Man made v natural breeding and selection

[Beesnaturally]

About Randy Oliver 2014

Randy changed his mind. He noticed that mite resistant bees die quite easily for varroa
[/QUOTE

Can you supply a link that details this?

 

[Finman]

I do not have the link. Surely you will find it. Randy wrote in the page, that he has cancer in his tongue. Perhaps that is the readon, he has not updated his home pages.

 

[Monbees]

Did you say remote areas in KENT!! Well at least you didn’t claim humid valleys. Having been to some remote places in the world Kent is not really top of the list. Nor I suspect when brother Adam was setting up his isolated mating apiaries he lamented the fact he was not in Kent.

So how about a rough area for these remote sites nothing specific obviously. Just a town or village so we can use bee base

Maybe Kent, USA?

 

[rolande]

Nope, he's definitely in Kent UK.

 

[Ian123]

Nope, he's definitely in Kent UK.

He wasn’t very forthcoming in giving us a few remote locations to check out on bee base! Not surprisingly as the last 1 that did had 200 apiaries in a horny drone flying distance

 

[Finman]

He wasn’t very forthcoming in giving us a few remote locations to check out on bee base! Not surprisingly as the last 1 that did had 200 apiaries in a horny drone flying distance

Try Blenheim

Keywords: isolated, survivors

 

[Ian123]

Try Blenheim

Keywords: isolated, survivors

Lol but Blenheim turned out to be not so isolated after all.

 

[Finman]

Lol but Blenheim turned out to be not so isolated after all.

616 000 visitors in Blenheim in last season.

 

[Ian123]

To get back to the original question and desired genetics. The simple answer in terms of rearing bees MAN MADE SELECTION will far surpass any natural attempts. A point some appear to have missed in the last 5 pages

 

[Finman]

To get back to the original question and desired genetics. The simple answer in terms of rearing bees MAN MADE SELECTION will far surpass any natural attempts. A point some appear to have missed in the last 5 pages

Perhaps you are only one, who noticed that local bee are best syndroma.
.

 

[Just]

I had this interesting talk pop up on my YouTube feed today. Which I thought was quite appropriate to this thread. Its looks at all IPM in general as well as selecting for the positive aspects of VSH etc. Each aspect I feel is a tool in the beekeepers arsenal against varroa.

 

[Finman]

I had this interesting talk pop up on my YouTube feed today. Which I thought was quite appropriate to this thread. Its looks at all IPM in general as well as selecting for the positive aspects of VSH etc. Each aspect I feel is a tool in the beekeepers arsenal against varroa.

Problem in reality is, that we get tens of positive VSH videos from USA every year, but in USA varroa control is one of the worst in the world. There are huge amount of mite resistant queen sellers.

USA looses every year about 50% out of its hives , 25% in summer and 25% in winter.

What is the secret behind this gap between fact and fact.

 

[Finman]

14 years ....

 

[Boston Bees]

Problem in reality is, that we get tens of positive VSH videos from USA every year, but in USA varroa control is one of the worst in the world. There are huge amount of mite resistant queen sellers.

USA looses every year about 50% out of its hives , 25% in summer amd 25% in winter.

What is the secret behind this gap between fact and fact.

In the US, UK and Europe, VSH is always jam tomorrow, never jam today. It will always be thus I fear.

 

[Just]

View attachment 30379


14 years ....

I do appreciate the statistics involved in your graph, but without stripping these down to specific causes of each loss they become fairly meaningless, ie over stressed by migration or environmental factors of America's liberal use of pesticide, fungicide, herbicides or any other cides you can think of, this doesn't even include viruses and beekeeper error. I'm not anti treatment or pro treatment, just use all tools possible. I think if we close our minds to any possibilities to assist colonies in thriving then we have failed to ensure the future of healthy bees in general.

