Are Honeybees In Trouble?

Hi Jape, what I’ve been saying for quite a while now is bees aren’t necessarily dying out. More to the point that there are not as many beekeepers these days.

Just this forum alone proves that bees are not in trouble. I haven’t seen one post where a new beekeeper has not been able to acquire a colony of bees for their new hive.

Yes Jape, but look how much the population has grown. The say that there’s hardly enough food to feed 7 billion people. How will it be when the global population reaches 10 billion. Where will the food come from!!! We can’t all start eating surstromming.

We will just have to start eating bee larvae!!! And rats… :smiling_imp:

Hi Dawn, would Jape know what I mean? I believe Surstromming is a Swedish delicacy:) I suppose they also enjoy it in Finland.

Woof!!! :wolf: :smile:

Hi Jape, can you send a tin of surstromming over to Australia, I’ve been dying to give it a go. If it’s good for Jamie Oliver to try it, I’ll do the same.

Well done Jape, I was just kidding:) After watching Jamie Oliver eating it, I researched it a bit further. I don’t think it’s for faint hearted people like me:)

They have done fine for the last 34 million years without us and the wild bees around here are doing fine without me. Everywhere I know of in North America people are collecting wild bees in greater numbers all the time. I’d say it’s pretty unlikely they will die without us. We just like to think we are important to them.

It’s all hypothetical because mankind will always keep bees. Bees might have been around for the past 34 million years but they haven’t had 34 million years of mankind messing things up. Varroa hasn’t been around for 34 million years & SHB only lived in it’s natural habitat where it’s numbers were kept in check.

I think it would be very optimistic to think that the honeybees would make it into the 22nd century without man. If they did so, they’d be highly Africanized.

So from what your saying, if Varroa does make it into Australia, I have nothing to worry about, I wont need to treat it.

There are lots of people successfully keeping bees without treating for Varroa. Most have results that mimic or are slightly better then treated hives. So IMO the evidence supports that treating or not treating makes no difference in the long run. By not treating you are not allowing varroa sensitive hives to reproduce. You are only splitting or collecting swarms from hives that can deal with them, so over time it would make sense that Varroa would become less and less of an issue. The bees need to be given time to adapt to the threats rather then bombarded with toxic chemicals and pesticides that only weaken them further.

1 Like

You need to read the new article I just put up
https://beeinformed.org/2016/03/08/why-did-my-honey-bees-die/

It’s a good article but ultimately it doesn’t really address what I am talking about. Not all bee colonies are adapted to handle Varroa or their virus’. Google Ron Hoskins to get an idea of what I am talking about, with the right genetics and circumstances bees can become immune to these diseases. It is going to take a much larger push to treatment free beekeeping to make this work. We need to all be working on developing good genetics that can withstand and coexist with the current pests. It can be done because it has been done. We don’t need to wipe out Varroa we need to develop bees who are genetically predisposed to deal with and coexist with Varroa.

I understand that Adam but presently the number of Hygienic Colonies is very low. and the bees carry the diseases anyway - it appears when the Varroa infestation weakens the immune system, that the virus’s and bacteria are able to get a foothold due to a weakened immune system.

Varroa are not the cause of some diseases, they are just the vector for triggering dormant problems that are actually in the DNA - it is a bit like the switch for AIDS in bees gets turned on