Varroa Destructor Paper

[camero7]

This is the best paper on Varroa Destructor I've read. It will make me change some of my treatments and assumptions on this mite.

http://www.circlesevenhoneyandpollin...estructor.html

[Rick 1456]

Hard read for "layman". (no offense to anyone) It answered a lot of my questions and concerns. told me I'm doin some things right, some things that i should be aware of. Bottom line seems to be,,,we just do not have the answers,,,,mostly direction. Gota start some where.
Thanks for the post.

[Rick 1456]

Doesn't it make sense, that there is no answer? The solution is, there is no one solution. Amazing grasp of the obvious again. There are so many things that can "play" into this. How does any one isolate one thing? Research hasn't gone that far yet. Getting close maybe. I always wondered about the Hygenic test. Killing brood to see if the bees would remove it. It tests to see if bees will remove dead brood. The mite doesn't kill the brood,,,am I wrong?
Hope this stimulates others to read the article in it's entirety for comment.
Thanks

[TxFirefighter]

The one thing everyone needs to realize. These things are here to stay...in my mind..the only true way to deal with them is to quit treating for them and let the survivors survive..the non survivors die.

[Solomon Parker]

I'm with you TX. By treating, we are allowing for wimpy bees and beefy mites. Treating very literally selects for the strongest possible mite. And an animal which has such a short reproductive period has a high capacity for adaptation just like bacteria. The only real and permanent solution is to stop treating altogether. And no one needs to say it won't work, I've been doing it for nine years. It is very possible, yet somewhat painful. That's life.

[Rick 1456]

thank you thank you thank you

Rick

[rkereid]

The one thing everyone needs to realize. These things are here to stay...in my mind..the only true way to deal with them is to quit treating for them and let the survivors survive..the non survivors die.

Yep!!

[camero7]

I have over the last 3 years, tried some hives with non-treatment. Just lost a pretty good hive I didn't treat in the last couple weeks, even in this mild winter. Bottom board is full of mites. My treated hives are doing quite well. I still have a couple of no treat hives alive. I will take them through another winter and, if they survive, graft queens off them. However, my experience is not good and I'm not hopeful. I find that 2 years is the time that no treat hives collapse. One can usually get them through the 1st year and start to feel confident.

I agree if one has 1 -10 hives it's probably possible to have no treat hives. However, when you get over 50 and do pollination and try to make money off them I don't see it as a possibility. I have only queened with queens from no treat producers and still need to treat. I also think that - if the paper is correct - and such a large % of the mites are in the brood that even the survivors are damaged more than most beeks realize by the mites. Couple that with the virus that the mites vector, throw in a little nosema and you have a deadly cocktail for the hive. Because of the possibility that so many mites are in the brood, I have lowered my threshold to 1-2 mites in an alcohol wash.

I will continue to treat. This year I will use formic. Last year I used OA vapor. I expect to rotate these methods every year. I do not yet treat for nosema. However, my counts are presently ok.

[BEES4U]

The paper does provide a lot of information!
Does anyone know what a sodium recepter is?

[JohnAllen]

Excellent post - many thanks!!!

[camero7]

The paper does provide a lot of information!
Does anyone know what a sodium recepter is?

Try these:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21377491
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16367782
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11982625

[jim lyon]

Interesting and thorough. A must read for any beekeeper who wants to fully understand varroa. But my cursory reading of it is that it is pretty much a compilation of a lot of previous research and dosent really break any new ground. If Im missing something, as there is a lot of information here, I would encourage someone to point it out.
For those "let them die and breed from survivors" advocates I can only restate my long held belief that the collateral damage is a loss of genetic diversity. What is slowly but surely happening in the industry is many beekeepers are having very good success in dealing with varroa through different management techniques coupled with the properly timed and much safer treatment options now available. It may not make for great headlines for those looking for drama and proof that our bees are dying from this or that but the state of bee health in the US is on an uptick and the current bee supply situation the past two years in California is the "lay your cards on the table" proof of it.

[camero7]

I agree Jim, not much new here, but a lot of things I had not read yet. It's as thorough a review on Varroa as I've read and that's why I posted it. It's difficult to read everything and when something like this comes along it's a goldmine to me.