 

[Finman]

I do appreciate the statistics involved in your graph, but without stripping these down to specific causes of each loss they become fairly meaningless, ie over stressed by migration or environmental factors of America's liberal use of pesticide, fungicide, herbicides or any other cides you can think of, this doesn't even include viruses and beekeeper error. I'm not anti treatment or pro treatment, just use all tools possible. I think if we close our minds to any possibilities to assist colonies in thriving then we have failed to ensure the future of healthy bees in general.

Amen
Can you guess what is the best tool in varroa treatment. .... it is your BRAIN.

And your mother language is English.
I recommend you to read researches of US researches.

 

[Finman]

I do appreciate the statistics involved in your graph, but without stripping these down to specific causes of each loss they become fairly meaningless,

This is not my graph. It is from national Hive Losses Survey made by herd of US scientist.

Every year there is an evalutuation about spesific causes losses. You have gathered all reasons to a big mixed heap into your head.

You are not interested about facts, what US scientists are saying about losses.

There are big differenciers between professional beekeepers and hobby beekeepers. A third category is natural keepers,

 

[Fusion_power]

High losses in the U.S. are mostly among hobbyist beekeepers who tend to purchase commercial stock that is then not treated for varroa and dies over winter. There have been some huge losses among commercial beekeepers such as Adee who lost @30,000 colonies one winter about 5 or 6 years ago. Survey the beekeepers who actually know something about beekeeping (winter preparation particularly) and who treat for varroa, most of them have winter losses less than 10%. So far this winter, I have zero losses.

I have not treated my bees since 2005. A couple of years ago, a research project in the EU cast a wide net for anyone who had long term survivor bees. Geoff Williams from Auburn University came up and took samples of 8 of my colonies. The results came back a few months ago showing that they did not find any of the known varroa tolerance genes. But and it was a big one, they did find that my bees show a box gene mutation that was highly concentrated in my colonies but is almost never found in commercial stock. The gene affects hair structure on a bee's body. He came back a couple of months ago and got a few more samples to see if they could track expression of this mutation in my stock. My only claim is that my bees are alive and thriving after 17 years with no treatments for varroa. I inspected a colony today that had 5 frames of brood and was hauling pollen in at a high rate. I'm sure I could find a few varroa with an alcohol wash, but equally sure that there are not enough to cause problems for the colony.

As I've previously posted, I am in a reasonably isolated area with no other beekeepers near enough to influence the local drone population.

 

[Ian123]

High losses in the U.S. are mostly among hobbyist beekeepers who tend to purchase commercial stock that is then not treated for varroa and dies over winter. There have been some huge losses among commercial beekeepers such as Adee who lost @30,000 colonies one winter about 5 or 6 years ago. Survey the beekeepers who actually know something about beekeeping (winter preparation particularly) and who treat for varroa, most of them have winter losses less than 10%. So far this winter, I have zero losses.

I have not treated my bees since 2005. A couple of years ago, a research project in the EU cast a wide net for anyone who had long term survivor bees. Geoff Williams from Auburn University came up and took samples of 8 of my colonies. The results came back a few months ago showing that they did not find any of the known varroa tolerance genes. But and it was a big one, they did find that my bees show a box gene mutation that was highly concentrated in my colonies but is almost never found in commercial stock. The gene affects hair structure on a bee's body. He came back a couple of months ago and got a few more samples to see if they could track expression of this mutation in my stock. My only claim is that my bees are alive and thriving after 17 years with no treatments for varroa. I inspected a colony today that had 5 frames of brood and was hauling pollen in at a high rate. I'm sure I could find a few varroa with an alcohol wash, but equally sure that there are not enough to cause problems for the colony.

As I've previously posted, I am in a reasonably isolated area with no other beekeepers near enough to influence the local drone population.

Unfortunately not much use for this side of the pond! As you’ve mentioned you have purchased in Africanised bees. Also according to news reports they are also found in your county/state. Africanised bees are well known to cope with varroa.

 

[Finman]

About Fusion's winter losses. His home is at same altitude as North Africa on this side of pond.
His hives are now bringing lots of pollen. Our bees get pollen first time at the beginning of May.

Vudeo from Finland 12.2.22