VSH Bees

[Erichalfbee]

Been traveling in New Zealand, and don't often have internet. I think tonight I will be able to answer your question. Off to the east coast from Wellington....

Had a pig roast at the Camp Rangi meeting in Pohangina on Saturday. Stayed with a beekeeper who just received payment for 2 drums of high activity Manuka. NZ$26,000 per drum. Imagine!

Troubles in the Manuka kingdom though. Will be on the news soon enough.

Thanks, Michael. I look forward to that

 

[Erichalfbee]

Troubles in the Manuka kingdom though. Will be on the news soon enough.

Recall of Manuka honey, I read somewhere

 

[charlievictorbravo]

Recall of Manuka honey, I read somewhere

The NZ authorities have got to do something - 1600 tonnes produced per year in NZ and the UK imports 1800 tonnes. The problem is, there's so much money to be made, it attracts the international criminal fraternity and then the trouble starts!

CVB

 

[Michael Palmer]

Recall of Manuka honey, I read somewhere

Yep, the Chinese found a chemical in the Manuka that artificially elevated the activity of the Manuka. They've banned it until they get a handle on it. I assume others will, too.

 

[Michael Palmer]

I copied here what I sent to Dani....Just my take on the matter


First, hygienic response to diseased brood is different than Varroa Sensitive Hygiene...VSH.

Hygienic response is when bees recognize that the brood is sick, uncap the brood, and remove the sick/dead pupa. Very good at cleaning up chalkbrood. I had some very chalky bees, requeened them with daughters of stock testing high for hygienic trait, and once the new bees were established there were zero mummies. Amazingly fast.

But VSH is a different gene...according to Spivak. Two genes actually. One to control uncapping and one controlling removing the bee pupa. The bees recognize when a foundress mite is reproducing. They uncap the brood cell, dismember the pupa and remove it...thus stopping that foundress from getting any of her daughters to maturity. The trait was discovered at the Baton Rouge lab. The scientists found colonies that had single foundress mites with no offspring. At first they thought some pheromone was preventing the mother mite from reproducing and labelled it Suppressed Mite Reproduction..SMR.

Well, they then discovered that what was really happening was that the bees were removing all the pupae where the foundress was reproducing, thus leaving only non-reproducing females. The trait is selectable.

So, how does it work?

I started introducing VSH breeding stock in 2004. As everyone else believed, I thought it would be the silver bullet. Didn't turn out to be so. The colonies with VSH daughters still crashed from varroa come autumn. But, I continued with the program. Now I believe I'm seeing some success. Whereas before I used VSH my bees were showing PMS by mid-summer. Now I rarely see DWV crawlers, even in August. My varroa numbers according to the national surveys show acceptably low varroa numbers. My New York apiaries are rolling 0-2 mites/350 bees in July. My Vermont bees are rolling .4 mites/150 bees. Very acceptable

But I still do treat in August/September when I remove the honey crop. Most beekeepers I know have to0 treat twice...spring and autumn...or their bees are crashing mid-summer.

To me it's not about never having to treat again, but more about getting them to Autumn with no crashing colonies, when I can treat. Perhaps eventually no treatments, but for now, having to treat only once a year...after I remove the crop, is a real step forward. Using VSH stock is not a quick fix. To get lasting results of any kind, you have to change the neighborhood. You have to elevate the % VSH in your area stock so the drones have enough VSH when they mate with your virgins. That takes time. Probably not possible if you're surrounded by beekeepers who flood your area with non-VSH drones.

Still, I believe it is worth pursuing. VSH is another tool. I'll be introducing another stock this summer to my mating area. Purdue University has been working on the grooming behavior. They found the grooming behavior is selectable and have developed stock that have a high grooming rate. So here we go with another one. Something to keep me excited and motivated to stay with my bees for another decade. Heck, I'm only 67 and I've got it in me still.

Are any of your bee labs working on VSH, or are they still grouping hygienic with VSH?

Mike

 

[mbc]

Not to my knowledge. As I said earlier, I wish there was more top quality work being done with our bees but it is largely being left to well meaning amateurs a la Ron Hoskins, with the exception of the work being done at LASI by Prof Ratnieks et all.

Serious funding for proper bee men who are also scientists doesn't seem to happen here.

