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Subject:
From:
"Walter T. Weller" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Discussion of Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 12 Dec 1997 21:42:14 -0600
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>Should we now be looking in the  feral stocks in countries that have had
the >mite for many years for the resistant bee?
>
>Does this make any sense?
>
> Stewart
>Cumbria, UK. (an old Gable-Endie)
>
Yes, Stewart, it does make sense, and the U.S. Dept. of Agr.'s Bee
Research Lab at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has recently imported a hundred
or so queens chosen from stocks of European honey-bees in eastern Siberia
(around Vladivostok) which have been living with Varroa for over a
century (since European Russians settled in that area}.  The bees are
still in quarantine on Grand Terre island off the Louisiana coast, and
should clear quarantine early in 1998, be brought to the Baton Rouge lab,
and be subjected to research programs to find out just how good they are.
 For more information, you might contact Dr. Tom Rinderer, director of
the Baton Rouge lab.
 
Incidentally, it appears that U.S. Varroa jacobsonii is descended from
the Siberian strain of mites.  The Brazilian V. jacobsonii, where our
American Africanized bees got their start, is descended from a Japanese
strain.  These two races of V. jacobsonii are recognizably different
genetically, and appear to differ markedly in virulence, the
Japanese/Brazilian being the lesser of the two evils.  So, reports that
Africanized bees in Latin America are resistant to Varroa should be taken
with a grain of salt.  Until the Africans have lived with U.S. Varroa for
a few years we won't know how tough they really are.
 
And in that regard, their advance into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and
California seems to have come pretty much to a stand-still for the past
two years or so.  Could this be due to the mites?  There isn't much else
reasonably to blame it on.  Some say our local fire-ants may deserve
credit, but they are imports from South America themselves, and our
European bees have coexisted with them for forty years more or less.
Others suggest that our North American intensive cultivation with its
heavy pesticide usage is more than the Africans can handle, but again,
our European bees have withstood that problem for many years.  The
climate along the "stall-out" line is not severe (approximately 30
degrees north latitude - equivalent to Cairo, Egypt).  So what else is
there?  Who knows?
 
And what, pray tell, is a "Gable-Endie"?
 
Walter Weller
Post Office Box 270
Wakefield, Louisiana  70784
<[log in to unmask]>

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