Varroa

May 3, 2010 in Articles

Well June will soon be upon us and the dutiful beekeeper will be checking their hive(s) in a 7 day cycle. Why? Well the early summer honey should be due for removal before the first week in June.

Honey left where it is and the bees left to their own devices will result in (if the early summer bloom has been good) bees gradually taking back the honey ready to swarm. The bees will take the stored honey ready to feed the swarm for the three to five days it takes to relocate and get settled. If the honey is removed the bees do not have this option and you will gain a larger early harvest.

If the early bloom is not so good it simpy take longer for the above process to happen. They probably will still swarm but the honey extracted for the process will be over a longer period. Also the bees will be producing more brood to replace the innevitable swarm later in the Summer, which could result in Queen fatigue or congestion, plus the bees wont have much to do because of the lack of forage!!

Not sure if your bees are going to swarm? Well if they are short of space (lebensraum) they will swarm!! Is the brood box rammed full of bees (another delay tactic would be to add another super for brood)? Are there queens cells or even other queens? If yes a swarm is imminent.

One of the best solutions and certainly the easiest is to remove the early honey harvest (sealed honey) at the end of May and create a couple of “mini” swarms with the bees which would otherwise have not much to do. So give these new nuclei a couple of frames of eggs and open brood and remove to another locale. Feed all the hives well with 1 part sugar to 2 parts water syrup.

Now you have a queen right colony and perhaps two “mini” colonies with the right tools to re-queen start anew!! Awesome!

The other good thing about this whole process is the opportunity to treat Varroa and look out for EFB and AFB!!

Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH) Honeybees

February 27, 2010 in Articles, Beekeeping News

Agricultural Research Services (ARS) are making positive strides in creating a strain of honeybee which is proactive in attacking the Varroa mite head on!

ARS are focusing on creating honeybees with a certain genetic trait; Varroa Sensitive Hygiene. The VSH trait in the bee means it is more likely to find and remove mite infested pupae from the capped brood developing sealed inside the comb cells. This can be obviously difficult for the bees to detect as the mite attacks the brood within the capped cells and so rely on the protective layer of wax to escape the bees natural sanitation tendencies.

ARS scientists at the agency’s Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics and Physiology Research Unit in Baton Rouge, LA have developed honey bees with a high expression of this VSH trait. The VSH is a specific trait and form of hive hygeine that not all honeybees possess. The VSH developed bees show an aggressive pursuit of Varroa in the hive.

Varroa on Larvae The Bees form groups and chew through an mite infested cell cap, lift out the infected brood and eject them from the broodnest.

This hygiene destroys the mite’s frail offspring preventing the reproductive output of the mites and preventing the usual Varroa mite hive takeover!

The team at ARS conducted field trials using 40 colonies with varying levels of VSH bees contained in each colony. The mite population growth was significantly lower in the VSH and hybrid colonies than in the colonies without VSH developed bees.

Of course if you believe in evolution the bees will eventually develop this trait on their own but would the bee population be too decimated by then to recover. After all bee breeders have been messing around with bee behaviour for years, perhaps to the detriment of the bees themselves; perhaps breeders have been focusing on certain traits like honey production and temperament and not hygiene and disease resistance.

Personally I think the discovery of the VSH trait is good for bees and humankind. I just wonder if fiddling with genetics is ever a good thing to do? What are your thoughts?

Tags: Bee Health, Beekeeping News, Bees, CCD, Fould Brood, Notifiable Disease, Varroa, VSH No Comments »