PLan Bee for Survival

[Teemore]

Thought this might be of interest:
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/nuig-researchers-come-up-with-plan-bee-for-survival-1.2757114

 

[Finman]

That kind of dream.

Method is good. The researchers asks from public, where are resistant bees.

 

[Tony M]

(My first posting - Hello, all!)

This reminded me of something I read the other day - a piece of UK research from 2012, which can be found by searching the bibba.com site for "The health and status of the feral honeybee population of the UK". (I was going to post a link, but can't, since this is my first post). I can't remember how I came across it - and, of course, you might have already seen it!

The UK research seemed to indicate that our feral populations of bees are pretty-much the same "mongrel" mixture as the average beekeepers stock - which in turn suggests that chances of finding resistant wild populations might be slender.

It will be interesting to see what the new research comes up with - there is perhaps some hope for a different outcome, given the geographical separation.

Thoughts welcome!

Tony M.

 

[bpmurray]

It's a good idea to be able to map feral colonies, but I suspect they're populated by new swarms each year.

 

[wessexmario]

It probably depends on the beekeeping demographics of where the search is done.
In places with a high density of beeks, then I would expect there not to be any significant difference at all between the feral and managed populations, in less populated rural parts, then there might be more of a difference.
If it's there, if they don't look, they won't find it.