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Pan-European Study finds honey bee survival depends on Beekeeper and Disease Control

12K views 71 replies 14 participants last post by  lharder 
#1 ·
#2 ·
Well, duh!

I enjoyed the reference to Multivariate Poisson Regression Models - I always feel there is something a bit fishy about statistics.

But, seriously, I think we can do a lot better getting information out to beginning and hobbyist beekeepers and counteracting the absurd - though often spread about - notion that you can just throw bees in a box and then "let them be bees" and have any hope of long term success.

Nancy
 
#3 ·
I thought the study kinda indicated that more study was needed to add the real cost of managing hives. It did indicate that the ones with more loss had mechinizims to counter those losses that needed to be studied to find the cost of those mechinisims. It was short term and pointed out that the impact of weather was hard to define as to the impact of the study its self and how that may have skewed the results. The one thing that it did find was sign of disease and mite pressence based on keeping practices but even there reconized the differrence in the resistance of the bees them selves to those things and that all bees were not the same.

I did not see it make any recomendation except on what else to look at with this knowlage as part of the looking.

It seems to be a study that gives something to everyone. Psm1212, thanks for posting it.
Cheers
gww
 
#4 ·
It is the absolute truth and need not be explored, that the loss rates through beekeeping methods that have developed in over 30 years, to the detriment of the bees, have led to the fact that the bees are no longer able without good care to survive.
Therefore it must be our, and the task of the legislation, to redirect beekeeping back to more natural ways more in line with bee nature and to convey it and, especially in Central Europe, to create the conditions in agriculture and nature that support the bees' immune system to deal with brood diseases again.
This approach has already been taken by banning three nicotinoids.
 
#5 ·
Yawn. Another study without context. Take bees that need treating, and put them in the hands of people who aren't good at treating. High losses.

An interesting study would look at the abundance and health of feral bees as a useful surrogate as a canary in a coal mine, in relation to industrial beekeeping and agriculture. Here we will get a a better sense of the resilience of bee population health.
 
#9 ·
Like this one from 2014? Quote from the abstract ... "Samples of forager bees were collected from paired feral and managed honey bee colonies and screened for the presence of ten honey bee pathogens and pests using qPCR. Prevalence and quantity was similar between the two groups for the majority of pathogens, however feral honey bees contained a significantly higher level of deformed wing virus than managed honey bee colonies."

So the feral weren't really healthy I'm afraid.
 
#6 ·
The EU neonics ban is now 5 years old. It appears to be expanding this year to a complete ban, and not just a ban on pollinator-attracting plants. We now need only sort through the data to determine the net effect of the ban and, hence, the tale-of-the-tape on what role neonics has played in the demise of bee colonies. It is done. Neither side of this debate will be able to escape the data. Though we know they will try.
 
#7 ·
The number of bee colonies in europe is rising every year and in 5 years the before 1990 level can be reached.
This higher number in earlier times was not because of mite or disease but because of politics.

This raising numbers today are caused by the hobbyists or sideliners mostly which want to support pollination and sell local honey.
They want to be more natural beekeepers too as one can see with the different "natural beekeeping" projects.

It´s time some losses are accepted and to find scarecrows will be no necessity.
 
#10 ·
Yes. Overall hive counts can, at least partially, be attributed to rising popularity. In the United States, our gross hive counts have been fairly static over the past 20 years.

I think the issue, however, is annual hive loss as a percentage of that count. One would expect the number of annual hive loss (as a percentage of count) to now be lower in Europe after the benefit of the 5 year ban of neonics. If neonics were the problem, wouldn’t you agree that their removal should have a statistical impact on the annual hive loss numbers?
 
#8 ·
The general thrust of this study might also be born out by the American experience.

Back when CCD was a thing, there were several prominant beekeepers claiming high losses and blaming it on various culprits of their choosing. But I can remember some Beesource commercial members stepping up and saying that they, or someone they knew, was keeping bees in the same area without problems.
 
#12 ·
It is logical that the Ferals have higher DWV titers because they are not manipulated. But they seem to be more tolerant than the others.

I have learned from sources who kept bees before Varroa that 10% losses were considered normal. At that time there were mainly production colonies coming from swarming multiplication and artificial swarms for sale.
A big part to have healthy bees in my eyes working with nature.

Today beekeepers have to use a "reserve" strategy or they will loose more and more bees and this is not the non-treated ones alone. If the dark forest honey is harvested, treatments often come too late and the colonies crash.
The commercials then have some nucs as reserve. That to "mite bombs" in late fall.

