Joe Waggle and all

I did not post the abstract of the study to get into a discussion
about feral bee survival, but Joe raises some questions that need to
be addressed. As I have said before, I am a big fan of Tom Seeley and
not just because he's from Ithaca and was Roger's protege.

And as I have also said, when he undertook to study the bees in the
Arnot forest to see if their survival was due to some heritable
character (or not) I was a bit skeptical. I have been to the Arnot
forest and I could not see that there had been time or isolation
enough for bees there to develop any unique characteristics, but I
thought, hey -- he's a scientist, he'll figure it out.

Well, then, I wasn't that surprised when he concluded that the queens
he raised from "wild stock" didn't perform any better than the
commercial bees to which they were compared. And, his suggestion that
the answer might lie with the mites rather than the bees raised more
questions than it answered.

When I posted the short abstract on the movement of mites from
infested to clean colonies, I didn't think it bore much connection to
the feral bee question. Certainly proving that bees rob or that mites
evolve *doesn't change Tom's conclusion*, that the Arnot bees didn't
have "the right stuff". These issues are peripheral to *that*
question, but of interest nonetheless.

So far as I know, Tom has gone on to other things and bee breeding is
not some he has focused on at all. So, we are free to speculate as to
what else causes this feral bee effect. As I said, it could have to do
with the bees living high in trees, or the annual swarming. It appears
that distance between colonies is not an important factor .

The following abstract shows how swarming might be the cause. When
shook swarms were made, the swarms had far fewer mites than unsplit
hives. The unsplit hives had about 5 times as many mites despite
having only twice as many bees. The colonies that had the lowest
number of mites were set up without brood. Nucs made with brood had
almost as many mites as the control hives.

* * *

Effects of colony splitting swarms on population development and
health status of honey bee colonies. I. Illies, et al

Nucleus colonies and artificial swarms are used to increase the number
of honey bee colonies in apiaries. Colony regeneration this way
simulates the natural colony reproduction by swarming. The new
colonies are physically separated from the old, possibly pest- and
pathogen loaded brood nest of the mother colony. The shook swarm
method (i.e., one technique of producing an artificial swarm) has a
disease preventing and sanitizing effect.

Our study aims to test the effects of such manipulation practices on
colony population dynamics, and on the number of Varroa destructor
mites and secondary viral infestations. In July 2006 artificial swarms
were generated from 12 honey bee colonies. Six swarms were shaken on
to combs with unsealed brood (group A). Another six swarms were shaken
on to fresh wax foundation (group B). The remaining brood from the
swarm donating colonies was used to established six nucleus colonies
(group C). Six untouched colonies were used as control (group D).

The mite infection rate in October was significantly lower in A and B
(A: 1.6 mites per 10 g bees. B: 0.9 mites per 10 g bees) than in the
other two groups (C: 5.0 mites per 10 g bees, D: 5.7 mites per 10 g
bees,. Colony strength was significantly affected by the swarm
simulating manipulations: The colonies in treatment groups A and B had
8000 individuals on average in November, while the mean of C and D was
approx. 16 000 bees. No winter fatalities occurred.

* * *

The abstracts were excerpted for review purposes only from:

Association of Institutes for Bee Research Report of the 54th seminar
in Veitshöchheim 27–29 March 2007
Apidologie 38 (2007)

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