Kim Flottum on Varroa Resistance

[Juhani Lundén]

Nice to find own work discussed around the world!

Beeweawer in US stopped treating their bees (1000 hives) in 2001. They had started much earlier and leaving gradually more and more beeyards untreated. It took about 10 years to be productive again. To me, having done the same, it seems realistic time table.

The interesting part is, how fast another beekeeper could start treatment free beekeeping with resistant queens bought from a resistant stock. Good beekeeping skills are needed: the beekeeper needs to be able to make nucs and raise queens and mate them with some control. Our queens have got promising reports from customers in Southern-Europe and even Mexico. They are far from icecold Finland! It seems that the climate and environment is not all that important.

Biggest problem is, like John Kefuss said, the beekeeper. He/she does not have the courage to start. How many years will it take until beekeepers understand that to get rid of varroa and virus problems, we need to stop treating?

 

[sipa]

Hi Juhani

Nice to see you here, I've had a look at your webpage and read some of your notes.
To breed a varroa resistant strain of bees, is a very difficult task I imagine, well done for making so much progress.

Regards
Sipa

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

Hi Juhani

Nice to see you here, I've had a look at your webpage and read some of your notes.
To breed a varroa resistant strain of bees, is a very difficult task I imagine, well done for making so much progress.

Regards
Sipa

+1 Wonderful to have you on this forum. How stubborn you are ! Congratulations.

 

[Norfolk]

.........."Biggest problem is, like John Kefuss said, the beekeeper. He/she does not have the courage to start. How many years will it take until beekeepers understand that to get rid of varroa and virus problems, we need to stop treating?"

Hi Juhani

I'm not sure that the biggest problem is a lack of courage, more it's a lack of belief in your proposed method maybe ?

I wonder what the response would be to the suggestion that we stopped treating illnesses in humans to allow them to build their own resistance up over time ?

By the way, I'm not trying to insult you, just trying to understand what you are saying.
I can see the argument to develop less chemical treatments but to stop doing anything is perhaps a bridge too far for me. (if indeed you are suggesting that)

 

[VEG]

I heard the talk given by kefus at the welsh beeks convention a few years ago, it was very interesting. He did loose a lot of hives when he started non treatment, and said it was a risk he was willing to take.
I still treat my bees and have no problem with anyone that doesnt its up to them as long as the bees do well.

 

[Finman]

Hi Juhani

just trying to understand what you are saying.
I can see the argument to develop less chemical treatments but to stop doing anything is perhaps a bridge too far for me. (if indeed you are suggesting that)

Juhani is a Finnish professional beekeeper who has crossed and breeded bee stocks that he could get VARROA TOLERANT bees. I have known his reports about 10 years.

He had lost in his selection work perhaps 1000 hives and nucs. to varroa I do not know,exactly how much and does he himself know...

But hoiwever he has been stubborn like a African Bison in his work, and he has succeeded so well that he sells special queens wf´hich stand seemengly well varroa without treatment.

He has made cross national co operations with famous queen breeders. It has been a huge work.
http://www.saunalahti.fi/lunden/page3.html

He writes on his page:

The Lundén Resistant queens are the end result of a long development and breeding efforts. It all started 1996, when we found the first varroa mites. After cutting down the treatment little by little in 2001-2008, we stopped treating the bees.
http://www.saunalahti.fi/lunden/page3.html

He is selling ordinary queens 35€/piece and resistant queens 120 €/piece


And text continues:
The Bees


Our breeding stock is a mixture of Buckfast (from Sweden and Luxembourg), Finnish local bee, Primorsky (from Josef Koller in Germany), Elgon bees (trademark from Sweden) and South American bees from Colombia. The change from original Buckfast bees has been dramatic: At the moment when working my bees its sometimes impossible to do it without gloves. Sometimes you can open a hive without a veil, but for sure the bees will "buzz" around very lively. They land on your hand and may pull your hairs or just "snoop around". They gather on the hive entrance and search incoming bees carefully and sometimes violently. They groom other bees on the combs (glass hive observations) and the groomed bee folds her wings to help the grooming bee. The brood areas are full of holes, at least if there is a mite pressure from outside. The winter clusters are relatively small and the bees consume very little winterfeed (less than 10 kg).

.

 

[Finman]

.
Why I write this: Juhani Lunden's work is an example that mite tolerant bee stocks will not appear into landscape easily and not by accident.

Juha Lunden has graduated in beekeeping in Helsinki University and he was more wiser in his job than normal professional beekeepers, when he started.

If someone has couple of hives among ordinary tame and wild colonies, it is 200% sure that one yard of some hives cannot be mite tolerant. The bee stock in same area has same genepool more or less. If you buy some special queens, soon they are ordinary mongrels.

That 2-hive owners start to breed mite tolerant bees is a fairy tale. And it is fairytale to 20-hive owners too.
Juha has had every year about 100 hives or nucs with which he had tested the mite tolerancy. Juha has made that as his own job. It has not been any national project.

New Zealand started their "varroa tolerant Project" in the year 2007. They selected from Europe resistant Carniolan strains which Germans had allready breeded quite long time. At fisrt you could read about "break broughts" in Project and recent years it has been quite quiet.

However, breeding brograms show that tolerancy breeding is not easy at all.
It is not a hobby job. It needs huge amount of money and time ...



First you need to get a bee strains which have genes, which identify mite as an enemy. Then bees need genes, what to do with enemy.

You need to have several strains (large genepool) that colonies do not start to suffer from some inbreeding anomalies.

What evolution or breeding needs is material for selection. It does not help if the colonies are all almost same type.
How to get material for selection...and how much.....don't ask from me.



