BBKA Forum

British Beekeepers Association Official Forum 

  • Difficult to treat Varroa

  • General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #4875  by Chrisbarlow
 23 Sep 2019, 21:40
NigelP wrote:
23 Sep 2019, 21:19
So why aren't people clamberer over each other to buy these bees?
If you are referring to the bees and Ron Hoskins, I might be able to answer that but I don't know the science around it. I went to a talk by I think it was Prof Steve Martin, he was talking about varroa tolerance in bees and VSH and the likes and Ron Hoskins came up in the talk as he was asked by a member of the audience. In essence from memory it is all about the dominant diseases in his bee population, 1 form of DWV being more deadly than the others apparently (and I am open to being corrected here) but the dominant DWV version in Ron's bees is a type that is less lethal or non lethal, so the bees survive but also, as its the dominant type, it is crowding out more deadlier variant which means it cant take hold. So backs to his queens, I am under the impression they have taken his queens and put them in other colonies and the colonies die out because in the general bee population the dominant DWV type is the deadly version. I haven't read the link you posted to his site btw. Interesting to hear what others have to say on this.
 #4876  by Chrisbarlow
 23 Sep 2019, 21:41
NigelP wrote:
23 Sep 2019, 17:14
Chrisbarlow wrote:
22 Sep 2019, 17:32

That's interesting to hear Nigel, do you have a link to the research?
Yup.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1051/apido:2007040
Cheers Nigel
 #4879  by NigelP
 24 Sep 2019, 11:30
Chrisbarlow wrote:
23 Sep 2019, 21:40

If you are referring to the bees and Ron Hoskins, I might be able to answer that but I don't know the science around it.
Yes that is correct Chris. Ron spent years describing them as varroa hygienic bees, but they weren't.
 #4883  by Patrick
 24 Sep 2019, 18:31
I heard Dr Martin suggest much the same Nigel.

It’s like the different strains of EFB. Who apart from researchers has really grasped the impacts? Let alone effects in combination.

Beekeepers are far from unique in appreciation of variation in the thing they understand and want to influence but (maybe optimistically) consider other variables as constants when they in practice are simply not.
 #4884  by NigelP
 24 Sep 2019, 18:42
What I would have really liked to have seen was an equivalent experiment to that done w ith the Avignon bees where half where treated for varroa and then untreated and treated hives in the same apiary assessed for honey production.
Whilst honey is not everything a good surplus is a generally sign of a healthy colony, anything else is just people keeping sick bees.
Varroa is like any parasite, it can be treated. And like my cat I treat him for worms every three months regardless of whether he is seriously suffering from them.
 #4885  by mikemadf
 25 Sep 2019, 11:01
I understand testing shows Ron Hoskins bees are resistant to the local strain of DWV which is prevalent there but not elsewhere.

SO his bees are not varroa resistant as such..

"
However, new research presented by Catherine Thompson of Salford University at the UK National Honey Show last Friday and now published in The ISME Journal has revealed the reasons for Hoskins’ bees’ success. A non-lethal form of Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) is prevalent amongst his bees and is acting to exclude the more lethal form.

DWV is now well-known as a killer of honeybees and its virulence seems at least in part to have been caused by Varroa which, because it injects the virus straight into the bees’ bloodstream, has spread the virus with disastrous effects. Honeybees have long had DMV, but pre-Varroa spread by sex and other methods had not enabled it to spread so quickly and thoroughly throughout a colony.

For reasons that are not yet understood, Hoskins’ bees have been subject to a relatively benign version of DWV — Type B. In contrast DWV Type A is lethal. Type B has become dominant in Hoskins’ apiary and kept Type A out — or at least at very low levels. It is even thought that Varroa spreading Type B have in effect inoculated the bees against Type A!

Unfortunately, simply moving Hoskins’ bees to another apiary where DWV Type A is dominant is likely to be futile. The colony is likely to be swamped by the lethal Type A and face the disease threat common to most colonies"

https://www.vita-europe.com/beehealth/blog/mystery-of-the-superbees-solved/

Note the date : 2015..
 #4886  by NigelP
 25 Sep 2019, 21:46
Thanks Mike. Interesting stuff.
Alas not likely to be a universal solution.
Back to cleaning hives with OA vapour....