There are many factors involved in resistance and tolerance, and there are many neonics. All together have never been banned and there are other chemicals that work. The correlations between these chemicals have not been explored much by science.

Lack of diversity of pollen and beekeeping methods are also an issue.

What I see this year is that the dropleg method of spraying is much more in use and that the air spraying is done late in the evening or at night.
Both methods help the bees much.
So it´s getting better for the bees :)

It would be a good thing to have a control of the mite impact and act accordingly, but it must go in the direction of breeding and multiplying the more resistant and tolerant.
Law should forbid to treat prophylactically, to treat colonies which are under a threshold, and this must be a strategy used on all livestock IMHO.
 
#13 ·
It is logical that the Ferals have higher DWV titers because they are not manipulated. But they seem to be more tolerant than the others
Most of the studies point otherwise…

I have learned from sources who kept bees before Varroa that 10% losses were considered normal. At that time there were mainly production colonies coming from swarming multiplication and artificial swarms for sale.
If that was true, the package bee industry would have never taken hold… like the myth of the immortal bee tree it’s a good story and may have been true in an isolated case or 2…….but doesn’t hold up well in daylight.
. “The most importance as far as wintering is concerned, is gradually leading to the practice of only wintering colonies in proper condition; that is, with an abun- dance of young bees, plenty of stores, plenty of pollen reserves and reason- able protection. All other colonies are removed before the winter period begins. This will decrease the winter loss, but it will increase the number of hives that are empty. From our own experience we find thirty-five out of one hundred hives are empty each spring from all causes and must be replaced one way or another."
American Bee Journal, 1947
Written by Gladstone Cale, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Maryland College of Agriculture, Head of Dadant Apiaries
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B5dxtbosHna7YUhiY1MwMGVzYU0
Of note 1947 was the peak year in US colonys

Yawn. Another study without context.
I dissagree 3,00+ apairys, tracking location and mangment across a lot of difrent countrys and enviorments
No boogy man snatching hives
Survival was do to how well the stock was manged
 
#20 ·
Most of the studies point otherwise…



If that was true, the package bee industry would have never taken hold… like the myth of the immortal bee tree it’s a good story and may have been true in an isolated case or 2…….but doesn’t hold up well in daylight.
. “The most importance as far as wintering is concerned, is gradually leading to the practice of only wintering colonies in proper condition; that is, with an abun- dance of young bees, plenty of stores, plenty of pollen reserves and reason- able protection. All other colonies are removed before the winter period begins. This will decrease the winter loss, but it will increase the number of hives that are empty. From our own experience we find thirty-five out of one hundred hives are empty each spring from all causes and must be replaced one way or another."
American Bee Journal, 1947
Written by Gladstone Cale, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Maryland College of Agriculture, Head of Dadant Apiaries
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B5dxtbosHna7YUhiY1MwMGVzYU0
Of note 1947 was the peak year in US colonys


I dissagree 3,00+ apairys, tracking location and mangment across a lot of difrent countrys and enviorments
No boogy man snatching hives
Survival was do to how well the stock was manged
Yes but only in the short term. When varroa is introduced (the real crime and an indictment of modern beekeeping and the movement of bees) a massive die back needed to occur with surviving bees moving forward. This can was kicked down the road with treatment. It still needs to occur, and those who are trying to introduce resistance into their stock will occur losses one way or another.

BTW as a general comment. If you are a person that needs medication to survive, you are not a healthy person. I think the same applied to bees.
 
#14 ·
Many colonies were combined if the hive system allowed it, as it is done today with weak hives.
Packages were done to sustain the numbers.
But I´m only speaking about europe, I don´t know about US, in europe they used the native bees then.

msl
I´m searching for statistics about losses in earlier times in middle europe, you are a fine provider of links, do you per chance know about this if some research was done then?
It´s all hearsay for now.
 
#15 · (Edited)
sadly "losses" seem to be like fishing stories (even in the past)
ie I had 20 weak nucs and combined them to 10 and then lost 5 over winter.. Did I lose 5, 10, or 15 hives? or did I save 5 from certain death. did I gain not lose as I now have more then I did this time last year.