 

[bontbee]

... look at them under a microscope to determine whether or not they have been chewed. The most common damage is dented carapaces...
CVB

IIRC it was reported at a Varroa conference in the early 2000s that research had shown that dented carapaces were a "birth defect"....not damage caused by bees. Has that research been disproved - or did I just dream it?!

 

[charlievictorbravo]

IIRC it was reported at a Varroa conference in the early 2000s that research had shown that dented carapaces were a "birth defect"....not damage caused by bees. Has that research been disproved - or did I just dream it?!

I don't have any facts for you but a comment by Ron Hoskins at the weekend was that when Varroa first arrived in the UK they were described as "crablike" and many beekeepers assumed that meant they had a hard shell. It was only when he started trying to collect dropped mites that he found that the carapace was quite soft and easily damaged. It took him a while to figure out a way of getting the mites off the monitoring board without, himself, damaging them. It is possible - no evidence - that early researchers had the same problems and actually damaged the mites when handling/moving them and described the damage as a birth defect. Ron has a video, which he showed last Saturday at Holsworthy, of a bee performing an unusual waggle dance, the response to which was another bee attacked a mite on the waggling bee that was situated between the thorax and the abdomen, where the victim bee could not reach it.

CVB

 

[bontbee]

Thanks for the update, cvb.

I have been racking my brains to think where I got this next suggestion from: I seem to remember that at the same conference one of the speakers suggested that the dents in the carapace are in pretty much the same location in each case and that these locations relate to the points of muscle attachment. Again, I'm a bit hazy on this but it was suggested that muscle contractions were responsible for the damage. If their shells are soft could this be possible? (though that might suggest poor design of the varroa...!) The indentations don't, apparently, affect the varroa's functioning.

Has anyone else heard of this, or did I just pick it up in la-la land last time I was there?

 

[Michael Palmer]

Has anyone else heard of this, or did I just pick it up in la-la land last time I was there?

I think Purdue University and or Greg Hunt must have something online. Look for grooming behavior or "ankle biters".

 

[bontbee]

Thanks Michael.

I've done a bit of burrowing and found the following:

"Internally, each regular dorsal dimple aligns with a series of obliquely-situated, dorso-ventral muscles in the opisthosoma. It is concluded that regular dorsal dimples are faults originating during mite ontogeny and should be considered separately from damage to Varroa destructor inflicted by honeybees or predatory arthropods."

(That's copied from the abstract of Davis AR. Regular dorsal dimples on Varroa destructor–Damage symptoms or developmental origin? Apidologie. 2009;40:151–162. doi: 10.1051/apido/2009001)

So something did stick in my wasteland of a brain, after all. But, the conference referred to in post #27 was held in 2011, not early 2000s as I stated. (And I did, it seems, make up the bit about muscle contractions...!)

 

[charlievictorbravo]

Thanks Michael.

I've done a bit of burrowing and found the following:

"Internally, each regular dorsal dimple aligns with a series of obliquely-situated, dorso-ventral muscles in the opisthosoma. It is concluded that regular dorsal dimples are faults originating during mite ontogeny and should be considered separately from damage to Varroa destructor inflicted by honeybees or predatory arthropods."

(That's copied from the abstract of Davis AR. Regular dorsal dimples on Varroa destructor–Damage symptoms or developmental origin? Apidologie. 2009;40:151–162. doi: 10.1051/apido/2009001)

So something did stick in my wasteland of a brain, after all. But, the conference referred to in post #27 was held in 2011, not early 2000s as I stated. (And I did, it seems, make up the bit about muscle contractions...!)

Well that's interesting. Reading the paper, and I'm not very good at that, it appears that about 10% of mites have birth defects in the form of "dimples" on the carapace or as it is called in the paper, the idiosoma. I had a short period last year of counting damage on the carapace of mites and found about 10% damaged so what I was seeing was probably not hygienic behaviour but just birth defects.

Ron Hoskins' bees exhibit up to 80% damage to all mites on a monitoring tray so either he is breeding birth defects into his Varroa destructor or his bees really are damaging the mites. Furthermore, he has a video of a bee pulling a mite from a another bee. Unfortunately, the vid does not show the detail of any damage done, it being a serendipitous "that looks like unusual behaviour, I'll grab the camera and record it" moment.

