> Natural selective pressure from the mite, survival
> of the fittest.
When starting with beekeeping, some things can stay in
your mind even after many years will pass.
I will try to share one my fascination which I can say
is now pretty big part of my today beekeeping
philosophy.
After debacle of my first bee colony due to, in that
time, for me unknown circumstances, I started to work
for one of the biggest beekeepers in my country. In
that time he had terrible time with varroa invasion.
Digression: Americans and beekeepers from many other
West-European countries can learn unbelievable lot
from as (Eastern-Europeans) for what you call
resistance to acaricide and alternative treatments for
varroa...
Being part time beekeeper with 500 and more hives he
barely had control over situation. In his beeyard was
opportunity for me, first and last time, to see some
bee colonies with such infestation that most of the
bees in the colony had 5 - 6 easily visible and very
vivacious varoa mites on them. (That was due to
resistance of acaricide he used before) I had time to
observe and think and... my fascination was born.
It is hard for me to describe here how bees had acting
but generally, later in the research literature that
behavior was described as grooming.
I had a filling that individual bees are able to be
sensitive about mite presentness only when infestation
is really very big, and that if we want natural and
faster resistance against varroa, we must create such
environment in which colonies will be terrible invaded
but SOMEHOW saved from death. I even made my plan how
to make an experiment, but... Experiment was never
been done because it was stopped by one, as I know
now, very strong barrier: scared beekeeping
professionalism. Namely, the beekeeper was not ready
to sacrifice dozen or more of his bee colonies for
that uncertain mission, because he believed that
someone else will soon find something and also his
primary goal was only money from honey and nuclei
sold. But from that point in my beekeeping I adopt
philosophy that I will never attempt to kill all (99%)
mites (when treating) because I find out that bees
will survive (and be enough but not maximum
productive) with quite number of them. I cannot recall
when I made chemical treatment twice in one year - I
always do it once but I must admit that is very
important WHEN the treatment is done, and also few
"minor" things, like how much care is taken about
drifting of bees in the yard. I can say that in recent
years, few beehives (always different) is left
untreated 2 years.
All this has become actualized this last autumn when I
had a chance to attend beekeeping symposium in Croatia
where I had opportunity to listen Dr. Ralph Buchler
and Alberto Millani lectures/reports. They are
starting to recommend (still very overmodestly) using
two or three different alternative treatments in the
year, which has 60 - 70% efficacy.
Finally, here is my (maybe naive) idea about
experiment which I had never had a chance to conduct:
I planned to use 2 groups of bee colonies. One group
will be chemically treated against varroa and other
will be highly infested. This infested colonies will
be saved with adding frames with mostly capped brood
from treated colonies.
Did anybody have heard of such keeping of highly
infested colonies with varroa? And what is you
opinion/prediction about eventual outcome of this
trial?
=====
Aleksandar Mihajlovski, editor of
Macedonian beekeeping journal: "Melitagora"
Ul. Helsinki 41 a, 1000 Skopje, Macedonia
Tel./Fax(modem): ++ 389 2 363-424
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Join "Apimak", Macedonian discussion group at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apimak
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