Man made v natural breeding and selection

[Finman]

shouldn't compare elephants dogs lice or whatever to prove anything, none of them are bees act as bees and none of them parasite do as varroa

Guys in this chain invent evolution rules which have nothing to do with real world.

Dogs and slices are at least from real world. Antivarroa bees made by nature are imagination. That is the difference.

These kind of writings I have read last 20 years from internet.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

It is good internet etiquette to simply ignore those things that do not interest you. It is appalling bad manners in any context to try to close down conversations others want to have.

Who brung you up?

Perhaps it's time to put you on the ignore list. Unfortunately it doesn't prevent seeing the responses you get. It would improve the forum if it offered the option of blanking threads rather than people.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

I don't think it's a crusade ... I don't see anywhere that anyone is being forced into following a treatment free route .. there are well documented instances where treatment free is working without detriment to the bees or the beekeepers honey crop (me for one - but there are many, many others now following a TF regime). It's not for everyone and I accept that it won't work in every location and in every circumstance but it's interesting to hear of a beekeeper who has managed TF successfully with a significant number of colonies over a significant period. If you don't like what is being said - don't read it. There's the ignore button if you really cannot resist the temptation to read the things that appear to annoy you.

Lively debate has always been at the heart of this forum and I see no reason to castigate or stymie a poster for bringing forward their views and experiences .. whether you agree with them or not.

As for the analogy of fleas on a dog ... it's been put forward as the antithesis to being treatment free in beekeeping on many occasions and it just does not hold water. I've always kept dogs .. some seem to attract ticks and fleas - others seem never to collect them. In some cases you may never notice that a dog had fleas - would I treat prophylactically my dog with fluvalinates - just in case they caught a flea - no I would not. Would I treat a dog that was infested to the point that it was evidently suffering - of course I would. But - if my bees are thriving and there are no signs of detriment from the parasites then. perhaps, there is a good case for not treating them ? With that goes a responsibility to be certain that there is no detriment and that requires good husbandry - the continual inference that being treatment free equates to let alone beekeeping is misguided - those of us who are TF are probably as aware (and in some cases more aware) than some beekeepers who simply follow what the book says and treat with little awareness of the infestation levels or the effect that it has on their bees.

But, as I've often said, it's not a path I would recommend for everyone and certainly not for a new beekeeper with one or two colonies (although I started out TF and I was lucky) .. you need to have an understanding of bees and to be able to recognise any signs of stress or distress. There's more to it than just stopping treatment.

But ... there's a place for debate and the knowledge and understanding of how other beekeepers keep their bees never did anyone any harm in the continual learning curve of the craft.

I've noted your use of treatment free with interest but thankfully you don't bang on and on about it. I find the ignore button cuts out the annoying individual but it doesn't cut out the replies. Maybe you could explore a method of achieving ignore for a thread in its entirety?

 

[magor]

Guys in this chain invent evolution rules which have nothing to do with real world.

Dogs and slices are at least from real world. Antivarroa bees made by nature are imagination. That is the difference.

These kind of writings I have read last 20 years from internet.

at least em bees ?

sry if ya felt offended didnt meant , it was just un example to put emphasis on where arguments drive out of context

 

[Erichalfbee]

Maybe you could explore a method of achieving ignore for a thread in its entirety?

Unwatch the thread then you won’t get notifications

 

[user 20297]

Unwatch the thread then you won’t get notifications

.......or just log off.

 

[Erichalfbee]

.......or just log off.

Then you’d lose the whole forum. Be reasonable.

 

[user 20297]

Then you’d lose the whole forum. Be reasonable.

I only said, "Log off!"

 

[Gilberdyke John]

Unwatch the thread then you won’t get notifications

I'm not sure what you mean Dani. I read the forum via the new posts button and things come up. Have I missed something here?

 

[pargyle]

I've noted your use of treatment free with interest but thankfully you don't bang on and on about it. I find the ignore button cuts out the annoying individual but it doesn't cut out the replies. Maybe you could explore a method of achieving ignore for a thread in its entirety?

I've never been in to converting anyone else to the way I keep my bees .. if people ask and are interested I'm willing to talk about it ... what people do with their bees is their business - I'm pretty liberal minded. I will call out bad beekeeping or errors but if people are keeping their bees in the way they think is best for them and it's working then that's fine by me. Live and let live.

This forum covers a wide spectrum of people ... some people and some posts are going to irritate you for one reason or another but it's best just to slide over them and move on.

 

[Newbeeneil]

Unwatch the thread then you won’t get notifications

Can you explain how to do this Dani?

 

[Beesnaturally]

Your English is great, but still I do not understand, from where you have got all those theories into your head. Have you seen in your apiary, how evolution does its work.

From study. Many many hours of this specific issue, including extensive correspondence with appropriate specialist. I've followed progress, learning continually, since the the mid 1990s. I've invested thousands of hours in the topic. Have you looked at any of the links I've posted? There is plenty of information out there.

As to your second question, given what I have said here I'm astonished that you feel the need to ask that.

 

[Beesnaturally]

How far is mite resistant fox evolution in the world?

