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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 ·
#43 ·
Malaria was the selective pressure that led to the sickle cell mutation in human haemoglobin ... we haven't 'evolved out of it' but those carrying the mutation are more resistant to malaria.

Of course, as with many other examples, the (partial) resistance comes with its own problems ... heterozygotes have the advantage against malaria, homozygotes develop sickle cell anaemia, with reduced longevity, long-term pain, bacterial infections and swelling of the hands and feet.

We may be able to select bees with increased tolerance to Varroa but they may have other detrimental traits as a consequence - like the increased tendency to swarm described by Seeley in his studies of survival of large and small colonies.
 
#48 ·
But swarming is what feral bees do. He noted that life history characteristics of Arnot bees were largely unchanged. Yet we know a genetic bottleneck also occurred. So its not just about swarming. We also have examples of people maintaining productive tf bees over time. Keufus is not interested in resistant bees that don't do anything. He selects for production.
 
#45 ·
Whew, that was almost too much to take in; so what I gather from your discourse (and just a little disagreement) is:

1- have an IPM management plan and treat accordingly
2- we ALL (beekeepers) have a responsibility to take care of our bees and
3- not anthropomorphisize bees with human conditions
4- varroa arrived here in 1990? I am sure breeders started around then to breed for resistance, hygenic behavior, etc. So maybe 25 years.
5- a good amount of beekeepers need to educate themselves on varroa. I had the priviledge of hearing “soon to be Doctor” Samuel Adams and his presentation on varroa. If you had seen the slides he presented of varroa eating and depleting the fat body of a honey bee you would never be treatment free again.
6- mite bombs exist, collapsing hives usually abscond and find another hive to live in, ours.
7- there needs to be a program to have good genetics available easily and not cost hundreds of dollars to buy one queen.

There was much info there MSL, thanks for the time you put into it.


Your quote from Randy Oliver is succint.
 
#46 ·
1 Yes, but the foundation, and most important part of IMP is resistant stock, and that's often missed
3 Some did/do but not at a unified scale eunff to shift the pool past the areas they have drone domination on . The market isn't there, that our fault as beekeepers for not buying there stock and filling the air with drones form it
5 he is comeing to CO in june...thinking about making the drive
6 Mite bombs are a robing event of a collasping hive with the robbers bring mites back home, simple education about entrance reducers/robbing screens could help shift the impact. Absconding some times happens, but more often if bees flying off to die till there is nothing left. I haven't seen much work pointing to mite bomb bees ending up in the other hives, the sluction would likely be the same, robbing screens
7 Yes and no I don't see the cost of a good breeder queen changing much.. In the 1860s Italian queens were going for $20, a bit over $300 in todays money.... no suprize queen rearing texts started appearing at that era.
The problem as i see it is there is little market for the offspring of such. People don't seem willing to by a $40 queens with better tratis then $25-$30 run of the mill.
I think what we need more of is what Meghan Milbrath did to get the ball rolling in her area. She took her local virgins(from 2 year TF queens) to Purdue for II with ankle biter stock and made those breeder queens available for the cheap price of $150, the catch? The buyers had to make 100 queens form it available for sale... That's how you shift the drones of an area!
 
#47 ·
Definitely make the drive to hear Samuel Adams. We drove around 2 hours to hear him. It was so worth it. We have NY BeeWellness here in NY, and Pat Bono (founder) does workshops here every year. She gets good people to learn from; Randy Oliver (twice), Megan M., Al Avitable, Peter Borst, Aaron Morris (he runs the Bee-l email fotum) plus more. All excellent workshops. This year Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk will be the *star*. We are lucky to have this program. As for Megan, what a great idea! I would buy some.
 
#50 ·
This has developed into a useful conversation, and I'm pleased to see msl working up his case. So far however there has been a failure to identify the single biggest cause of the failure of US beekeeping to overcome vulnerability to varroa and all that brings.

That is of course the systematic removal of selective pressure via treatments. For as long as beekeepers think they - personally - can do better commercially through simple systematic treating, the problem will continue, and the vulnerable genetics artificially dominate the gene pool.

That's pretty much common knowledge now, yet it is also something of a taboo issue. It shouldn't be.

Msn writes (in reply to me)

"Nature select’s for bees that make the most offspring and low production. A large surplus of left over honey come spring is wasted energy that could have been offspring."

In nature a large spring surplus is what makes a large spring colony ready to do business. In robbing winter-weakened colonies, in raising a large foraging force, and in reproductive terms. Whether that is swarming or just raising a large drone population, the means is the same: it is the surplus that powers the colony in preparation for the year ahead.

Nature selects for high energy storage on that basis, and through that mechanism. Nature does not waste energy. See my previous post: energy is the ultimate object under competition in evolution.

That is one of the most powerful things you can say about life itself.

Mike (UK)
 
#55 ·
lharder said: “That is why R. Oliver is still too scared not to treat. “

All this talk, treatment vs. non-treatment is much more complicated than we can figure out. I dont think Randy is “too scared” not to treat whatsoever! And what makes Kefuss the guy to follow over Randy Oliver?
 
#56 ·
All this talk, treatment vs. non-treatment is much more complicated than we can figure out.
well said. there really is more that we don't know about why some populations are resisting varroa off treatments while others cannot, but we are learning.

in the meantime i think the conversation is better served when open minds prevail regardless of what side of the issue we find ourselves.

beekeeping will never be a one size fits all endeavor. like with many issues that appear to be either/or this is one that may end up being both/and instead.
 
#57 ·
I'm not sure if "it can't be figured out". TF bees and ferals have difficulty getting established where large numbers of keepers treat and with movement of bees. There are well established ecological principles that make me suspect this though it hasn't been established in a peer reviewed way in the case of bees. But it could be looked at and the links made.

There may be other factors as well, but this is the biggie.
 
#58 ·
2017 was my 8th year keeping bees off treatments and my losses and production have been comparable to others in the area utilizing conventional managements (treatments/feeding).

i think it's fair to say that my stock is demonstrating a decent amount of resistance/tolerance.

i also think i've been somewhat fortunate in that most of my losses that appear to be varroa related have taken place in the cold of winter which prevented or at least limited horizontal transmission to other colonies.

i was less fortunate last fall when a colony at my outyard suffered collapse from varroa and was robbed out by the other colonies in that yard. the resulting domino effect ended up taking down 5 out of the 8 colonies there for a 62.5% loss in that yard.

the lesson learned was that even stock demonstrating resistance/tolerance has the potential to get overwhelmed and as long as we are keeping more than 1 hive per yard we have to be vigilant enough to avoid such a scenario, not only for our own sake but for others keeping bees nearby as well as any ferals living in the area.
 
#60 ·
Square
i was less fortunate last fall when a colony at my outyard suffered collapse from varroa and was robbed out by the other colonies in that yard. the resulting domino effect ended up taking down 5 out of the 8 colonies there for a 62.5% loss in that yard.

the lesson learned was that even stock demonstrating resistance/tolerance has the potential to get overwhelmed and as long as we are keeping more than 1 hive per yard we have to be vigilant enough to avoid such a scenario, not only for our own sake but for others keeping bees nearby as well as any ferals living in the area.
You know your hive got robbed because you pay attention and so it is easy to come to that conclution even on a one time event. I do wonder though about the new genetics you added to your bees last year. They were not over represented in that same yard were they?
Just asking.
Cheers
gww
Ps It just seems like a split taking only 30 percent of the mite load from a hive and the hive has a good chance of living but a hive split 8 ways plus any out side bees that might have participated in the robbing, is enough to take 5 hives down. The hives might always be close to the edge at that time of the year but it still seems from a numbers perspective to be giving a lot of credit to one bad hive. Did the robbing happen before most of the winter bees were made?
 
#63 ·
I must have been typing when mike posted

That is of course the systematic removal of selective pressure via treatments. For as long as beekeepers think they - personally - can do better commercially through simple systematic treating, the problem will continue, and the vulnerable genetics artificially dominate the gene pool.

That's pretty much common knowledge now, yet it is also something of a taboo issue. It shouldn't be.
Very true, and it highlights why the reverse is needed, we need to artificially dominate the gene pool with better genetics to shift a stock.


