April 2005:

http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=000171;p=9#000 200

[Michael Bush]

>The question: Did the bees have resistance? the answer? They did slightly worse than the yard bees in a careful, controlled study. The work continues in looking for how these ferals survive, because they do. Hypotheses: Small colonies swarm often; The mites have evolved to be non virulent, i.e. they don't kill off the host. The test was done with "yard" mites.

Were they put on large cell foundation, small cell foundation or allowed to build their own comb?

My expectation would be they would crash on large cell foundation. Just like the AHB in this study:

http://www.funpecrp.com.br/gmr/year2003/vol1-2/gmr0057_full_text.htm

http://www.oddernettet2.dk/Biavlerforeningen/Varroa%20og%20cellest%F8rrelse.pdf#search='AHB%20E HB%20cell%20size'

[dickm]

The queens were not put on small cell either in the bait hives or the test colonies. Bait hives were on drawn comb. Queens were "paired". A queen from his Carnie yard and a feral queen were put in empty hives side by side. Each hive was given 2 frames of infected brood from the same "yard" hive, then left alone. There were 6 tests. ie.12 hives. No bees were transferred, just queens, so no crashes. No signifigant difference but the feral queens were slightly worse on the graphs. He related that he was severely disappointed. He agreed with my input that we may end up breeding mites that don't kill the hosts ie. reproduce slower, and putting them into the equation. After all, we did breed fruit flys that were sterile and dumped them into the world to copulate thereby reducing the population of fruit flies. It's cheating but it works.

What would it do for commercial beekeeping if it were known that smaller colonies that swarmed often were better able to resist mites? Food for thought.

Dickm

[chief]

I'm not on either side of the whole feral bee and small cell argument but this sounds like a very inconclusive and flawed test to me. Does he have some sort of proof that the bees are feral? Does one hive of feral bees truly represent all the feral bees that may be scattered across America? Does one hive of feral bees truly represent all the feral bees in his area? Probably not. Has he tested enough hives to make these tests statistically significant? It may be true that you can say that the bees he raised from one captured feral queen did poorly with the mites but I have not been shown that all feral bees do poorly with the mites. All I’ve been shown lately is that mites suck (in more ways than one). I wish there were more accredited published reports about such things that gave more hope.

[dickm]

The test is small. Don't we have to start somewhere? I don't see any flaws. The bees you could always argue about but he's been watching them go in and out of knotholes for years. No one claims that they represent all the feral bees in the world. I'd like to read about other studies that were done as carefully. Does anyone know of any?

Dickm

[Aspera]

I don't think its cheating at all to breed less virulent mites, provided they outcompete the pathenogenic ones. It seems like an elegant solution to a difficult problem. If you have to have critters, they "mite" as well be friendly.

[BjornBee]

I agree that most ferals are not ferals. And many collecting bees use the term to distinguish a level or quality of bee, instead of using the term to just simply imply they caught an "unhive swarm".

I really think that these discussions blurr the facts and many possibilities that are out there. As an example...

Small cell users suggesting that all bees not on small cell will crash. Do the studies posted suggest this? No. It points out that fewer mites will be raised in smallcell comb. Does the study suggest that smallcell bees will not have problems with mites? No. It is pointing out an advantage. Some will actually add to the study by using terms like "crash" when the study does not use this term or conclusion.

Does small cell give you an advantage in lower mite counts. Yes. We have known that culling drone comb, using full sheets of foundation and the use of plastic foundation limits the area that bees can make larger cells on the edges of the frames, all give advantages to lower mite counts. Do screen bottom give you an advantage? Do we discredit those who do not use them?

Studies indicating less mites raised on smallcell should be kept in perspective. Many times it is used to discredit other aspects of beekeeping such as genetic and hygenic bees. Will hygenic bees be even better off on smallcell? Probably. But that should not be used to discredit or somehow imply that all bees will "crash" if not on smallcell. There are certainly bees out there surviving on comb not smallcell.

I really think that the word feral should be scratched from labeling bees. There are certainly enough beekeepers out there keeping bees successfully on smallcell, not on smallcell, and everything in between, that some studies could be done on the strains of bees, without the controversial "feral" bee blurring the information and research.