Mange disease in the picture. It was examined feral dogs in Mexico Yucatan. 34% had mites, and they had 3 different mite species.

View attachment 30456

A better example is rabbits and mixomatosis. Or flu and COVID.

All life forms are continuously challenged by predators who want to eat them - or parts of them. Predator and prey relations are simply the norm. New predators come along and prey suffers for a while. In the case of bees and mites, the bees have 20 million years of accumulated defence mechanisms raised by hundreds of thousands of different parasites, just as they have complex venom raised by larger predators who want to take their energy.

For goodness sake _study_ the bold text in the extract I posted earlier. Work at grasping the meaning of every sentence.

Understand: evolution via natural selection for the fittest strains is not just an explanation for the multiplicity of species. It is also an explanation for the maintainance of health in the face of continuous new micropredators and parasites, as well as larger predators. All life needs energy constantly: bees get theirs from plants, and give pollination services in return, symbiotic relationship, but the vast majority of species are either constantly hunted and or hunting for energy. That struggle, often charactised as an arm's race, is the very driver of life-form development. It's what we all do. We fight back against lifeforms that make us sick by using us as a good source.

You really need to do some study and thinking. Honestly: stop and learn for a while. You will be a much better beekeeper for it.

 

[Finman]

A better example is rabbits and mixomatosis. Or flu and COVID.

All life forms are continuously challenged by predators who want to eat them - or parts of them. Predator and prey relations are simply the norm. New predators come along and prey suffers for a while. In the case of bees and mites, the bees have 20 million years of accumulated defence mechanisms raised by hundreds of thousands of different parasites, just as they have complex venom raised by larger predators who want to take their energy.

For goodness sake _study_ the bold text in the extract I posted earlier. Work at grasping the meaning of every sentence.

Understand: evolution via natural selection for the fittest strains is not just an explanation for the multiplicity of species. It is also an explanation for the maintainance of health in the face of continuous new micropredators and parasites, as well as larger predators. All life needs energy constantly: bees get theirs from plants, and give pollination services in return, symbiotic relationship, but the vast majority of species are either constantly hunted and or hunting for energy. That struggle, often charactised as an arm's race, is the very driver of life-form development. It's what we all do. We fight back against lifeforms that make us sick by using us as a good source.

You really need to do some study and thinking. Honestly: stop and learn for a while. You will be a much better beekeeper for it.

I have studied evolution in Helsinki University.
I have kept nees 60 years.
My honey yield record from one hive is
200 kg. I measure my skills with yield.

 

[Fusion_power]

A dog with fleas/lice is not a very good simile, but I could draw some relevant parallels between humans and Covid19 that are a lot closer to the mark.

Deadly to it's host, easily spread, Treatments work but are controversial, some have natural resistance, etc.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Can you explain how to do this Dani?

I'm not sure what you mean Dani. I read the forum via the new posts button and things come up. Have I missed something here?

Go to the top of the page under the ads. There’s tab that says unwatch. Click on that

 

[Beesnaturally]

A dog with fleas/lice is not a very good simile, but I could draw some relevant parallels between humans and Covid19 that are a lot closer to the mark.

Deadly to it's host, easily spread, Treatments work but are controversial, some have natural resistance, etc.

Attaboy. And in both cases we are now at the stage of having resistance. However in the case of bees systematic medication is preventing the development of immunity.

The beekeeping world is like New Zealand but without a vaccine. If NZ hadn't been able to vaccinate to gain resistance in its population it would still be stuck with closed borders. Just as the beekeeping world is stuck with medication.

Brazil and other poor countries have been through 'live and let die'. They had high casualty rates but now have full-on resistance.

The analogy is far from perfect, but its in the ball park.

I would say rabbits and mixomatosis works better. The disease was introduced (mite arrival), killed most of the population, but those that survived had resistance, and from them populations rebuilt quickly. That was plain live and let die.

What happened then was that new strains of mixomatosis were developed (by humans) and the rabbits were back to square one. They overcame the new strain in just a few years, and the whole business was repeated - and that goes on to this day.

A few years ago there was a new frog virus in the UK that decimated the population. Most frogs died, those that survived rebuilt the population.

This has happened for as long as life itself. We mammals have evolved highly complex immune systems to cope. And bees have evolved a wide range of, mostly behavioural, defences.

All this was completed predictable the day varroa arrived. We had three choices:
1) live and let die

2) conduct a carefully slowed live and let die process,

3) screw all that, medicate, be prepared to do it indefinitely, understand that will inhibit natural selection from developing resistant populations, hope for a bred superbee.

We went for 3. With no little help from multinational corporations and their supply chains, who were all very happy with the prospect, and developed and promoted a narrative that suits them.

Sadly there is no superbee - that was always a pipedream.

But we know enough now, and have the co-evolved bee-mite combinations to do things differently.

Most commercials producers will never do it. With their eyes firmly fixed on their bottom lines, they'll go on promoting the pharma narrative. Bee equipment suppliers will go on helping with that.

