Seems like everybody wants to take credit for thinking up the idea of
mite resistance.
> The first breeding progress as far as resistance to mites was concerned were achieved in Buckfast Abbey with free-mating. From 1925 onwards the establishment of the legendary Sherberton mating station was started, in order to give the breeding work the necessary permanence. In England, shortly after the turn of the century, and because of losses caused by the trachea mite, there were necessarily a lot of imports to Buckfast Abbey from Northern Italy and also from France. In 1919 only a fraction of the colonies survived the winter, all with descendants of an Italian queen mated with local drones. These colonies, which were highly resistant to the trachea mite, formed the basis of the subsequent brood. A high degree of resistance of the Buckfast bee population, quite adequate for practical bee-keeping, was not achieved until about 1927, after years of severe selection and not without suffering considerable lossesIn the mid-20s, the English Ministry of Agriculture imported queens from the USA from a brood based on the Italian bee, which is still well-known to this day. This material was put at Brother Adam’s disposal for testing purposes.
> "In spite of their many qualities, these bees are not suitable for our country because of their susceptibility to the trachea mite. They proved to be so extremely susceptible that often, in the middle of the summer and with excellent flow, strong colonies suddenly exhibited a mass crawling, which later proved to be a characteristic symptom of extreme susceptibility to mites. Over 30 years later, we decided on a further import of queens from the same brood, to find out whether the brood still suffered from the same susceptibility to mites after 30 years. The 2 queens reached us in mid-July 1958 and we added them to our apiary. Their development in the next spring was quite satisfactory and we therefore intended to use both queens for crossing purposes. However, this was never to happen: about the end of July there was suddenly a mass crawling in one of the colonies with an American queen. To make quite sure, samples were immediately sent to Rothhamsted for examination: our worst fears were confirmed. All the bees were infected with mites, but there was no sign of nosema, amoeba or other pathogenes. In the second colony the epidemic only broke out in the spring, but then in its worst form. In the aforementioned July 1958 there were 48 further colonies of our own brood in the apiary, none of which showed any symptom of a mite infection. I could cite many other examples of susceptibility to mites from our experience."
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The monk and the honeybee
Paul Jungels
Ewicht Gaass 1A
L -9361 Brandenbourg - LUXEMBOURG
Email: [log in to unmask] - Web: http://www2.vo.lu/homepages/apisjungels
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