I'm confused!

CVB

 

[Erichalfbee]

Now.......can I throw regressed bees into the mix. Does anybody have an opinion on small bees ?

 

[Michael Palmer]

Now.......can I throw regressed bees into the mix. Does anybody have an opinion on small bees ?

Don't get me going about small cell. Think round luncheon meat.

I'll have a better response later, but for now...Bologna

 

[Fusion_power]

I can neither prove nor disprove that small cell has any impact on varroa tolerance. I use small cell, but for a different reason. The queen has more cells to lay eggs for a given frame size. This has a positive effect on spring buildup.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Don't get me going about small cell. Think round luncheon meat.

I'll have a better response later, but for now...Bologna

Michael Bush bangs on and on about them

 

[Michael Palmer]

Yep, MB is a real banger. More mash than banger.

 

[Michael Palmer]

Thought I would give you a few ideas from some noted scientists, about their findings concerning small cells and varroa control. This one is Seeley's work, and others are listed at the bottom of the linked page.

http://honeybeesuite.com/small-cells-do-not-control-varroa-mites/

What have the bangers come up with? Faith based rubbish beekeeping with no numbers and no science. Of course they all claim the studies weren't done correctly, or for long enough, or even that the beekeeper installed the foundation backwards, (Housel Position). We've asked over and over on BeeSource for numbers. They never get posted. why? Because there aren't any. Until I see some good science from the Small Cell group, it's once again round luncheon meat to me.

 

[pargyle]

Thought I would give you a few ideas from some noted scientists, about their findings concerning small cells and varroa control. This one is Seeley's work, and others are listed at the bottom of the linked page.

http://honeybeesuite.com/small-cells-do-not-control-varroa-mites/

.

From that thread:

"Bill Castro
November 20, 2011 at 5:22 am

I agree that small-cell won’t “cure” varroa. These studies are only very short term studies and need to be carried out for 2-3 years as regression is a major factor in using small-cell. I have met with and spoken directly to several life-long beekeepers such as Michael Bush, Kirk Webster, Mike Palmer, Dee Lusby, and Erik Osterlund, and all switched away from conventionally- sized foundation and switched to small-cell regression and had extremely beneficial results. These are folks who don’t have laboratory apiaries, but lifetime real life trial-and-error experience with varroa from the beginning in the 90s. I really don’t think anyone has claimed that small-cell will “cure” the infestation of varroa, but it has made a huge difference in the way bees deal with them over several years. I have also seen a big difference in how my bees cull infected brood when comparing large-cell and small-cell colonies. It is my belief that giving our kept bees any advantage that we can, short of chemicals, is what we should be looking for."

Ooops ... someone taking your name in vain Mike !!

I run foundationless hives ... I have bees that have never been treated for varroa (or anything else for that matter) and they appear to be both healthy and strong colonies. Whether 'small cells' aid anything I don't know and I certainly won't be arguing with the notable authorities on both sides of the divide.

But .. what I have noticed is that my bees build cells that vary in size .. some are small and some are larger .. they seem to be larger in the areas where they choose to store honey and around the bottom edge of the comb where there is often drone brood - I like to think that my bees are building what they want and not something that I have influenced. Whether this assists in the health of the colony I don't know .. all part of the mix as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Erichalfbee]

But .. what I have noticed is that my bees build cells that vary in size .. some are small and some are larger .. they seem to be larger in the areas where they choose to store honey and around the bottom edge of the comb where there is often drone brood - I like to think that my bees are building what they want and not something that I have influenced. Whether this assists in the health of the colony I don't know .. all part of the mix as far as I'm concerned.

That's the thing, isn't it
It's obvious that they way our bees eventually cope with varroa is multifactorial.
Ron Hoskin's bees....for example.... nothing to do with small cells.
(If I lived near Swindon I'd be banging on his door for a few queens)
If you let the bees draw their own comb the cells are different sizes as you say.
Michael bush says he has to make his bees smaller as large bees won't make small cells. He says it works for him.
I think maybe the danger is that novices get hold of an idea like this and think it is the answer.
Just buy small cell foundation and the need to treat disappears.