Lost my colony in last couple weeks. It had been failing since last fall so I was expecting this to happen. I just need to clean it up and get ready for Spring.
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Thatās a real pity and a real bummer do you know why they failed?
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Iād agree with the varroa diagnosis. Iād disagree with the varroa feces. Actually, itās closer to urine, but thatās not what Iām disagreeing about. Varroa guano is on the ROOF of the cell, the upper surface. Itās where the little varroa family all go together to poop (guaninate?) between feedings. You only see it in a colony that has collapsed or is about to. Normally the youngest bees will clean it out.
There is no recipe or calendar based protocol for treating for mites. You have to follow IPM (integrated pest management). Your first line of defense is knowledge. Your next line of defense in MONITORING, MONITORING, MONITORING. Learn how to do it well. When your bees reach threshold. Treat. MONITOR again to make sure it worked. It might be June or August or once or 4 times. If hives around you are collapsing, those mites end up in your hives. Keep monitoring and treat again if needed. Try to get your beekeeping neighbors on board. VD is a community problem and needs a community solution!
Cheers,
Kristina Williams
Boulder, CO, USA
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Consider this: treating colonies means messing with natural selection; colonies which would normally not survive, now do, and their āweakā genes will be spread to other colonies through their drones. That means that more and more beekeepers might have to start treating their colonies, for them to survive.
The other way around, though -not treating- does the opposite: Natural selection makes sure that only those colonies who can handle varroa (and other pests and illnesses) will survive and will get the chance to spread their āstrongā genes. Meaning, less and less beekeepers might have to treat their colonies for them to survive; they will survive on their own.
My advice: get to know beekeepers in your area, preferably those who have not messed with natural selection that much and you should probably not have to buy new colonies if yours die because they are not adapted well enough to their environment, genetically. From my experience (I donāt know if this goes for other places as well), there are more than enough among beekeepers who do not have a problem at all with giving away captured swarms for free. You could also use bait-hives to try to capture swarms yourself.
The bees that truly live and cope with varroa have coevolved with varroa over millennia. Apis mellifera is not a normal host of varroa and has not time to evolve resistance. There is treatment and treatment. Most of us will have to treat. Thatās a hard fact.
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It is not a hard fact that you have to treat against varroa. I know of quite a number of treatment free beekeepers who have healthy colonies and do not experience more colony-losses than those who do treat. This is an interesting figure:
It shows a couple of mite-resistant Apis mellifera populations from all over the world that have been reviewed in the following article: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-015-0412-8. These mite-resistant A. mellifera populations have all experienced natural mite infestation pressure and have been given the opportunity for natural adaptations without the influence of typical apicultural practices.
Some interesting observations and conclusions:
- Importantly, all the mite-resistant populations in this review have experienced a general lack of, or less intensified, apicultural management.
- Ironically, the spread of these diseases [such as the Varroa mite] in apiculture is facilitated through intensified management practices (Fries and Camazine 2001).
- Co-evolutionary processes such as natural selection that lead to a stable host-parasite relationship as seen with the Asian hive bee have been hindered for the European honeybee host since apicultural practices remove the mite and consequently the selective pressure required for such an adaptive process to occur.
- Pesticides administered to colonies by beekeepers to treat against mite infestation can actually cause more damage to bee health (Haarmann _et al._2002; Johnson _et al._2009; Locke _et al._2012a)."
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Iām not prepared to lose all my colonies which is what happens if I donāt treat. When I lose them where do I go for replacement? Do I keep losing all my colonies again and again till I stumble on resistant bees? I havenāt enough years left on this planet. No thanks.
Itās a hard fact for me
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It looks like 6 of the 10 are African/Africanized.
Are you ok with that chili?
Of course:
Iām a live and let live guy: To each his own. Do as I do not as I say.
I could preach, āstop using fossil fuels!ā when the very device I am posting on required fossil fuels to make; the car I use each day runs on fossil fuel, electric cars included.
Plastic = pollution. I use plastic therefore who am I to preach stop polluting!
