VSH Bees. The Future? or a False Dawn?

[Beefriendly]

Varroa Sensitive Hygienic bees.
The future? or a false dawn?

I’m quiet interested in VSH and always grateful to B+ for keeping us updated about his work.
But what I am struggling to understand is how it will, or if it can, have any impact on us “ordinary” Beekeepers. So if anyone has tried some VSH bees be interested to know how it has affected your beekeeping.

I’m beginning to think it is a false dawn for several reasons, please feel free to disagree.
Currently, as far as I am aware it is a multi-genic trait that only breeds true under very controlled conditions such as II or station mated queens and even these offspring seem to show considerable variability.
Continual breeding of the VSH trait is outside the scope of us hobbyists.
So we can only purchase VSH queens expressing this trait that is then lost in the next generation thanks to only having access to open mating. This means we have a few queens that we don’t need to treat for varroa at the end of the season. Not a great gain in my opinion, seeing as treatments are cheaper than queens.

About the only way I can see it having a major impact is if all the breeders only sell VSH queens, whether that be Buckfast, Carniolan, Amm etc. And (and this is big AND) we all stop treating for varroa, such that only VSH queens genes (or we hope) become (over several years) the dominant population.

The other question, of course is, is VSH the only solution to varroa? It appears from other studies that bees have adopted several strategies to live with varroa and non have shown VSH and also non show any characteristics’ that would be desirable to have in your apiary.
It will be interesting to see how the approach taken by Randy Oliver works out. He isn’t interested in the mechanism of varroa resistance, just that they show resistance and also characteristics that are desirable to the beekeeper.

Be interested to know what others think.

 

[Walrus]

I think that the complex genetic science stuff that breeders like B+ do, which is way over my head, is worthwhile from a learning/scientific discovery perspective. Incredibly beneficial understanding may come out of such research, which would have practical benefits. We already know that the hygienic trait is a good thing even if it doesn't always help with varroa.

IMO it's going to take a very long time to get widespread varroa tolerant* bees i.e. it's the norm for most beekeepers. Varroa has been around for a long time and if it was easy it would have been cracked by now. If all queen breeders and queen suppliers sold just the varroa tolerant queens, over a few years the numbers of tolerant bees would be the majority, and eventually take over. That could happen if those that buy queens only buy varroa tolerant ones - supply & demand etc.

*by this I mean that parasite & host co-exist in an equilibrium which bees, mites, and beekeepers find acceptable

 

[Finman]

I

*by this I mean that parasite & host co-exist in an equilibrium which bees, mites, and beekeepers find acceptable

Varroa has been mellifera's parasite now 100 years. How long are you going to wait that balance truly works.

What domestic animal do you know where parasite - host is in balance.

 

[Finman]

Varroa has been mellifera's parasite now 100 years. How long are you going to wait that balance truly works.

What domestic animal do you know where parasite - host is in balance.

Beefriend asks, how VHS has affected to everyone's beekeeping. ... many has lost most of their hives.

Randy Oliver hardly has any Magic Tool, that he could succeed better in breeding than other breeders.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Varroa Sensitive Hygienic bees.
The future? or a false dawn?

Many of us don't want Carnica anywhere near our apiaries anyway so using VSH as an excuse to foist them on many of us would put the mockers on the whole dream from the outset

 

[domino]

This topic general elicits a negative vibe with a weird binary beekeeping World between treating and breeding an elusive super bee.

Any long term and widespread solution to varroa would need to be easy to adopt, simple to use and require almost no effort. Every year beekeeping friends lose hives because they cocked up the treatment, we're not there yet.

Reading about the programs to breed a super bee is good fun. In partical, day to day beekeeping I can't see it benefiting me for years to come.

I'm focusing on a robust monitoring and treatment regime.

 

[Lancs Lad]

I decided over 4 years ago that after all the years of keeping bees I was doing it wrong, in that my main criteria should be breeding for health. I usually rear about 40 new queens every year and went down the route of using Sussex University hygienic queens, contrary to what people posted on the forums they have proved excellent bees. I decided to go with one treatment a year in December and breed from the best and shoot the rest, my stocks have constantly improved doing it this way. In my four apiaries I now have a good background population of hygienic drones, the main mating apiary is on the edge of the sea so there is a good drone barrier.
Also we have a group of 12 to 15 beekeepers that meet once a week for cheese and biscuits and a brew, they are all moving to a common stock between us and next year grafted queen cells will be distributed to all increasing the background population.
Whilst there are many variables due to bee genetics this is a first step and hopefully with time we will see more improvements.
In breeding for Hygiene or VSH I think that Buckfast bees are at a disadvantage as the mere fact of being Buckfast means new drone lines, so there is an advantage of using AMM or Carnica.
To bring new genetics into my lines I have this year introduced and grafted off some queens from B+, they are proving good bees but the test will be this winter and next year.