One study I did this year was a feral(I know) bee study at one of the state parks here in Pa. I chose a park isolated from beekeepers and placed swarm boxes around the perimeter. Using starting strips, old comb, and swarm lures(bought from naturebee...hey wait a minute...maybe that was the problem....just kidding). The goal was to catch and then track back to the parent colony and genetically test the bees. The results...not one swarm caught. (And to think of all the beekeepers catching all those so-called ferals)

The other experiment was to have side by side tests with different strains of bees placed on different comb and colony configurations. To accomplish this test, starting out the bees at the same time was important. Of the six breeders supplying bees for the study, one supplied on time, and the rest were from a few days late to a few months late, with one refunding money after three months. Needless to say this study crashed.

At least I didn't spend as much money as I thought. smile.gif

In Nov, if the weather cooperates, I will be going with a group of "bee trackers". We hope to mark found colonies in some isolated areas of the forrests, and then return in the spring. Hopefully we will find something.

[db_land]

Conclusion: I think we are in the midst of bees and mites adapting to one-another - it's just a matter of time.

Anecdotal observations:
1) The number of swarms seems to be increasing,
2) but the size of swarms is decreasing
Swarm pickups and removals doubled in 2005 over 2004. Most swarms were in the 2 lbs range.
3) Queen supercedures seem to be more frequent
4) "Feral" bee colonies act different: smaller clusters, rapid population build up and decline, swarm even when they have lots of space.
5) The intense flying probably loses most, perhaps all but a few, of the mites accompanying the swarm.
6) The most virulent mites die with the bees in collapsing colonies.

All of this implies that "feral" bees are self-selecting for many of the characteristics of AHB and "feral" mites are becoming more managable by the bees. At some point a balance will be achieved between mite infestation levels and bee colony viability.

As beeks can we proactivly help this process? Interruption of the brood cycle is an obvious mite control measure. Maybe we need to cage the queen a few days and shake out all of the bees at least a mile away. Impractical, but is there some other way we can achieve the same result?

:cool:

[Aspera]

Interruption of the brood cycle is SO obvious, I think that many people forget that it has nearly a 100% efficacy and that it is safe, and usually cost effective. Not to mention, it is the most effective form of swarm control that I have used. Likewise, I believe that caging the queen, without doing anything else will reduce mite loads. As for feral bees, the name implies exactly what they are: human selected bees no longer under human care (possibly free for 5 min, possibly free of human intervention for 20 years).

[Robert Hawkins]

Do we have any proof or real indications that mites fall off of flying bees? anybody?

Hawk

[Michael Bush]

>Do we have any proof or real indications that mites fall off of flying bees?

Not that I know of.

[Robert Hawkins]

Rats!

It sounded like a proven fact and I don't think I believe it. Once again I was looking forward to beeing proved wrong. Anybody gets some evidence, i think it might change a lot of our varroa management.

Hawk

[db_land]

Hawk, my apologies if my statement: "The intense flying probably loses most, perhaps all but a few, of the mites accompanying the swarm." came across as a proven fact. I was only speculating. I have counted mite drops after hiving swarms and the numbers are 0 to 1 or 2 mites a few days afterwards. Assuming some swarms issued from mite infested colonies (either feral or domestic) there must be some explanation for why they are virtually mite free. It could be that all of the mites are on house/nurse bees that don't depart with the swarm or that the mites mostly fall off while the swarm is outdoors (clustering and/or flying). There could be other explanations.

I think brood cycle interruption (for at least one full cycle) could be a very effective mite control, but like I said in another thread I don't think it goes far enough. The next step is to remove mites from the bees by treating or some other method. :cool:

[Robert Hawkins]

Landman, I just got my hopes up that shaking out the hive would clean the mites out. Down deep I knew it wasn't true. This thing has us grasping at straws.

The varroa mite doesn't get far from the bee that it lives on. So when the Bee exits the brood chamber, it becomes a nurse bee. That is still in the brood nest. When the mite is ready to reproduce, it goes inside a brood cell. Then exits on a newbee that becomes a nurse bee.

Foragers can, of course, have mites but most of the mites life cycle revolves around the brood nest so that's where they are. On the young bees. Young bees have never flown. So flying bees don't have as many mites for a different reason.

I agree completely that interupting the brood cycle is a part of a good IPM but won't do it all.

Hawk

[db_land]

If the interruption starts just before the flow and ends just after the flow (about 6 weeks in NC) all the the bees will be "old" and all mites phoretic. Btw, how old are "young" bees? Arn't the bees that depart in a swarm mostly young bees?

I guess I'll have to do some experiments next season to determine how well mites hang onto flying bees. :cool: