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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Subject:
From:
Allen Dick <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:50:22 -0700
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I know for a fact that if we were trying to raise mites, rather than suppress
them, we would soon find that we had problems with providing the right
environment.  We would eventually find ourselves combating *their* diseases and
predators in a struggle to maintain our mite populations.

The reason I am sure of this is that we have had that problem with every other
organism we have tried to encourage.  As soon as we attempt to manage them and
generate populations or production above the natural levels, we discover the
factors that limit them in nature.  Up to that point, we tend to assume there
are no such limits.

Penicillin was discovered by people who were having trouble culturing a
troublesome bacterium in a lab and got to wondering what was 'spoiling' their
attempts, causing them to have to discard plates, and forcing them repeatedly to
try over.  They discovered that other organisms on the medium were giving off
chemicals that suppressed competitors' growth and thus giving them an edge over
the desired culture.  We found that some of these chemicals were not
particularly poisonous to us and our livestock, and by imitating these
chemicals, we have been able to take a page out of the fungus' book and to thus
compete more effectively with many bacteria.

To carry this experience to our problem with mites: we know intuitively that
there *must* be many thousands of things that will inhibit varroa and tracheal
mites' growth and reproduction.  The problem is that even if we knew what they
were, many, if not most, of these things are likely hard or very hard on other
similar critters and bees are somewhat similar to mites in many respects.
Hammers, extreme cold, ionizing radiation, most pesticides, and harsh chemicals
are a few obvious mite controls that cannot be easily used on mites in the
presence of bees due to the adverse effects on the bees.

Nonetheless, there must be some things -- environmental, topical, or
nutritional -- that have neutral or beneficial effects on bees, but adverse and
hopefully fatal effects on the mites that concern us most.  The key is
identifying these factors.  If we think of this as a filtering problem, then
identifying the ways in which the mites differ from our bees is the most
important first step to finding a new, permanent method of control.

Of course the fact that humans are in the picture, narrows the field further,
since any method discovered must be benign as far as humans administering the
control is concerned, and also benign to humans encountering the bees or their
products.

Drone brood removal is one technique that takes advantage of some behavioural
tendency of varroa.  There must be thousands of other possible tricks we can
use, if we can just determine more exactly where bees and mites differ.

Mites, in their way are as interesting and important to people and many have
been the subject of exhaustive study.  Bees have been well studied by bee
scientists, but I wonder how much interaction there is with experts on mites?

Such interaction could be very fruitful.

allen
http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/

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