 

[Beefriendly]

Randy Oliver hardly has any Magic Tool, that he could succeed better in breeding than other breeders.

Possibly not, but most breeders have focused on VSH or simply on hygienic bees. His approach is quite different.

 

[Beefriendly]

Many of us don't want Carnica anywhere near our apiaries anyway so using VSH as an excuse to foist them on many of us would put the mockers on the whole dream from the outset

There are other VSH lines that are not Carnica.
But as you say currently unlikely to work.

 

[For want of a better word]

Varroa has been mellifera's parasite now 100 years. How long are you going to wait that balance truly works.

Not holding my breath!!

What domestic animal do you know where parasite - host is in balance.

Sheep & sheep worm ... in a close flock.

Chons da

 

[Finman]

Possibly not, but most breeders have focused on VSH or simply on hygienic bees. His approach is quite different.

He just began it.

Do you think that varroa tolerant bee breeding has been easy to others.

Randy writes more than does.

Nyt Randy could get ready bees from Fuzion.Power.

 

[Ian123]

If you check out buckfast zucht Peter Stophens site there are hygienic queens available but they have a price, I would think that after some time this stock will make its way into general production lines and then price should drop. Let’s hope other breeders will be making some available.

 

[Poly Hive]

The person who started the hygenic line of thinking was involved with AFB and if I remember rightly gave a lecture at the Nat Honey Show. Steve Taber. He was using liquid nitrogen to kill an area of brood and then observed how long the bees took to remove them.

PH

 

[Beefriendly]

Yes there was some very interesting work done on AFB resistant bees, where at least 2 genes are involved; one for uncapping the cells and one for removing the infected larvae. Both recessive. They generated lines that would uncap only and lines where they wouldn't uncap but would remove the larvae if they manually uncapped the cells.
Hygienic behaviour is nothing new. The tricky part seems to be getting Varroa sensitive hygienic behaviour.

 

[foghornleghorn]

You buy a 100% vsh breeder queen from your chosen breeder. Open mate it. If you can't affect drone populations to any extent, the daughter queens will still produce 50% vsh bees. That is enough to make a decent impact on varroa even though treatment will still be necessary.

 

[mazzamazda]

You buy a 100% vsh breeder queen from your chosen breeder. Open mate it. If you can't affect drone populations to any extent, the daughter queens will still produce 50% vsh bees. That is enough to make a decent impact on varroa even though treatment will still be necessary.

You cant buy 100% vsh breeder queens, certainly who I have been speaking to, their 100% vsh queens are very inbred, and pretty much useless to anything other than being vsh, aggressive, swarmy.

 

[Ian123]

You cant buy 100% vsh breeder queens, certainly who I have been speaking to, their 100% vsh queens are very inbred, and pretty much useless to anything other than being vsh, aggressive, swarmy.

He sold some earlierhttps://www.buckfast-zucht.de/index.php?seite=berichte&la=en

 

[Finman]

Yes there was some very interesting work done on AFB resistant bees, where at least 2 genes are involved; one for uncapping the cells and one for removing the infected larvae. Both recessive. They generated lines that would uncap only and lines where they wouldn't uncap but would remove the larvae if they manually uncapped the cells.
Hygienic behaviour is nothing new. The tricky part seems to be getting Varroa sensitive hygienic behaviour.

AFB resistant bees do not exist. They have been bees really long time.

Today Canada does not accept, that In AFB case treatment is hygienic or Something else bees.
.

 

[Finman]

You buy a 100% vsh breeder queen from your chosen breeder. Open mate it. If you can't affect drone populations to any extent, the daughter queens will still produce 50% vsh bees. That is enough to make a decent impact on varroa even though treatment will still be necessary.

It has been found with researches, that VHS hybrid hives are almost as tolerant against varroa as normal bees.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

It has been found with researches, that VHS hybrid hives are almost as tolerant against varroa as normal bees.