In nature a large spring surplus is what makes a large spring colony ready to do business. In robbing winter-weakened colonies, in raising a large foraging force, and in reproductive terms. Whether that is swarming or just raising a large drone population, the means is the same: it is the surplus that powers the colony in preparation for the year ahead.
In the beeyard perhaps, but if a large overwintered surplus was being selected by nature bees would show a preference for a larger nest to accommodate it. Robbing winter weakened hives as you suggest is not overwintered surplus .

Well of course, nature selects, then we do some more, what's your point? I do the same. You only talk about the later and ignore the former
I don’t see alowing livestock to die under your care as natural selection. If a cow is sick or has a trait you don’t like, you treat it and sell it and don’t breed form it.
That being said I am not ignoring the” natural selection” because its going to happen "naturally":lpf: I don’t have to worry about pinching a queen that died, infact I don't have to think about it at all, so its not a topic of discussion

The problem here is the TF talking heads focus on negative selection form nature with very little fouse on positive selection…and that is were the change needs to be made.

“splitting everything left alive” is a huge offender of the main TF complaint of the area being flooded with poor genetics. Your polluting you own airspace with weak gentnicks by allowing average drones out there.
People are kidding them selfs that just because a split overwintered once, and is now 9-10 mounths old its got “good” genetics and should be split and or its drones be allowed out. But that not the case. And the trend of the TF types to go foundationless only exabrastis the problem

If people really and truly want to make a change… and not just your bees its time to shift the message to all the back yard beekeepers…

Buy local restiacant queens , IPM and protect your stock, install robbing screens, use drone culling on all queens that haven’t spent 2 winters TF. If you have a hive that have stayed sub 5% mites for a year, make and distribute cells in the spring, and instead of culling move the drone frames to other hives

If the majority did the simple steps above we could enact change.

Mabey its time to relook at something like the Ally drone excluder
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c0/8d/49/c08d4923518809ecccf569c833cab7ab--drupal-beekeeping.jpg


It simply about gene husbandry. To the extent that that you keep beekeeper-dependent bees alive and free to spread their genes, you will get more of the same. The vulnerable genes have to go. That is basic population husbandry. You can't buck it.
It is, but it needs to be done on a order of magnitude beyond what nature will usaly do. If you don’t, you still get too many hives dependent bees

The sheer fact we are “keeping” bees (as lharder points out in post 27) lowers our losses vs wild….that lowers the selection pressure….

We need to simulate a mass die off of around 96% as Kefuss did in Argentinian, or as he suggests in soft bond. Graft, pinch, place.

If as some suggest we let the 96% just die we don’t have the resources for the needed positive selection, and if like most of us we are not isolated and not on a scale of hundreds of hives by the time we build our numbers back up we have lost the traits in outcross and suffer another major die back do to peeing in the ocean…

Ie we go from 10 hives to one, by the time we split the 1 and split the splits to get back to 10 we are looking at 75% of the genes coming form the back ground drones, and we are not contributing any from our slect stock , we are reinforcing the background, not making change, this gets us no were!
The above is another example of how permoting splits over grafting (by that I mean cell building with select stock in general.. be it grafts, comb strips/cell punch, foundtionless frame and cutting cells etc) and slection…is very hurtful to the end goals of TF…

Far better to save the resources, graft form the 1 and turn the 10 in to 20-30 strong F-1 hives pumping out drones form selected stock, rinse and repeat and had out as many cells as you can to locals. Even better to make up some drone holding colonies from drones from the breeder queen.. something your not going to do if your low on resources and trying to recover from losses..

Now I have no issue with splits as an easy way to get your numbers up to provide resources for positive selection down the road, just like I have no issue with using treatments to protect those resources. I have done both…. They are resources, not the end product and if I don’t let them swarm, and cull the drones there is little to no harm in it.
 
#64 · (Edited)
Msl
I understand the points you make as you make them. But your points are only good when the reasons you are making them on it good and that is subjective. You make lots of points like it is the treatment free guys thats hives are dieing and they keep having to replace them with packages. You base it on 96 percent have to die. Or even if 96 percent have to die does not happen that it is negative selection. Now I don't denigh that people have had those results. It is not what everyone is seeing and so would not pertain in every situation.