āSalvation lies within.ā
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If you do not want bee populations to further be weakened, at some point, we have to start giving them a change to co-evolve with their pests and diseases. Of course that will mean that individual beekeepers could lose their āweakā colonies. However, that will help make the bees as a species more likely to survive in numbers that are healthy for nature, and our food production.
Again, I know of many beekeepers who do not treat, and who -after possible initial losses- do not lose more colonies than those who do treat. (In fact, I have heard the opposite). I have heard of people who went treatment free with colonies which they had been treating, because they thought that had to treat for them to survive, and those colonies stayed alive and well (or actually even better 
).
It might indeed be that you, Dee, might lose your colonies if you stop treating. That tells you that you have colonies with āweakā genotypes. My advice would be: you donāt have to stumble on resistant bees. Find out if there are any beekeepers in your neighborhood who do not treat, and make it clear that you are interested in tf-colonies.
As said earlier, I have no problems with getting local colonies for free. I got offered more than I wanted (as did a neighbor of mine). And if you were to live nearby, I would have gladly passed on surplus-colonies to you. This is not the case were you live? Do you know the beekeepers in your area? Are there many of them?
Coming from a varroa free area I probably donāt have educated input although reading many many many forum threads on treatment vs TF I see both sides but keeping in mind varroa has been introduced to most areas itās our responsibility to remove just as any introduced human viruses would be. Being proactive is far more productive than sitting on your ass and waiting for what seems like the inevitable. What happens when varroa evolves again and takes down the so called resistant bees? Get on top of it now, reduce the varroa and help undo what we have done to the bees before itās too late.
I know itās a touchy subject and I am not open to arguments on this subject however if varroa ever came here to Oz it would be outright war Iād imagine and anything that could stem the spread would be implemented and Iād be right behind it. We would not sit on n our asses and wait for the bees to get their shit together and evolve.
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I am registered on Beebase (more beekeepers are not, than are) There are 75 registered apiaries in a 10K radius even though I am very ruralā¦so even if I had resistant bees my queens would breed with heaven knows whose drones and as you must realise traits like VSH are not easily heritable.
Not for me, Iām afraid. The constant disappointment of colony loss after colony loss is too much to bear[quote=āAnon, post:50, topic:9655ā]
Of course:
Iām a live and let live guy: To each his own. Do as I do not as I say.
[/quote]
Thatās brillā¦I meant, were you OK with handling tetchy bees. I like bees with a little spirit but Iām not very brave coping with a lot of pressure when inspecting 
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Thatās a really fascinating study @CampingLaChassagne, thanks for posting it. What resonates for me among the findings, as a beekeeper and nature-loving citizen of the US, is the keener olfactory cognition found in some of the mite-resistant bee colonies, leading to faster & more effective hygienic responses - and the evidence in other recent studies of cognitive impairment in bees exposed to the combined load of herbicides & pesticides in their forage and miticide buildup in commercially produced wax foundation.
I also found it fascinating to read in the study you posted about bee brood volatiles - off-gassing during larval development that apparently has a lethal effect on mite brood in the cells. I wonder what those volatiles are composed of, and if weāve stumbled upon something akin to them in the use of oxalic acid - in the sense that OA kills mites but isnāt harmful to bees?
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Agree with you @Eva. An article with content to absorb and consider.
We need to sit back, stop fighting and masking and get a greater understanding of the scheme of things.
All over the world bees are now fed antibiotics to presumably stop AFB. It aināt stop it, just delay, while all honey sold is antibiotic contaminated. A whole story of antibiotic resistance emerging.
Itās even happening from Canberra all the way down south Australia.
The only way to fight whatever is strong hygienic colonies.
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This is interesting too
The bees are not mite resistant/tolerant. There is just no DWV
Currently known Varroa tolerant populations are surviving due to increased swarming41,42 or superinfection exclusion43. However, on Fernando de Noronha the mite and bee populations are both able to persist without any severe effects, however, the dark spectra of DWV lurks in the background, ready to decimate this small unique island population.
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That is indeed interesting.
Interesting articleā¦
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Poor bees; been dealing with this since: 1869, 1906, 1918, 1919, & 1965.
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Thanks Ed, interesting - it seems that the causes might be anthropogenicā¦
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