Since Erik Osterlund is not a member of this list, he asked that I post this
for him.

mark

-----------------------
I have been alerted that the following text has been posted on BEE-L:

>Erik Osterlund written numerous articles about his Elgon bees
>survivalability with mites in Israel and Denmark. The only trouble is
>that numerous swedish beekepers cant confirm that...either.


Just a few comments from me on the subject of survivability of Elgon bees
in connection with varroa mites.
I have written two articles where initial trials were described in Israel
and Denmark, in ABJ May -99 and in ABJ article which can be read here:
http://beesource.com/pov/osterlund/abjmar2001.htm

What's happened in Israel up til now I don't know much about. But breeding
is going on there.

In Denmark on the island Bornholm in the Baltic mr Karlsen still haven't
used any miticides, besides a small trial in two years together with a
chemical company trying to find out pheromone type chemicals to trigger the
bees to get rid of mites. The product is made of harmless food type of
plants. Today these trial is in a dormant phase waiting for greater interst
from industry as far as I understand, though the trials were promising. (If
someone of you are interested I maybe can ask for contact. It's a reliable
big company). Concerning the standard of the bees of Mr Karlsen apart from
that, is as the last years, in a kind of routine phase with what you would
call normal beekeeping, without miticides of any kind. He breeds from the
most healthy bee colonies and in first place shift queens in colonies he
spot is not coping with whatever, for example the mites. He says that this
mainly happens when the queens are getting old in such colonies, which
though isn't the main part of his colonies behaving so. Today Mr Karlsen is
going down from 5.3 mm cell size to 5.0 mm using a mold of his own for
making foundation. Last autumn there appeared an article in the Danish bee
journal by two visitors to Mr Karlsen. they had visited him in August -01
and Karlsen had waited to shift queens in the needy colonies till they hade
been with him. they looked in about 10 colonies in three apiaries with in
total 60 colonies. They saw quite a number of mites in some of these
colonies, where the bees also were uncapping worker puppea just getting
color, in which cells you found mites. There were also some "wingless"
bees. The two visitors predicted that one third of Karlsens colonies would
be dead in spring if he didn't do anything to treat against the mites. In
spring 6 of his 100 colonies had died, some due to mice and a couple due to
too small clusters, maybe because their queens were shifted too late for
mites. But none of the colonies that the visitors had looked into died.
Those in need of these had got new queens when the visitors left.

In Sweden, what is called beekeeper B in the ABJ-article on the url above,
have followed what's been happening with the six colonies in that test
apiary. (Last miticide usedon some in 1996 and in the others in 1997.) They
are still doing good up till this day. Alcohol tests of the bees (sample of
150-200 bees per colony) in broodless period in autumn gave values that
could be calculated to a total of 1000-5000 mites when colony strength were
considered. the 5000 value was for a colony that deliberatly had been
allowed to raise a lot of drones the whole season. This colony also was the
strongest and had given the biggest honey. That colony is also today the
strongest. In May an alcohol test showed about 0.5% infestation on the bees
(apart from the brood) with 6% for one colony (not the 5000 mite colony
above).

On another place a beekeeper is using Elgon and treating most in an apiary
with Apistan and some with no miticide of any kind. Now since 1997. he can
see no difference in the number of mites when checking drone brood in the
two groups.

Apart from this a test has been done investigating the initial mite growth
for one season, from a very low level in spring. No difference was seen
between controls and Elgon. As the host beekeeper managed the bees in such
a way that almost all Elgons and controls swarmed, the test went on next
year with kind of F1 daughter colonies. also the following season with
these queens no statistical significant difference in the mite population
growth was seen. What such a test tells you about the survivability of a
bee colony I don't know. Actually I havn't seen any paper dealing with the
connection of mite reproduction rate and survivability. I would not be
surprized if survivability is composed of a lot of parameters, (for example
cell size, ... said to stir the pot a little:-).

Hope we all will find good durable solutions to the mite problem. I'm quite
satisfied we are doing that. Many are working in a little different ways
finding valuable parameters.

Best regards

Erik Osterlund
[log in to unmask]




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