To lharders point on energy use and the bees doing the min to accomplish a goal. A bigger way to meet that gaol might be negative breeding rather then positive breeding. More pressure giving more speed. What I got from the artical that clayton just published is that natural selection was faster then artificial insimination.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0005772X.2018.1430999

Maby it is all that seperating the wheat from the chaff too quickly is leaving things out that we do not reconize as immportant. Maby creating a situation that is artificial, (like removing or treating the hives with high mite levels from the apary) is actually not finding what is best and just breeding from those that live keeps the gene pool wider over all and is good.

There is the study out there that JWchestnut has posted a few times that shows that bees with pressure (feral) but yet few genetic alies (spelled wrong) did better then managed bees with more genetic aleis and feral bees with more alies did even better. Maby negative breeding with pressure on what you are breeding is really the best as far as theroys go. It seems to be what is working best with all the small guys that live in the areas it is working in. There is always somebody out there calling for the end of days and putting a date to it. There are those out there that have lived with big bust after doing really well. The problim is that that same bust has happened to those treating in some places and may not corralate to being an actaul mite problim (though they are part too). Talking pure speed of getting from point A to point B, bond and negative breeding has seemed to work faster then all those working on vhs and artifical insimination. Now every one points at the proof that it was faster and says but we wouldn't want to keep those bee or those bees would not work were they kept bees. Yet, people are keeping them and happy and not losing or buying hives every year though some are not able to do this also.

The studies I like best are the ones that did bond and did it while in breeding range of commercial treated hives and still had enough success to see a differrence in the bees or at least the possibilities.

This is not to say that all the work on positive breeding will hold no fruit. It is just to say there is some clues out there that it has not been proven to work any better then just open breeding local and ending up with what you end up with.

There is as much proof on one side as there is on the other.
I believe I might have a lot of bees die one year compared to the rest of the years. I have seen treating bee keepers report that also. The only survey numbers out there to go from in a wide way and not case by case does not show that there is that much differrence in the big picture on bee health using chemicals of not using them.

The only place proving really hard to get resistance is with queen breeders and coming up with something that can be transferred nation wide and is not local. Maybe this has to do with better resistance but lower virus tollerance to what is around locally.

New stuff coming in does put bees or calves at a dissadvantage. A mother will feed her calve milk that helps with stuff a cow has been exposed to but probly also would not help with something the mother had never been exposed to. I could see bee movement making it harder for bees to handle it but they can probly do pretty good with what they get used to.
Cheers
gww
 
#65 ·
What I got from the artical that clayton just published is that natural selection was faster then artificial insimination.
Another opion paper holding Kefuss up as the gold standard for "natural selection"..... yet when I suggest people follow his methods as he has out lined them, there is push back :scratch:

Kefuss was not natrual slection....
Gotland was natural selection, Avignon was natural selection, sort of, as they unnaturally constrated the the stock. Place 52 proven TF hives in one spot good spot you create a mite black hole and threw the volume of hives and swarming start to dominate the local DCAs
"We however think that environment and apicultural methods could have played a part.The areas where the experiments were doneare outside France’s major agricultural zone and very favorable to the development of honey bee colonies. The colonies were ma-nipulated only when necessary and were not moved or managed as professional beekeeping would recommend, and the lack of beekeeping and environmental stress might have favored bee survival.
Honey bee colonies that have survived... (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/public...colonies_that_have_survived_Varroa_destructor

We see this trend emerge again in The influence of genetic origin and its interaction with environmental effects on the survival of Apis mellifera L. colonies in Europe https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3896/IBRA.1.53.2.03
commercial stock moved to Avignon and left untreated lived an advrage of 711 days, the highest in the 20 locations used in the study. But Avignon TF stock move to outer locations lived and advantage of 481, coming in 12th place out of 16... treated bees commercial bees did better going TF then the Avignon TF line when moved...


Any way as for the paper... the intro says it all
" beekeeping without queen breeding and without cultivation of breeds"
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0005772X.2018.1430999
Any one who suggests that modern beekeeping can survive with out queen breeding and cultivation has lost before they have started
 
#66 ·
Any one who suggests that modern beekeeping can survive with out queen breeding and cultivation has lost before they have started
You keep on with this msl. Who is advocating it? Who is your target here? Or is it just a straw man? Your former self?

I don't know anybody who says anything other than: 'make increase only from your best'. That of course means making the less than best strains impotent.

That copies natural selection. But it isn't natural selection, its beekeeper selection.

