Hi Garth, Perhaps you can help me with some of my questions, which I sent away
to the conference a few days ago?
 
Do yu know of any promising research and results according:
 
methods to use feromons to trap and reduce the varroa mites?
 
methods to use "natural enemies" and diseases against the mites?
 
breeding varroa resistent bees?
 
Regards from Torbjorn, Sweden
 * Svar på meddelande i "BEE-L.INT"
 
 
 G> On Friday, David Eyre responded to my post about cell size and
 G> african bees.
 
>> On 24 Oct 97 at 11:32, Garth wrote:
>> > I do't want to sound silly here but I would think the easiest
>> > way of telling if a hive is africanised is to look at the
>> > cell size. Should be about 5mm for all african bees, whereas
>> > it varies for euuro bees but is usually a bit higher. Mine
>> > are about 4.3mm, which means that they dont draw the AHB
>> > foundation I buy too well so I use a ver small strip at the
>> > top of each frame. One can see the transition
>>
>> I had just got off the phone talking with someone in Arizona on
>> this very subject of cell size when I received the above from
>> Garth. They stated a correlation between cell size and Varroa
>> infestation. It seems they are putting Euro bees in smaller
>> cell foundation and not treating Varroa with any chemicals or
>> medication. Could the AHB foundation and smaller cell size be
>> the answer?
 
 G> Firstly I think this is a great bit of research!
 
 G> I think that this is probably due to the fact that the bees
 G> thus born are going to go through a more rapid metamorphosis.
 G> I do not know this, but would think that a fastidious hive
 G> would clean any mites out of uncapped brood cells, hence the
 G> only time the varroa could multiply would be when it was in
 G> the capped cell. As the natural host of Varroa jacobsonii is
 G> the asian cavity nesting bee, Apis cerana, which is a bit
 G> smaller than my own cape bees (about half the size actually
 G> although I have only seen two pickled specimens) I would think
 G> that the time A.cerana spend capped would also be quite short,
 G> or even shorter as their cells are minute.. (I think that
 G> Ruttner in his big book on bees whose name at present eludes
 G> me gives the brood durations for all the Apis species) So the
 G> european bees with their large cells must have been heaven and
 G> maybe thats why V.j multiplied up so much?  It is also
 G> interesting to note the A.cerana are supposed to be dirty
 G> little bees that don't even clean their bottome boards up.
 G> Apparently this is a prob as wax moth hang around there.
 
 G> Out of interest, I know that there has been some mention by
 G> people that are doing removals of bees that have survived
 G> varroa? Were those old colonies in comb that had been packed
 G> with silk so it did not have a large diameter anymore? Also
 G> the hive in the walnut tree mentioned a while back? That
 G> sounded like an old hive. Paul Cronshaw in Santa Barbara- your
 G> removals - do you have any of the combs from the old hives
 G> left? Also Ted Wout I remember you mentioned a hive you were
 G> taking out of an oak tree? Do you still have those combs? It
 G> would be interesting to hear what the size of the cells was in
 G> the brood nest? If they were close to 5.0 mm (I unfortunately
 G> cannot convert this into inches as I dont know what the sub
 G> units are but I think that there are about 24 mm to an inch)
 G> then they are getting near that of african bees.
 
>>         But then Garth says that his Euro bees don't draw the
>> foundation too
>> well, meaning I suppose that our bees need larger cells?
>>         Discussion please!
>>
 
 G> On this topic, the person who introduced me to the world of
 G> bees, Prof Randal Hepburn did some interesting work in his
 G> book 'Honeybees and Wax' in which he put bees on various size
 G> foundation and recorded the results. It appears that if one
 G> gives bees a size they are not
 G> used to, they  will try to get it back to their favourite size, by
 G> drawing blank and dummy cells in amongst normal cells, giving
 G> a strange shape cell here and there and open spaces. This
 G> would give a bad brood pattern as the cells are not regular
 G> and some are not right to trigger the queens layiing
 G> responses. (governed by cell width)
 
 G> I should imagine that another problem would actually be how to
 G> fit a euro queen into an AHB cell for laying an egg.
 G> Carnolians would not
 G> be able to do it as they are just too big. Italians would  I gather
 G> be able to as they are a bit smaller, and for many years
 G> people requeened with italians here with some success.
 
 G> The plus side of thie smaller bee thing is that one gets more
 G> bees per frame and they go faster. The down side is they have
 G> a bigger surface area to volume ratio which means that they
 G> will cool down faster which is why I should imagine bees in
 G> cold areas are big in the first place.
 
 G> The idea does sound fascinating though, with the though of
 G> maybe Arizona exporting drawn AHB comb to Canada for the
 G> summer months and then beekeepers putting their large frames
 G> back into the brood nest for the last few brood cycles before
 G> winter and so on. Could be fun for bee viruses and will boost
 G> tetracycline sales through the roof!!
 G> Note: AHB dont get AFB  and EFB very much.
 
 G> I think in the book I mentioned earlier an experiment was
 G> carried out which was titled 'bigger bees more honey'.
 G> Apparently the idea was great but it flopped because of some
 G> undetermined reason. The bees were bigger but they made much
 G> less honey. Those were AHB on carnolian drawn frames. Oh yes,
 G> the extent to which AHB will draw frames of EHB foundation is
 G> also variable as I gather different sizes are available. This
 G> is different to all the african bee races which have about the
 G> same size cells (with the exception of my silly little bees)
 G> european bees have a large variety of cell sizes and I
 G> remember reading somewhere that even giving carnolian size
 G> foundation to italians gives problems with dummy cells being
 G> drawn.
 
 G> In conclusion I don't think it will be as simple as just
 G> changing over to a smaller foundation size. That would entail
 G> a change of hive dimensions (imagine going from about 4000
 G> cells per frame to 8600 cells a frame). That means that your
 G> potential hive population doubles, your workforce can't fly as
 G> well in the rain, when they get cross there are twice as many
 G> to sting the neigbours ducks to death, extracting honey will
 G> take longer from those irritating honey filled end frames as
 G> the cappillary attraction goes up and so on.
 
 G> On the plus side it means that there may be a cheaper supplier
 G> of AHB foundation for me!! David, who makes those guys
 G> foundation?
 
 G> Keep well
 
 G> Garth
 
 G> PS if anybody is interested I can type out some of the bits
 G> and pieces about the foundation size experiments after my
 G> exams. Just give me a shout.
 G> ---
 G> Garth Cambray       Kamdini Apiaries
 G> 15 Park Road        Apis melifera capensis
 G> Grahamstown         800mm annual precipitation
 G> 6139
 G> Eastern Cape
 G> South Africa               Phone 27-0461-311663
 
 G> 3rd year Biochemistry/Microbiology    Rhodes University
 G> In general, generalisations are bad.
 G> Interests: Flii's and Bees.