Social distancing

Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum

Help Support Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
That’s interesting. That second figure is quite low. Does that allude to the 1km distance?
Another question though is does drifting matter within an apiary.
I practice apiary level hygiene, so drifting is not a huge concern. No the dispersed hives were only about 50-100 m apart from the diagrams Tom puts in. It is a good book, I recommend it
 
I practice apiary level hygiene, so drifting is not a huge concern.

David Evans has an interesting article on drifting.

He cited a recent study showing that
Distance between colonies in an apiary was the major factor that influenced drifting and ~17% of tested workers had drifted (with a third to half of these being apparently unrelated to other colonies in the test apiary).

He followed this up with another study that monitored varroa numbers in colonies continuously treated with Apistan. Any mites found were obviously introduced by bees from other colonies:
In one summer an average of 1415 and 1001 mites were introduced to each of the seven ‘recipient’ colonies in two separate apiaries.
 
David Evans has an interesting article on drifting.

He cited a recent study showing that
Distance between colonies in an apiary was the major factor that influenced drifting and ~17% of tested workers had drifted (with a third to half of these being apparently unrelated to other colonies in the test apiary).

He followed this up with another study that monitored varroa numbers in colonies continuously treated with Apistan. Any mites found were obviously introduced by bees from other colonies:
In one summer an average of 1415 and 1001 mites were introduced to each of the seven ‘recipient’ colonies in two separate apiaries.

Yes, our practice of keeping hives close to each other is one major reason to treat for varroa.
 
In his book" the lives of bees" Tom Seeley talks of wild colonies being 1 km apart. In a study of two apiaries, one with crowded hives and one with dispersed hives, he found drifting of drones to be about 50% and 3% respectively
David Evans has an interesting article on drifting.

He cited a recent study showing that
Distance between colonies in an apiary was the major factor that influenced drifting and ~17% of tested workers had drifted (with a third to half of these being apparently unrelated to other colonies in the test apiary).

He followed this up with another study that monitored varroa numbers in colonies continuously treated with Apistan. Any mites found were obviously introduced by bees from other colonies:
In one summer an average of 1415 and 1001 mites were introduced to each of the seven ‘recipient’ colonies in two separate apiaries.

In Germany they did a study about varroa spreading. They brought cleaned hives from varroa and situated then on the military area, where were no other hives . Mites spreaded via flowers . Hives were contaminated by mites quite quickly.

When varroa arrived to Finland, it spreaded 50 km per year inside the country.

Varroa is such a creature that you cannot avoid it via drifting theory. It is only matter of time, when mites are too much.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top