I notice that nuc requests are starting to dwindle, and coupled with all the hives available in CA I totally agree with your statement about the bee supply.

[Oldtimer]

Best ever article. Much thanks Cam.

And of course much thanks to the folks who actually wrote it, a lot of work and dedication required.

As to the treat / don't treat argument that has been brought up in this thread, one of the issues the paper dealt with is the two main varroa strains present in North America. One being considered "less" virulent and almost a non issue for bees. This less virulent strain is not present in my country, we only have the more virulent one. In my country there are still some areas with no varroa. But for the rest of the country you treat, or you lose the hives. The presence of the two strains in North America may explain why some beekeepers are able to go treatment free, and some are not. Plus is also a plausible explanation why no migratory operations can survive treatment free, the bees are exposed to more mite types.

Like most beekeepers, I'm very interested in finding some way to go treatment free. But mite types are not even discussed in treatment free circles, the information available from these people pretty limited at best, sometimes not going much further than "just do it". Also people who do treat are often demonised, being painted as people who are producing better mites. In fact the mites produced by treatment resistance are better at resistance to treatment, but unlikely to be better at anything else.

The paper gives a lot of useful information, even discussing some of the differences in resistance methods used by cerana, and melifera.

[Rick 1456]

If it was in the article I missed it. How can you find out which specie of mite exists in your hives. It is an excellent point that treatment free success could/does hinge on which specie you deal with. If one had bees that groom, and attack the mite, would matter not which specie seems to me. Creatures are amazing. We evolve a bee that will do that, the mite will evolve a way to defeat it. Hopefully it will be tit for tat. Some days chickens, some days feathers

[Oldtimer]

It's a big paper!

The differing varroa types are discussed on pages one and two.

Information exists elsewhere as to how to determine different mite types, but right now I don't have time to search it for you. There's an Aussie scientist done some good work on it you may be able to find it.

[camero7]

"Japanese/Thailand haplotype
also infests and reproduces on A. mellifera. However,
this haplotype has a more restricted distribution than the
Korean haplotype and is considered less virulent"

[camero7]

Several takeaways for me from the paper.

There is no data that the mite is becoming less virulent.

Older brood cells are more attractive to mites.

mellifera is 2x more attractive to the mites than scutellata

a 7% infestation of winter bees almost always leads to collapse.

parasitized workers forage earlier, have a significantly reduced life span, and a lower return to the colony.

Colder regions have higher mite levels.

Removal of 3-4 completely capped drone combs reduces final mite population 50 - 70%

Up to 90% of the mite population can be in the brood at one time.

[Rick 1456]

Found this in an article:
Varroa destructor resembles V. jacobsoni, with which it was confused until the end of the 20th century. Relative to V. jacobsoni, V. destructor is significantly larger and differs substantially with respect to mtDNA COI sequence, as well as at other genetic loci investigated. Varroa jacobsoni is rarely found on A. mellifera. Only a couple of lineages of V. destructor appear to have shifted hosts from A. cerana to A. mellifera. Varroa destructor now occurs nearly everywhere A. mellifera is found, but as of 2010 it had not yet been detected in Australia.
If the two species were confusing to the experts for years, (taxonomic difference) leaves me out I've given up the idea of writing the book, "Ricks' Guide to Backyard Mite Identification."

[Moccasin]

There are several things that I firmly disagree with in common bee literature. One of them is that Varroa Jacobsonii made a jump and became Varroa Destructor. I know it wasn't given a name until 1999 and didn't start killing bees until the late 80's in the countries that it mysteriously migrated to. Another thing that is never mentioned is not only do they breed in drone cells, but they are mostly carried by drones from hive to hive. Another thing, which is not related, is drone congregation areas. I do not believe that queens fly miles away from their hives to meet with drones in these areas then, fly home. I am certain that queens mate immediately above the hive. The genetic diversity comes from the fact that drones fly frantically for a couple of hours every afternoon from hive to hive. This ensures genetic diversity, not drone congregation areas. This is what carries mites from hives to hives as well. I also suspect Varroa Destructor could be genetically modified.