*1st seen in the sci.beekeeping news group.
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In the October 1997 issue of the AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL's section on
APICULTURAL RESEARCH page 742-747 are published two interesting papers
one AN ISOLATED POPULATION OF ITALIAN BEES THAT HAS SURVIVED VARROA
JACOBSONI INFESTATION WITHOUT TREATMENT FOR OVER 12 YEARS, and the
DEFENSE OF AFRICANIZED BEE WORKERS AGAINST THE MITE VARROA JACOBSONI IN
SOUTHERN BRAZIL. Please do read them.
 
These papers confirm some of my own thoughts with one exception and
that is the role of other pathogens and what the total load means to the
health of the apiary.. How sad it is that multiple disciplinary research
can not be carried out at the same time as without it it is to easy to
interpret any research as the rule when it may not be. I need to know
what other conditions exist in these apiaries that can be compared to
what is found in my own area. As far as the average varroa count
they are about the same here for both treated and untreated hives and
in some yards the treated may have more then the untreated several
months after treatment, 7-15 mites per 100 bee sample may be average.
 
They do report the absence of AFB in Brazil, but what about the viruses
and other bee pathogens?
 
Few in the US have stepped forward and said they had honey bees that were
infested with Varroa and could survive with OUT any treatment. A few
have but many more have reported loss of bee hives under treatment for
this pest then those who have not treated and see no problem. Of course
all of these reports with maybe one exception must be treated as
beekeeper observations and not research but one must realize that some
research does begin because of what beekeepers think they are seeing in
the field. The thing that interests me the most is that the problem seems
not to be one of the individual hive but one of the total apiary and
this makes it hard to explain as far as predators being the cause as
they are normally considered the problem of the individual and not that
of the masses. All disease study of honeybee apiaries is complicated by
the fact that bees drift from hive to hive and under some conditions
this may be increased such as the addition of feed, chemicals or drugs.
One test that comes to mind is the fact that one group of test hives
were treated with chemicals and that chemical could be recovered from
the control hives also.
 
My own guess is that if it was possible to transplant the bees from the
isolated populations of the island of Fernado de Noronha, and those of
southern Brazil into an apiary in the US that was failing from
whatever they too would also fail. I am writing of what I have seen
that is not much reported and that is the dramatic loss beekeepers in
the US have experienced and I have observed, this is not the loss of one
or a few hives but that of whole apiaries sometimes hundreds of hives or
even thousands all at once. These are the losses that cause the total
numbers of hives to decline in dramatic fashion because they can not be
made up from survivors. These losses have been reported and seen by
beekeepers for more then 100 years here in the US and are reported to be
caused by whatever the popular pest, disease, or predictor of the day
happens to be, including environmental, and  seldom mentioned because of
the lack of knowledge in the US, the many bee virus including some that
can effect the reproductive efforts of the queen bee herself.
 
If virus are the key, and the older I get the more convinced I am
becoming they could be, then the dramatic loss of bees will continue in
the US regardless of what control or what the pest beekeepers are
using/seeing at the time and some beekeeper reports seem to indicate
this today even as I write this.
 
CHANGE OF TOPIC, interesting that at least one beekeeper in this
news group, maybe tongue in cheek, asks about getting US African
breeding stock. Let me add that because of the unreliability and high
cost of certification it is doubtful that any will be available soon as
the "pure" thing but African or Egyptian bees are around in large
numbers and are being assimilated into beekeeping operations as they
have been for the last 80 years or more. If someone really wants
daughters of so called African bees just call around to the beekeepers
in the areas that have them and I am sure some arrangements can be made
to produce you some nice queens or cells, but be prepared to spend a lot
of additional time on swarm control and honey harvesting.
 
ttul, the OLd Drone
 
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(w)Opinions are not necessarily facts. Use at own risk.
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