Beekeepers will go on believing the rubbish about it taking 2000 years to evolve resistance, that precious strains must be maintained at all cost, that by medicating the beekeeper is actually saving us all from starvation.

That's about where we are.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

Go to the top of the page under the ads. There’s tab that says unwatch. Click on that

Hi Dani Ive just scrolled up and there's a watch button but not an unwatch (unless I need another visit to the opticians). It's not a button I've ever found need to use so I tried clicking it in case it toggled on/off but it doesn't seem to on my tablet. In the short term I've set an ignore on another "contributor" so he's joined a very short list.

 

[Wilco]

A dog with fleas/lice is not a very good simile, but I could draw some relevant parallels between humans and Covid19 that are a lot closer to the mark.

Deadly to it's host, easily spread, Treatments work but are controversial, some have natural resistance, etc.

Attaboy. And in both cases we are now at the stage of having resistance. However in the case of bees systematic medication is preventing the development of immunity.

The beekeeping world is like New Zealand but without a vaccine. If NZ hadn't been able to vaccinate to gain resistance in its population it would still be stuck with closed borders. Just as the beekeeping world is stuck with medication.

Brazil and other poor countries have been through 'live and let die'. They had high casualty rates but now have full-on resistance.

The analogy is far from perfect, but its in the ball park.

I would say rabbits and mixomatosis works better. The disease was introduced (mite arrival), killed most of the population, but those that survived had resistance, and from them populations rebuilt quickly. That was plain live and let die.

What happened then was that new strains of mixomatosis were developed (by humans) and the rabbits were back to square one. They overcame the new strain in just a few years, and the whole business was repeated - and that goes on to this day.

A few years ago there was a new frog virus in the UK that decimated the population. Most frogs died, those that survived rebuilt the population.

This has happened for as long as life itself. We mammals have evolved highly complex immune systems to cope. And bees have evolved a wide range of, mostly behavioural, defences.

All this was completed predictable the day varroa arrived. We had three choices:
1) live and let die

2) conduct a carefully slowed live and let die process,

3) screw all that, medicate, be prepared to do it indefinitely, understand that will inhibit natural selection from developing resistant populations, hope for a bred superbee.

We went for 3. With no little help from multinational corporations and their supply chains, who were all very happy with the prospect, and developed and promoted a narrative that suits them.

Sadly there is no superbee - that was always a pipedream.

But we know enough now, and have the co-evolved bee-mite combinations to do things differently.

Most commercials producers will never do it. With their eyes firmly fixed on their bottom lines, they'll go on promoting the pharma narrative. Bee equipment suppliers will go on helping with that.

Beekeepers will go on believing the rubbish about it taking 2000 years to evolve resistance, that precious strains must be maintained at all cost, that by medicating the beekeeper is actually saving us all from starvation.

That's about where we are.

Right... I'd probably not compare two structurally different viruses to a multicellular organism like varroa. An individual can develop immunity to a virus in their lifetime but as far as we know, a bee cannot do the same for varroa so unless you're talking at a population level for the metaphor as well, I'd be cautious.

Likewise in people, treatment allowed many to develop immunity and they have more genes than just those related to covid so it helps species genetic diversity that you don't lose them because of a single weakness. 'Fitness' is not about a single trait. You also seem to conflate an anamnestic immune response with individuals with an immune system more resistant to covid and comparing to genetic resistance in bees... Not quite as simple as that really.

As for commercial producers... I think not having the cost and time cost of treatment for varroa, nor the cost of losses from it, would be commercially advantageous so I'm not sure your stance there is entirely logical.

Covid is a single stranded RNA virus. This means mutations do not get corrected like in organisms which have double stranded genetic material. As a result there are many many variants in a short time. A lot die, some persist.

Flu has building blocks of which the virus genome is composed and where multiple strains occur in an individual cell they can recombine. This does not cause new genetic material.

Variation and mutation in viruses is very different to that in multicellular organisms and even to that in bacteria. Novel mutations are usually corrected due to various mechanisms and if they are not, they need to be in the germ cells to be conferred to offspring, assuming they're not terminal to the cell involved (or like in cancer, the organism).

Most resistance traits we see developing are not novel genetics but the consequence of selection pressures increasing the prevalence or upregulating expression of pre-existing genes. It is entirely possible that certain behaviours in bees exist for another purpose but also confer advantage against varroa thus may be seen more.

Rabbits and myxomatosis... Not really. Again, caution comparing viruses and parasites. With rabbits, they get infected, many die, those that are left have immunity so aren't reinfected and the virus starts to die out as R number drops. New generations occur and have not been exposed so have no immunity, population density increases to the point R number goes up, virus spreads again and wipes out a lot of the population. And so it cycles.

The 'three choices' look to me like they have been said in hindsight. At the time it started, options one and two would be indistinguishable.

I'm not saying you don't have a point/are wrong (still mulling it over, particularly the concept of varroa becoming host adapted... Intriguing), but I am challenging the suitability of your metaphors.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

In the short term I've set an ignore on another "contributor" so he's joined a very short list

better remember to empty out your drivel basket regularly as well