Views on LASI Queens at the end of the season

[farmerboy5470]

The thing is that the £40 queens are described as open mated in their own apiary. Fair enough and an adequate description. The £500 queens are described as the same but put in colonies and their progeny tested. If they are the same as the £40 queens then what is the point of testing them unless it is to justify the price. Surely if they are the same the progeny will have the same behaviour? Or have I completely missed something?

Different progeny as queens mated with different drones...

 

[Madge]

I think the question referred to other valuable characteristics (e.g. swarming, disease resistence, overwinterig ability, etc) rather than just hygienic behaviour

LASI aren't making any other claims - not that I have seen.

 

[Fusion_power]

New Zealand has tried to breed varroa tolerant bees long time. No success so far.

A beekeeper in NZ got too sick to care for his bees a few years ago. Several hundred hives dwindled down to about a dozen survivors. When he recovered, he started breeding from them and is now selling limited numbers of queens to others who are interested in mite resistance. I don't recommend this method, losing 1800 colonies of bees had to be heart breaking, but after 3 years, the survivors are mite resistant. His genetic base is very narrow and will have to be supplemented by outbreeding.

 

[Finman]

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NZ resistant bee project is leaded now by university.

Previous million project failed. They got from Germany a resistant Carniolan bee start.

I have not found, from where university project has got the start. I bet that they use foreign gene material.

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[Fusion_power]

Beekeepers talk among themselves. One NZ beekeeper frequents the U.S. beesource forum as "oldtimer". He has posted a few times about getting queens to evaluate from the guy who lost almost all of his bees. It will be a year or two before anyone publicly says if the queens are resistant.

 

[Finman]

Beekeepers talk among themselves. One NZ beekeeper frequents the U.S. beesource forum as "oldtimer". He has posted a few times about getting queens to evaluate from the guy who lost almost all of his bees. It will be a year or two before anyone publicly says if the queens are resistant.

I do not trust on individual beekeepers, who says that he has need mite resistant hives. Hobby beekeepers get in few years resistant bees and with professionals it takes decades.

Next questions are

- why others do not use his bees .... Even after years
- do the bees get good yields
- when bees however have pest on neck, and suck blood, colonies suffer and their production is poor
- how bad those bees are to sting.

If you get 100% more honey with treatments, why don't you use then ordinary bees.
IT is like farming, do you use herbicides or not...

500$ per mated Queen every second year.... Grazy price instead of mite treatment. Mad!

You get 2 new hives with that queen price if mite kills one. And huge loose the Queen, which is 500$.

If you have under 20 hives, you are not able to maintain and save your own genepool inside mongrel colonies. With rigid selecting you have soon inbreeding problems. Sooner than mite resistant bees.
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[Finman]

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IT was brought tens of mite resistant hives to the Swedish Isle of Gotland. It took ten years that colonies were able to stay alive.
The origin of those bees were from another isle experiment , where they make open matings between resistant bees.

Then somebody get resistant bees in few years. Easy.

Now Sweden starts to breed hygienic tests. They have founded a project.

 

[Beefriendly]

I have many issues with all this effort put in breeding mite resistant bees.
Are they honey monsters? No I think is the answer in nearly every case.
Do they detect varroa infected cells?....or are they just good house keepers and clean up after a pin prick test has killed the larvae?

If they can detect varroa in a cell....how to they detect it?
Most likely is scent.
One small change in a varroa scent gene and they become undetectable again. 30 years research down the drain due to simple evolution of parasite prey gene shifts.

Do the hygienic strains breed as dominant....no is the answer. So these possible resistant genes simply get lost in the background.

Other varroa resistant strains of bees have been found that have nothing to do with hygienic behaviour, ie. the dominant benign DWV etc.

Why this obsession with developing a bee that can live with a parasite!


I could go on, but shall stick with my vaporizer and a simple kill on sight policy

 

[Madge]

I have many issues with all this effort put in breeding mite resistant bees. ...

If you're talking about LASI's breeding programme - they're not breeding 'mite-resistant' bees (from what I can see on their website); they're breeding for bees with hygienic behaviour. I think there's a difference.

 

[Beefriendly]

If you're talking about LASI's breeding programme - they're not breeding 'mite-resistant' bees (from what I can see on their website); they're breeding for bees with hygienic behaviour. I think there's a difference.

I'm glad someone else has spotted this from LASI.
Their liquid nitrogen and pin prick assays have little to do with varroa.
What puzzles me is that this sort of hygienic behaviour in response to AFB is well documented, at least 2 recessive genes, one for removal of larvae and one for uncapping of cells.
I worry they are re-inventing the wheel.

 

[Finman]

If you're talking about LASI's breeding programme - they're not breeding 'mite-resistant' bees (from what I can see on their website); they're breeding for bees with hygienic behaviour. I think there's a difference.

But Lasi hints, that hygienic bees heal many serious diseases and I am not blind.
I read cleary what they write in their advertising.
.
Lasi is far from honest, or then they do not know, what they are doing.
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[Madge]

But Lasi hints, that hygienic bees heal many serious diseases and I am not blind.
I read cleary what they write in their advertising.
.
Lasi is far from honest, or then they do not know, what they are doing.
.

All I can find is this:

Research has shown that hygienic behaviour helps control American foulbrood, chalkbrood, deformed wing virus and varroa.

All they're saying is that hygienic behaviour can be helpful.

 

[Finman]

All I can find is this:

Research has shown that hygienic behaviour helps control American foulbrood, chalkbrood, deformed wing virus and varroa.

All they're saying is that hygienic behaviour can be helpful.

But that is excactly the lie what they tell. I can tell that it is not even helpfull.

And then that mated with mongels are hygienic.

 

[Finman]

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I have told many times about that story that hygienic behaviour helps in chalkbrood.

That is a mistake in thinking, that hygienic bee carry a sick larva out.

But it is easy to get a bee stock , which is immune to chalkbrood. If you put an immune queen into sick hive, the next brood generation will be 100% healthy.


It is same with EFB. Get an immune genepool and you do no see EFB any more.
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The Danish say that they have nosema immune bee stock now.

I have not met a research when they map disease immune genepools.

But all, what I write now, I have got a hint from internet and some things have worked in my hives: nosema, chalkbrood and EFB immunity.

And if you have bad luck, you get these diseases via inbreeding into your whole apiary.

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[Madge]

...

And then that mated with mongels are hygienic.

Where do they say that?

 

[Finman]

Where do they say that?

Virgin Daughters of Hygienic Breeder QueensVirgin daughters are also reared from the same hygienic breeder colonies. They will be mailed to beekeepers when they are a few days old to introduce into a queenless colony and then to mate when aged about one week. Although virgin queens less often sold by queen rearers, we plan to do so to increase the supply of hygienic queens. In addition, there are two other potential advantages for a beekeeper: 1) they are cheaper; 2) by mating with local drones the resulting workers will have a combination of local genes from the drones and hygienic genes from the queen.

http://www.lasiqueenbees.com/our-queen-bees.html

OK, Mellifera, what they exactly say with that COMBINATION?

 

[Finman]

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Tasmania hygienic Project

However, it is
essential to understand that only 50% of the drones need to be from hygienic colonies

Same is said in Glenn Apiaries home page..

 

[Hivemaker.]

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However, it is
essential to understand that only 50% of the drones need to be from hygienic colonies

Same is said in Glenn Apiaries home page..

Do you concur?

 

[Finman]

Do you concur?

What? I only copied a sentence from Tasmanian Project.

 

[Hivemaker.]

I only copied the text.

But do you concur?