Europe winter 2015/16
Altogether, we received valid answers from 19,952 beekeepers. These beekeepers collectively wintered 421,238 colonies, and reported 18,587 colonies with unsolvable queen problems and 32,048 dead colonies after winter. This gives an overall loss rate of 12.0% (95% confidence interval 11.8–12.2%) during winter 2015/16, with marked differences among countries. Beekeepers in the present study assessed 7.6% (95% CI 7.4–7.8%) of their colonies as dead or empty, and 4.4% (95% CI 4.3–4.5%) as having unsolvable queen problems after winter.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00218839.2016.1260240?af=R

however they go on to say
For the same winter, a pan-European surveillance program, implemented in 17 countries, ascertained winter mortality based on field inspections to range from 4.7 to 30.6% in different countries
and the OP link put it at up to 32%
 
#17 ·
sadly "losses" seem to be like fishing stories (even in the past)
ie I had 20 weak nucs and combined them to 10 and then lost 5 over winter.. Did I lose 5, 10, or 15 hives? or did I save 5 from certain death. did I gain not lose as I now have more then I did this time last year.
This is the reason I've long ago tuned out all the talk about losses. Everyone has their own definition of a loss and what they feel is acceptable. The only things I am certain of are that honeybees are in no imminent danger and there are a lot of politics and potential and pending lawsuits in play beneath the surface.
 
#18 ·
SiWolke: Completely off topic, but I bought some German creamed honey today. It is from a company named Langnese and labeled as “Creamy Country Honey.” Made in Bargteheide, Germany. Not sure exactly how it got to Alabama, USA. Haven’t tried it yet. Know the group?
 
#25 ·
Bergteheide is the seat of the company, where honey is bottled from the EU and Mexico, so it's not local honey, but big business.

select breeder queens and requeening is how you mantian a trait in your yard at a stronger expression then "natural" .
msl,
agriculture and livestock performance still depends much on natural circumstances like the climate or weather and local managements, so there is no silver bullet to success and success might change every year just like nature influences all living things. Maybe not to the same extent if some managements or trait breeding is done but still, nature selects.
 
#21 · (Edited)
When varroa is introduced (the real crime and an indictment of modern beekeeping and the movement of bees) a massive die back needed to occur with surviving bees moving forward
That is certainly one view, but I can't think of one domestic live stock that has been manged this way...
This is not how bee pathogens of manged stock have been over come in the past, and its unlikely that its how they will be overcome in the future.
how was EFB dealt with ?
As queen rearing developed into a large-scale commercial enterprise in the Southern States and Italian queens from Europe were used extensively in the breeding program, a strong, Italian-type bee predominated. Before the end of the 1920’s, however, after years of persistent requeening with southern queens, northern beekeepers largely replaced the black bees with a less nervous, Italian-type bee that resisted European foulbrood.
History of Beekeeping in the United States-EVERETT OERTEL

as you say
In a more natural situation, bees would only perform mite control to the point where they had too. Anything more would be a waste of energy
Nature selects for bees traits to be expressed at the minimum needed, that means most traits are lost quickly in out crossing. This keeps bees flexible and gives them a multitude of options as to what will work best and aloes the species to adapt quickly to change. The flipside is then nature prunes back what dosen't work, to the tune of 60+% a year to maintain the stock. Great for the wild, not so much for a apiary with 20 hives.

It is possibly if we all just stopped mite management, and we all just stopped moving bees loses would settle in the 60% realm. Past that we are going to need to breed from the best so that there offspring trait expression is above the advrage and re queen our hives so our drones are expessing the traits at a higher level... If we don't keep up high pressure the trait back slides toward nature. like many traits we desire, strong mite resistance and others like gentleness, production of excess honey, low swarming, excess colony longevity etc are at odds with wild survival and need the hand of the beekeeper to select and maintain them as they are at odds with natural selection as in the wild they are a waist of energy or a detrimental behavior.
 
#22 ·
The arguements in livestock can be a little simular. Take mad cow diseise and the millions of cows killed to contain it. There were arguements on both sides on whether to vaccinate but then not be able to test for the diseise or destroy the cows. I know it is a bit differrent cause they were trying to destroy a diseise and not make animals strong enough to resist the diseise. The decision of which way to proceed was still a disscussion though and unlike mites or dmw, mad cow diseise could be caught by people. The desision in the end was made based on what was best money wise as far as trade agreements were concerned.

