Actually I don't think getting varroa free bees to start with is an issue though I could be wrong. We brought in by boat from NewFoundland to Labrador and then by chartered plane to the area in question 18 nucs in 2010. We have not detected mites in the hives which remained isolated from other hives by 20 km or more so I doubt the original hives had any mites. We did however detect mites at the end of august 2011 in 2 of the 6 hives which were located within 3 km of other hives brought in for blueberry pollination. The beekeepers on the island of NewFoundland have their hives certified every year by outside inspectors.
So given the feasibility of keeping hives free from varroa in the area, is it worthwhile? How much is varroa costing you if you add up all the indirect costs as well as the direct costs? I'm an outsider and have no idea but certainly from the media and the literature it seems varroa is a huge problem for most considering it's effects on other diseases.
As for what we were trying to observe with the project: we wanted to see what the bees would find in the area in terms of floral resources so we've done plant inventories around 6 beeyards, 2 in small clearings in the boreal forest and the others on or near blueberry fields and we've been analysing pollen collected by the bees to compare with our inventories to see which species were of most interest to them. We also looked at wintering in a cold chamber vs outdoors in the area as wintering indoors is recommended but one of the producers involved in the project was more interested in wintering outdoors. Too many factors, too few reps but the project is purely exploratory at this point.
Thanks again,
Kristine
----- Original Message -----
From: allen
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2011 12:50 PM
Subject: Re: [BEE-L] Varroa epidemiology-Varroa spread
>Or-- you could go with zero tolerance. This would involve putting down any colonies with mites.
But you will still have mites and a huge detection effort, with expense that exceeds the cost of managing varroa the way most commercial beekeepers do.
The problem with this idea, as many jurisdictions with dreams of being varroa-free have found, is that detecting low levels of varroa is practically impossible. Theoretically, and perhaps in practice, only one gravid varroa is required to infest an entire region.
As varroa levels increase, mites become easy to spot, but when there are only a few, they are undetectable.
Typically varroa has been in an area for a year or more before being detected. After three years, they become obvious.
Once detected in an apiary, the assumption must be made that there are varroa in all hives, and by extension if a high degree of certainty is required, all hives within flying distance, even if no mites are seen there.
We have been over this when discussing Australia's' varroa vigil. It is sufficient, we concluded, to prevent a collapse in Australia, but no absolute guarantee of freedom from mites for recipients of exported bees.
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