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Date: | Sun, 27 May 2018 09:51:20 -0600 |
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This thread has gotten a bit off-topic, but following with the
discussion of uncapping, recapping, hygienic behavior and resistance.
All of the above are components of hygienic responses to varroa, but
they occur through time, at different intensities, likely by different
specialists within a colony. Therefore what one sees at any instant
looking at comb is a snapshot of the balance at that moment of a number
of activities:
1) Bees tend to uncap cells with problems, varroa or otherwise, and
even unselected bees will do so to an extent. Uncapping increases with
infestation so just seeing it there could simply mean that infestation
is high in a non resistant colony.
2) Selected bees will explore more efficiently cells with problems, so
more uncapping is likely to be seen in resistant colonies at a given
level of infestation. However, some bees will recap previously
uncapped cells. In some extreme cases most cells are recapped. So a
highly resistant colony could also show few signs of uncapping if cells
are quickly recapped. Or if removers of infested cells are efficient
uncapped cells may be missed in one quick observation.
3) The evidence for uncapping and recapping, while the internal
contents of a cell are untouched, does not point to the
process significantly affecting mite reproduction. The primary impact
on mite population growth comes from outright uncapping and removing of
pupae and in the process all developing offspring mites die prior to
completing their development. This is how some colonies achieve that
ideal (and idealistic??) negative population mite growth (or decreasing
levels of mites): the equivalent of a treatment in a genetic package
that some are very skeptical about the possibility of widespread
implementation.
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