We AG minded humans think like "every calf or lamb or foal " needs to survive. In nature it just cannot work that way or we would be over run with critters.
Exactly, we trade relance on animal husbandry for survival for improved “productive” traits we desire.
What the math means is each 1 that over wintered colony becomes 3, then a winter loss of 66% (50% loss of established, 75% loss on swarms that found a home) back to 1 if we are assuming stable pop
What’s interesting is when you add in the slush for swarms that don’t find a home(nesting sites seem to be the carrying capacity limitation) say a spit ball 50%, that fits well with skep records
1757 : One old hive: the first swarm 7 June, the second swarm 20 June; swarm out of the first swarm 8 July, second swarm from the first 22 July.
https://www.evacranetrust.org/uploads/document/9cb7fced9e5db46beb810b8cc3f9f1797e2c5995.pdf
This fits better with the math and beekeeper experience better then Seeleys 19% loss estimation on established colonies, but its also happening in the areas people keep bees, so seeleys results may be the result of lack of pop density, witch is what tarpy say
and when we look at the COMB project in the same area we see 63% TF losses and BIP 5 year average for TF in the area is 61.6
So not bad given the added mite pressure of large cavities and swarm prevention
What I am point out is the very low wild survival rates (80% die in the 1st year. And 50% of what over winters dies the next) creates high selection pressure but that pressure just maintains the high losses, not improves on them…
out of 100 swarms 20 see spring, 10 see a 2nd spring, 5 see a 3rd spring, so only 5% or of those queens has what it takes to be a breeder and have the “survival” trait strong enough for a f-2 to survive .. Yes there are many other things besides mites, including dumb luck, but that’s natural selection for you.. this is why splitting what lives fails to induce change
The other thing worth noting is of the 20 that make spring, only 5 or so of those queens will see a 2nd year (the overwintered queens swarm and then have a 75% loss rate) so nature is NOT selecting for queen longevity
2. The generally poor overwintering in Year 2 for both groups makes me wonder what the management practices of the control looked like.
agreed, likely back yard beekeepers in proximity to the feral colony if you look at the data sheet some of the managed hives were only a few feet from the feral ones
The term 'feral' for the purposes of the study is never explicitly defined other than noting that, '... all feral colonies needed to survive at least one winter in wild, unmanaged conditions.' While I take no exception with this definition, I can see how local adaptation might likely impact local disease response as opposed to a swarm escaped from a managed apiary within the last 12 months.
While I was running numbers based on a sustaining pop, there is the rub, were these truly genetically feral hives from a self-sustaining population, or just escaped swarms that didn’t die in their 1st year do to better immunity(preselected).. these weren’t bees in the woods, they were bees in in peoples building
it would be interesting to see how many colonies they had found, but died overwinter and couldn’t be used for the study..
It would also be interesting to test the COMB TF survivors vs the managed bees of the project as they all had sister queens to see if the survivors has a higher imuinty % vs the base population that was treated,