So the bee decisions are in the end money based also and the money so far has said that we don't want the finacial burden of losing a lot of bees in case it makes then stronger. This really sorta fits the study that started this thread where it was mentioned that even the guys that lost more hives has systems for replacement. And like it was mentioned, those system cost need to be studied to see finacially if they are actually worse.
Cheers
gww
 
#23 · (Edited)
Well sort of...maby....
No vaxizine, no cure just stop feeding cow parts to cows and kill off the infected and keep them form entering processing systems and contaminating it... I would say its more like AFB don't feed honey or let bees rob AFB hives and burn them.. like AFB the prions can be viably for decades

The money issue about inishal losses is just the surface argument. What is missed is there are continual high losses that will keep happening if a "natural" path is chosen.
Traits in bees fade, fast witch is why re-queening with select stock after a few year was the gold standard of old
An example form a member here... it came from a time I was a bit more enthusiastic about feral being the golden goose
My BF production hives have averaged 200 lbs, per, for the last two years. 100-150/per, over the decades. Well worth the cost of replacement queens every 2-3 years.
It's probably just dumb luck - nothing to do with superior genetics or not wasting time & resources on feral mutts.
.
select breeder queens and requeening is how you mantian a trait in your yard at a stronger expression then "natural" .
when a honey production trait fades you requeen, what happens when a mite resistance trait fades? you lose the stock if you don't treat and re queen.

despite story's of the "golden" years historic loses were high, especially in the swarm propagation era when selection was much more natural (swarm) and you couldn't make 100 queens from one and requeen your stock (hard to find a queen in a fixed comb hive)
Keeping bees has been, and is now, by the majority, deemed a hazardous enterprise. The ravages of the moth had been so great, and loss so frequent, that but little attention was given to the subject for a long time. Mr. Weeks lost his entire stock three times in fifteen years.
Weeks, in a communication to the N. E. Farmer, says, " Since the potato rot commenced, I have lost one-fourth of my stocks annually, by this disease ;" at the same time adds his fears, that " this race of insects will Become extinct from this cause, if not arrested." (Perhaps I ought to mention, that he speaks of it as attacking the "chrysalis" instead of the larva; but as every thing else about it agrees exactly, there is but little, doubt of its being all one thing.
- Quinby 1853
 
#24 ·
msl
It is a natural way and it isn't, most still pick the best of what they have to make more with. I also, from reading those old guys, seen that losses were big sometimes. Nobody that raises live things can be compleetly risk free no matter what their practices are. I remember from when I was really young where we killed a bunch of cats cause a fox came out during the day and drank from thier water bowl. The cats were not worth taking a chance on waiting to see if they got sick when a fox acts so out of character from how a fox should act and the impact to people could be so bad.
Cheers
gww
 
#27 ·
as you say
Nature selects for bees traits to be expressed at the minimum needed, that means most traits are lost quickly in out crossing. This keeps bees flexible and gives them a multitude of options as to what will work best and aloes the species to adapt quickly to change. The flipside is then nature prunes back what dosen't work, to the tune of 60+% a year to maintain the stock. Great for the wild, not so much for a apiary with 20 hives.

Most mortality with wild bees is a result of competition for nest sites, predation of vulnerable nest sites, or weather exposure also due to poor nest sites. This has been stated before. The 60 percent figure has no relevance if bees are given decent nest sites and protected from bears.

It also flies in the face of some tf keepers who are developing a track record more on the order of 10 to 20 percent. All beekeepers will experience epidemics of one sort or another. We would expect the number of epidemics to be lower if bee movement was slowed down, tf or not.
 
#28 · (Edited by Moderator)
The 60 percent figure has no relevance if bees are given decent nest sites and protected from bears
The whole point of amimal hunsbdry and slective breeding is to over come those losses
Decent nest protected from bears...Seeley 2017

(the following chart can be found in: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-017-0519-1#citeas )



43% loses on hived swarms, 21% on established hives, figger 75% of the cast swarms are a loss.......
spread out and not clustered witch loweres epidemics hence losses... and not asked to do anything but live while being kept in small hives and alowed to swarm, likely lowering stresses and losses.
The issue is by providing shelter and care, poor genetics are propped up and spread, till pruned back by a crash or epidemic.

