At 02:43 PM 10/29/97 EST, Aaron Morris wrote:
 
>Varroa attack bees via a "drill like" structure of their mouth parts
>that they use to puncture bees' exoskeleton allowing the vampire mite
>to suck bees' hemolymph.  Speculation is that these puncture wounds are
>the avenues/entry points for virus attack.
 
>My question is, do these puncture wounds heal over once the varroa and
their >drill-like mouthpart is removed, or does the door remains open for
virus >attack once the mites are gone?
 
>If the answer is no, the puncture wounds don't heal and the door remains
>open, then all the more reason to treat early.
 
Well Arron I was going to let this thread die, but not sure if you got an
answer so I will confuse you with one. 1st research in the "lab" has
demonstrated that bee virus of one kind or another can be introduced via
puncture wounds the size of those made by Varroa, but NOT by the other
mites internal or external.
 
BUT this has not been demonstrated in the field because no bees have been
found that do not have one or many of the virus present. Bee virus of all
kinds are world wide and one only has to look to find them and that is a/or
the problem other then understanding them when you do find them which as
far as I can determine few do other then to identify them. There are NO
cures for any of the common honeybee virus and none is expected in this
life time or soon but looking for them is always on going as to find one
has implications far beyond honeybee science.
 
There are things that can be done to reduce or overcome the damage done by
virus and they all require good bee pasture and time and are well known by
most beekeepers and called the BM, or bee movement and bee management such
as the introduction of a queen or a nuc taken from hives not suffering
symptoms of virus.
 
>I guess as far as my question goes, varroa is a red herring.  I could just
as >well have asked, if a bee gets cut does the cut heal?
 
The good news is that yes adult bees can heal themselves and can also do
well with missing parts with the exception of those lucky(?) drones who
mate with our queens as they all seem to die within a few hours of doing
that job the same as those would be killer bees who prick our skins and
leave the evidence of their crime and fly off to die but not without
buzzing you a few times and attracting other bees to the live target.
 
I can't count the times I have crushed a queen between my swollen fingers
only to return weeks latter to find her doing well but looking like a
broken egg. It is quite common to find queens with legs and wings missing
or broken, and dents in their sides and for a fact most queens that are
shipped in queen cages with wire screen are subject to foot damage or
worse. All this does not seem to hamper them in their work.
 
>However, I ask because I am wondering about virus invasion.
 
Personally I do not think there is a real good correlation between any
virus and Varroa mites, if there were we would be reading of horrendous
losses in areas of the world that have virus and Varroa and are able to at
the same time keep productive bees without chemical treatments for Varroa,
and AS no area of the world that has bees has been found to be free of bee
virus and most reports that say they are usually from areas that have not
looked very close for one reason or another.
 
Honeybees have so many virus associated with them that some are little
known and yet to really be discovered. Even queen bees have virus that can
make them useless and I would not be surprised to find drones have virus
that render them less then a drone if you catch my drift.
 
I am sure that one or more of the virus are responsible for much of the
un-explained loss that takes out large apiaries of bees or even large areas
but so far no one has a real handle on how this happens, like what triggers
it and why it seems to come and go sometimes never to return and moves from
east to west and south. I do believe that there are some predictors that
can be observed in these unlucky hives for some of the virus that cause
complete collapse and one of these seen here is large numbers of "hairless"
bees. If seen late in the season those hives will decline dramatically in
the winter and die by spring.
Hairless or shinny black bees which are "not old bees" may be bees that are
infected with one or more virus and the hair is removed by other bees, some
say... but that's getting far out and would require some skills I am not
sure bees have.
 
IMHO,
 
ttul, the OLd Drone