The hard truth these days is that the work of bee keeping is like 80% keeping the mites in check. Plus all current treatments render the honey inedible so you can only do it at the end of the season.
The hard truth these days is that the work of bee keeping is like 80% keeping the mites in check. Plus all current treatments render the honey inedible so you can only do it at the end of the season.
To add, varroa quickly gains immunity to the pharmaceutical treatment we have, so the same medication cannot be used 2 years in a row. Most popular treatment from late 90s that used to kill 99% of varroa is now completely ineffective.
It was explained to me this is well planned and solved in Czechia. Varroa treatment is refunded my the government, but only one type of medication every 6 months. It's cheaper for beekeepers to use whatever the government gives them for free, than use something else. And the medication is free only for a few weeks, so everyone will use it at the same time.
Acid (oxalic acid, formic acid) treatments can be used multiple times in a row, but are harder on the bees
Very hard on queens in particular
I've been keeping bees for well over a decade now, and Varroa mite management and prevention of downstream disease vectors like deformed wing virus are consuming ever greater amounts of our time and concern in the community.
Personally, I've tried a number of mitigations with varying levels of success--most all resulting in requeening due to toxicity of treatment. At this point unless a truly successful new therapy is found it seems like a losing battle tbh. I meet monthly with beekeepers and scientists monthly for a few years now, an 99% of the time discussions involve Varroa destructor. It has that name for a reason...
I did some light research on the topic.
Wiki page about the specific parasite that affects honey bees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_destructor
On that page there mention of "honey bee genetics" as a form of parasite control. It is called "Varroa sensitive hygiene". Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_sensitive_hygiene
It sounds like you need to buy better gene stock in your area. USDA started publishing about this finding in 1997, almost 30 years ago.I have bees myself. Beekeepers and scientists all over the world are trying to breed better bees with improved VSH. While it may work in a laboratory, it does not seem to work consistently in practice. You cannot just buy a "VSH colony/queen" and no longer treat Varroa mites. Even with careful breeding, the VSH behavior often vanishes (or is greatly reduced) after 1-2 generations.
Of course having only colonies with a strong VSH would be the end goal so we no longer need to treat our bees. But until then, better treatments are needed.
As far as I know VSH is suppressed when you take away the honey. Taking away the honey puts the colony in constant food stress, which suppresses reproductive work.
Depending on location acid treatments can only be done after the honey harvest anyway, due to temperatures, so it's a minor issue.
You can also use drone frames, and remove drone brood during the summer, or cage the queen a period of time. These are both mechanical treatments and obviously doesn't hurt the honey.
> Plus all current treatments render the honey inedible
Formic acid is one of the few treatments which is acceptable to use while honey is present.
Last I checked researchers were trying to evolve bees to be mite resistant. Is this something you've come across?
No. The mites are not what is killing the bees.
And, by the way - natural pathogens exist in just about any population. These very, very rarely led to extinction. There is a media trend to claim the mites are at fault. This reminds me of prior fault yielding e. g. "mad cow disease" - and then the media also stopped doing any further investigation at that point. It's as if they have break points where you can not go past those points. Now it is the mites that get blamed.
Lotta unsubstantiated claims you're making there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations
The negative government prior is unusually attractive.
People who believe these types of things tend to get their information from the same places. Which podcasts do you listen to?
There is a valid point though. All types of insects are in decline, but the decline in bees is exclusively due to varroa? It's not unreasonable to assume that at least part of the decline in bees is due to the same conditions that results in less butterflies, beetles, dragonflies and so on.
The removal of habitats suitable to insects and modern farming certainly plays a part as well.
Honeybees deal fairly well with pesticides, wild bees doesn't[1], but none of them can deal with losing habitats.
1) https://www.biavl.dk/medlemmer/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Bi... (In Danish).
You can interpret what is being said charitably, as some true claims surrounded by nonsense. However, this says more about your model of the world than it does about the intentions or beliefs of the author. The phrasing and the argument structure suggests that to me this is the same belief cluster that supports COVID denialism and the idea that it is possible (perhaps desirable) to evolve immunity to arbitrary diseases via a "natural selection" let-the-weak-die eugenics.
Your response is analogous to how people project onto vapid AI slop meaning which was not present in the process used to generate it. The primary difference being that there is a true meaning behind these words, something against which we can compare your reading. (I would like very much for your reading to turn out to be closer than my reading to what shevy-java intended to say, but I do not expect it.)