We would expect the number of epidemics to be lower if bee movement was slowed down
agreeded, and then some serious work on bond type selection could happen..till then any progress is wiped out in a sea of fresh imported genetics.
Mass importation of resistant stock and persistent re queening over many years is the likly answer... that is what it took and to replace the black bee and bring in EFB resistance in the US

It also flies in the face of some tf keepers who are developing a track record more on the order of 10 to 20 percent.
it dose not, you misinterpret my statement.
Me-
It is possibly if we all just stopped mite management, and we all just stopped moving bees loses would settle in the 60% realm. Past that we are going to need to breed from the best so that there offspring trait expression is above the advrage and re queen our hives so our drones are expessing the traits at a higher level
The point was natural section creates natural loss rates
If you have less then natural loss rates(propping up weak stock) there is less section presure and the stock weakens, creating a colaspic and recovery cycle

As we have noted "losses" are a subjective and usess subject... so a "track record" as you say is taken with a grain of salt, there are many TF keepers out there whos numbers don't add up....
Mike B, catching 30-40 swarms a year + makeing splits, only loosing 15 hives a winter and his numbers stay static around 100 hives.....
Sol P seems much the same

The TF keepers who are truly doing well on a large scale and have repeatable results in mutpul areas share one trait. Grafting from highly selected breeder queens...This alows for strong section pressure threw re queening, the removal of weak genetics, or genetics that would produce weak stock in an out cross with out the loss of hives.

Mites aside we know what "natural" beekeeping looks like, and what results it will likely have, there is a reason such thing were left behind in the 1800s.
 
#29 ·
The TF keepers who are truly doing well on a large scale and have repeatable results in mutpul areas share one trait. Grafting from highly selected breeder queens...This alows for strong section pressure threw re queening, the removal of weak genetics, or genetics that would produce weak stock in an out cross with out the loss of hives.
Aren't they selecting for a bee that can be maintained within apiary with minimum treatments and other traits beekeepers value? I don't believe you're doing this, but I do think that often people conflate treatment free selection for natural selection. If humans are selecting for traits there is nothing natural about it.
 
#33 ·
Aren't they selecting for a bee that can be maintained within apiary with minimum treatments and other traits beekeepers value?

I don't believe you're doing this,

but I do think that often people conflate treatment free selection for natural selection. If humans are selecting for traits there is nothing natural about it.
yes they are, those who are just spiting everything left alive are not

I am, my 2018 breeder queen rolled 14 mites, brood off in late Oct 17 after last being treated Nov 2016. she and the rest of the stock did receive a nov 2017 OAD do to colasping hives in the area as insurance as I had the data i needed. and the plan is to requeen the majority of the stock with her and offer cells to my package bee neighbors. at the moment I am able to hold the mite in check with a spring flyback split, natural july brood break from a dearth, a single late fall broodless OAD and about 3 mouths broodless in the winter, my feral based stock starts brood rearing much later then my neighbors. There are of coarse the few outliers that need extra treatments and so get re queened or culled and broken in to nucs.

agreeded

msl, can you provide a more complete reference for the chart pasted in your post #28?
Seeley, T.D. Apidologie (2017) 48: 743. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13592-017-0519-1
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-017-0519-1#citeas
 
#35 ·
IMG]https://media.springernature.com/lw785/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs13592-017-0519-1/MediaObjects/13592_2017_519_Fig3_HTML.gif[/IMG]
43% loses on hived swarms, 21% on established hives, figger 75% of the cast swarms are a loss.......
spread out and not clustered witch loweres epidemics hence losses... and not asked to do anything but live while being kept in small hives and alowed to swarm, likely lowering stresses and losses.
The issue is by providing shelter and care, poor genetics are propped up and spread, till pruned back by a crash or epidemic.

Yes, that is the issue with treating. But providing habitat (a box) is giving a colony an even playing field with its peers. Founder colonies provided the same type of box as its peers did much better than founders having to settle. Bees cannot create their own habitat. It should be noted here as well that in nature there are catastrophic losses that occur as well. Well adapted critters die at the same rate as unadapted ones. Here a beekeeper plays a role and can reduce these (and sometimes increase them in the case of accidental rolled queens and harvesting too much). But it has nothing to do with natural selection.



it dose not, you misinterpret my statement.
Me-
The point was natural section creates natural loss rates
If you have less then natural loss rates(propping up weak stock) there is less section presure and the stock weakens, creating a colaspic and recovery cycle

And you are half way to the point why some treatment isn't useful. The shortest path to resiliency is bond. The selection pressures in a tf apiary are different than in a forest situation. But the bees are still able to apply the right metric, given time. Feral bees only are a useful starting point for stable genetics within an apiary. Read my point above re catastrophic events to see why a good keeper should have less loss than in natural situations.