.

 

[Norfolk]

Finman

I'm sure that Juhani is a very knowledgeable & pleasant chap. I have no doubt that he is very sincere in his efforts to be of benefit to the bee population of the world, so please don't misunderstand what I am saying/asking.

This was what I posed at the end of my post.

"I can see the argument to develop less chemical treatments but to stop doing anything is perhaps a bridge too far for me. (if indeed you are suggesting that)"

So how would you answer that, how do you do things, in simple terms ?

 

[Finman]

.

This was what I posed at the end of my post.

"I can see the argument to develop less chemical treatments but to stop doing anything is perhaps a bridge too far for me. (if indeed you are suggesting that)"

World is full of chemicals. People do not know what they are talking. I suppose that most have slept during chemistry education in school.

Most guys make jokes about oxalic acid. It is very common in food stuffs which we eate daily.

EU varroa group selected the best "chemicals" which are natural and they can be burned in human or honeybee tissue naturally: no residues, no upper limits to consume

Earlier stuffs were those which accumulated badly into wax.

Folks do not understand much about "chemicals". As we see, they burn such material in smokers which produce highly poisonous chemicals, like pine cone resins.

What I am most amazed is that in developing countries guys teach how to make an extractor from old rusty bicycle and steel barrel. Nothing in such toys are ment to food production.http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2005/september/honeyextractor.htm

I am graduated quite close to biochemistry in University and I need not feel "feelings" in this issue.

.

 

[Finman]

.
Oxalic acid and healt


http://www.ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB...sidue_Limits_-_Report/2009/11/WC500015217.pdf

Read points 17 and 18

.

 

[Norfolk]

Many thanks.

So how do you apply it ?

 

[Finman]

Many thanks.

So how do you apply it ?

They are told here

http://www.agroscope.admin.ch/imkerei/00316/00329/04435/index.html?lang=en

 

[Norfolk]

They are told here

http://www.agroscope.admin.ch/imkerei/00316/00329/04435/index.html?lang=en

Sorry what I meant was what method do you employ.
Spray, Drizzling or Evapouration, maybe some other way.

 

[Juhani Lundén]

Dear Norfolk,

As the Finman is doing all (and more) the advertaising I need, I´ll try to explain what I ment when quoting John Kefuss words:
Beekeepers as whole (we all, our organisations, beekeeing research institutes, etc.) need to answer one simple question: Do we have a problem with varroa?

If the answer is no, then things can go as they do today.
If the answer is yes, then we need to understand that the only long term solution is to see varroa as a companion and our helping "secret agent" in the battle against varroa. If we answer yes, that we really do have a problem with varroa and viruses, we need to understand that the only long term solution is to get rid of treatments.

I have no illusions that this scenario that all beekeepers stop treatments is near impossible. But we need to have a goal, what are we aiming at. We need small and big steps towards this goal.

Today we are trying to kill the varroa mites as well as possible. Tomorrow, if we answered yes, we need to kill so few mites as we possibly can. And what does that mean? It means diffrent things to diffrent beekeepers. Some stop treating, some maybe counting mites and treating, some cutting down treatments, etc. What suits you. The evolution pressure needs to be there: it is only mites and bees who can solve this matter together.

 

[Finman]

Sorry what I meant was what method do you employ.
.

- drone brood cutting + offering drone zone
- oxalic acid trickling
- formic acid
- thymol pad
- brood brake

- 3% oxalic acid water spraying onto broodless bee frames, on boath sides. 1% does not work.


Now I must take into use in large scale queenless hive during late half of main yield,
after that false swarm and separating brood from hives which rear winter bees.

The aim is to get clean colony at the beginning of August. Brood free + treatment with chemicals. (no to catcher larva frame. Don't work)

My goal is get maximum size winter clusters and now poor treatment reduces clusters very clearly.

.
I have had all kinds of plan to clean hives during swarming period but nectar flow has mixed everything.
Queenles hive during main yield has been 30 years my favorite, and I take it again into practice.

Cleaning swarm with oxalic acid is a good method.
.
.

 

[Fusion_power]

I wonder what the response would be to the suggestion that we stopped treating illnesses in humans to allow them to build their own resistance up over time ?

The human immune response of building antibodies to an infection is not applicable to the honeybee therefore your analogy does not work.

It is not a hobby job. It needs huge amount of money and time ...

I can't entirely agree with this. My cost was relatively low, however, I was able to leverage work done by others to get to treatment free status in a very short period of time. If I had to develop treatment free bees entirely from scratch, I might have a different story to tell.

 

[BeeJayBee]

The evolution pressure needs to be there: it is only mites and bees who can solve this matter together.

Most people are breeding survivor mites - mites that survive any form of treatment because there doesn't seem to be a treatment available that will kill all mites within a colony.

What we should perhaps be trying to do is breed bees, and mites, that successfully co-exist. Mites will evolve and mutate more quickly than bees because their generations are shorter.

 

[fatshark]

Mites will evolve and mutate more quickly than bees because their generations are shorter.

No they won't ... because bees are polyandrous, only reproduce sexually and exhibit behaviours that prevent inbreeding whereas mites have male haploidy and predominantly demonstate full-sib mating. Sequencing of the mite genome confirms this.

 

[Finman]

.
If you want to win varroa by the help of evolution, mankind will die before mite vanishes.

.and have you thoungt that Varroa has too right to exist. Amen.

 

[For want of a better word]

.
If you want to win varroa by the help of evolution, mankind will die before mite vanishes.

.and have you thoungt that Varroa has too right to exist. Amen.

Not in my colonies it don't!!

VAPORISE !​

Yeghes da