Many people also advocate starting with ferals (if you can them) because natural selection will (if there are any flourishing ferals) have already done most of your work for you - since nature 'breeds' proportionately more from the strongest, and also makes the rest impotent (kills them).

It is basic to husbandry that you never allow the weak to enter the bloodline of the next generation. Those beekeepers who understand this tend to succeed.

Now:

In a situation like that which beekeepers faced when varroa first arrived (very little resistance at all) there could be different approaches to raising resistance. You could go bond (if you could afford I) and let nature take out the weak - which many, including Kefuss did (in the early days). Into that effort you could try to seek out resistant genes - and the first place you would look is to survivors and ferals. After a little time it would become clear where the beginnings of resistance lay, and you would breed from there. As Kefuss did.

If you had access only to commercial bees you would be in the same position. And that too (if you could afford it) would be an option. (If you could afford to you could esablish an isolated breeding apiary too, apart from your commercal stock)

You could, and can, also do what Kefuss describes as soft bond, what Marla Spivak teaches, in order to improve resistance in a bloodlike that is lacking.

If you wanted to - most commercial beekeepers appear to be happy to simply treat.

All of this _husbandry_ ....

...relies on an ability to control mating! That means that unless you are free of artificially maintained stock, or have sufficient numbers to out-mate them, you will be swimming against the tide. Solitary beekeepers will find it hard get anywhere. that's why breeding clubs are a recommended way forward.

This is, again, all straightforward hundandry. It isn't theory, its how you manage bloodlines to get the results you want, with the slightly unsual feature that you may be enlisting wild blood at times.

Again: who is arguing otherwise? Who is the target of your ire? Or are you just frustrated because you don't have enough hives or the location to succeed yourself?

Mike (UK)
 
#68 ·
But it isn't natural selection, its beekeeper selection.
Into that effort you could try to seek out resistant genes - and the first place you would look is to survivors and ferals. After a little time it would become clear where the beginnings of resistance lay, and you would breed from there. As Kefuss did.
Solitary beekeepers will find it hard get anywhere. that's why breeding clubs are a recommended way forward.
You could, and can, also do what Kefuss describes as soft bond, what Marla Spivak teaches, in order to improve resistance in a bloodlike that is lacking.
This is, again, all straightforward hundandry. It isn't theory, its how you manage bloodlines to get the results you want, with the slightly unsual feature that you may be enlisting wild blood at times.
agreed on all points

Thanks for the link, its a good read
I guess were I am coming form is in the intro
Domestication always interferes by definition with natural selection
 
#69 ·
I would agree, but with this qualification: 'Domestication' in the honeybee is not really absolute in the way it is in other livestock. And it's ill-defined. We might take it to mean, for the purposes of definition 'couldn't survive without help'. But would that apply only to the bulk of a first generation released into the wild? if there were survivors they soon be something we wouldn't call 'domesticated'. (It happens quite often with pigs I understand)

The point to remember is that domestication (achieved through selective breeding) is an identical process to natural selection. Both are change in the bloodline due to the 'selection' of parents - one way or another.

Mike (UK)
 
#72 ·
The point to remember is that domestication (achieved through selective breeding) is an identical process to natural selection. Both are change in the bloodline due to the 'selection' of parents - one way or another.

Mike (UK)
Darwin had a chapter in his book "the origin of species" about domestication of species and selective breeding as an argument for his theory.
 
#70 ·
The point to remember is that domestication (achieved through selective breeding) is an identical process to natural selection
I disagree, if it was identical it would have the same outcome.
Do to the basic function of selection, types are going to have a lot in common, but they are not the same

The point on pigs is spot on, apples would be another good one (F-1 is feral) but most people certainty consider them both to be domesticated stock
You come from an area were wild bees are(or were) native, I come from one were there roots are escaped livestock its not surprising our view on the subject differs.
 
#71 ·
I disagree, if it was identical it would have the same outcome.
Do to the basic function of selection, types are going to have a lot in common, but they are not the same
The process is the same in that one or other forms of 'selection' of parents determine the outcome - the characteristics of the offspring.

The process is the same across all sorts of husbandry and into dedicated breeding - the outcomes in terms of characteristics are always different.

Mike (UK)
 
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