As we have noted "losses" are a subjective and usess subject... so a "track record" as you say is taken with a grain of salt, there are many TF keepers out there whos numbers don't add up....
Mike B, catching 30-40 swarms a year + makeing splits, only loosing 15 hives a winter and his numbers stay static around 100 hives.....
Sol P seems much the same

But why do you ignore Keufuss, sp fp and others? The above still have bees regardless of accounting, which is what matters. I'm sure there is nothing wrong with M. Bush's bees and he can easily maintain numbers. Of course Sol has moved around much too much to say anything about his success. A fact conveniently ignored by the naysayers.

The TF keepers who are truly doing well on a large scale and have repeatable results in mutpul areas share one trait. Grafting from highly selected breeder queens...This alows for strong section pressure threw re queening, the removal of weak genetics, or genetics that would produce weak stock in an out cross with out the loss of hives.

Of course, its selection on top of natural selection. If I have a chalkbrood ridden colony that sits there, I replace it instead of waiting for nature to do the inevitable. We also select for production and colonies that respond to swarm prevention. Its not natural beekeeping, its using natural selection as a baseline and respecting ecological principles to lesson the frequency of epidemics.

Mites aside we know what "natural" beekeeping looks like, and what results it will likely have, there is a reason such thing were left behind in the 1800s.[/QUOTE]

But those who wish to do this probably make some useful genetic contributions to bee populations. There is nothing wrong with this for the average back yarder who has other priorities.

BTW thankyou for posting Seeley's article. It was a good read that underscores the resiliency of natural systems.
 
#36 · (Edited)
But why do you ignore Keufuss
I find it interring you would say that....
Kefuss is exactly the type of bee keeper I am refering to when I said
The TF keepers who are truly doing well on a large scale and have repeatable results in mutpul areas share one trait. Grafting from highly selected breeder queens
He had a EFB problem in his Argentinian opperation
Did he just split from survivors, or from hives that showed no EFB?.....Nope
He did a frozen brood assay on over 380 hives, selected the 14 most hygienic and grafted from them, Pinched the queens of the other 366+ and placed cells
Massive beekeeper selection pressure based on objective metrics, that's how you shift and or maintain traits.

But those who wish to do this probably make some useful genetic contributions to bee populations. There is nothing wrong with this for the average back yarder who has other priorities.
It laughably to suggest the average back yarder is going to make any sort of contribution to bee genetics. They are peeing while swimming the ocean, the other swimmers will never notice a thing. The only people who gain from such a method are the package bee sellers.
Its not wrong to walk that path if it makes the keeper happy, but its wrong to tell them it has anything to do with the greater good

If I have a chalkbrood ridden colony that sits there, I replace it instead of waiting for nature to do the inevitable.
So why do you resist the suggestion to use the same method on a mite ridden colony?

We also select for production and colonies that respond to swarm prevention. Its not natural beekeeping, its using natural selection as a baseline
I am not sure what your getting at, can you explane.
Not dead under your care is a baseline for most selection programs. High production and low swarming are at odds with wild survival and what nature selects for.
 
#37 ·
It laughably to suggest the average back yarder is going to make any sort of contribution to bee genetics.
Nevertheless, in the other direction, to make the population weaker, it has also worked, at least in my area, the hobbyists and sideliners ( no commercial big enterprise here) have achieved that.
It could then work the other way round, but only with a group of beekeepers who have the same goal.
 
#42 ·
Siwolke said:”It would be a good thing to have a control of the mite impact and act accordingly, but it must go in the direction of breeding and multiplying the more resistant and tolerant. ”

The beekeeping industry has been trying to do that for 30 years or more. The problem is keeping those good traits with the honey bee. They swarm and these traits are diluted over time. Location makes a difference too; where I live most packages are brought up from the same area, S. Carolina, and Georgia. I have to say most migratory beekeepers in this area are down in South Carolina for the winter and bring their packages up from there, or other non-migratory beekeepers travel down and pick up hundreds of packages and sell up here, so genetics are sort of bottle-necked. Everyone around here buys those bee’s. Year after year this is done. Having a sustainable apiary is good; you save money, and some of it can be spent on importing queens that are being bred for VSH or tolerance, and get those genetics in your apiary and surrounding area by swarming. As per Tom Seeley 20% of swarms will live and make it over the winter, so then my queens can mate with them.
 
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