Wild/Feral Survivor-Thrivers: Naturally Selected Resistant Bees.

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This is for discussion of bees that have acquired the ability to cope with varroa without any help. The core assumption is that in the UK and Ireland this has occurred through natural selection for the fittest strain, and any subsequent selection has built on that. The idea is to learn from each-other, what works, and why, in the realm of no-treatment beekeeping. Testimonies, questions, explanations and links to relevant scientific studies are all welcome.

I'd like the thread to be a place where the mechanisms that wild populations employ to locate and maintain resistance can be explored, in the belief that that topic holds the key to understanding why no-treatment beekeeping works in some circumstances and not in others.

 

[Newbeeneil]

I sent my daughter a clip from Frozen Planet 2 of two polar bears playing. She said it was just gorgeous then added, "I stopped watching Attenborough because of the moments he points to the collapse of so many of Earth's ecosystems. I don't need a reminder of the eco-grief I feel so much"
I feel a bit like that too. I can only do my bit. I'm not concerned with what the Americans do with their bees. Hopefully our surveillance systems are sufficient and we will never have to worry about it.

I feel the same about Attenborough programs now. Your daughter put it well as I found it difficult explaining to my wife why I didn’t want to watch.

 

[Beesnaturally]

I sent my daughter a clip from Frozen Planet 2 of two polar bears playing. She said it was just gorgeous then added, "I stopped watching Attenborough because of the moments he points to the collapse of so many of Earth's ecosystems. I don't need a reminder of the eco-grief I feel so much"
I feel a bit like that too. I can only do my bit. I'm not concerned with what the Americans do with their bees. Hopefully our surveillance systems are sufficient and we will never have to worry about it.

Possibly. I just worry about the attitude: 'We care about stakeholders; wild bees and the ecologies that they support can go hang.'

I have always had plenty of support for 'eco-grief' from my family. I'm not sure who it was who said something to the effect 'If you are not infuriated, enraged, by the ongoing environmental destruction, the waste, the injustice, the tragedy of such loss, there is something less than human about you.'

Most people I guess don't want to be enraged and choose to wear blinkers to protect themselves. I guess that's human too. Trying to shut down the messengers is part of that, and while human is not one of the finer human qualities.

 

[Beesnaturally]

I feel the same about Attenborough programs now. Your daughter put it well as I found it difficult explaining to my wife why I didn’t want to watch.

I do that too. Its all rather old news to me, so it isn't interesting and there seems little point in wallowing in it.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Possibly. I just worry about the attitude: 'We care about stakeholders; wild bees and the ecologies that they support can go hang.'

I have always had plenty of support for 'eco-grief' from my family. I'm not sure who it was who said something to the effect 'If you are not infuriated, enraged, by the ongoing environmental destruction, the waste, the injustice, the tragedy of such loss, there is something less than human about you.'

Most people I guess don't want to be enraged and choose to wear blinkers to protect themselves. I guess that's human too. Trying to shut down the messengers is part of that, and while human is not one of the finer human qualities.

You miss my point. You can drive yourself insane worrying about the injustices to plant animal and human in the world. Getting enraged when you can’t do anything about it is a road to madness.

 

[Beesnaturally]

You miss my point. You can drive yourself insane worrying about the injustices to plant animal and human in the world. Getting enraged when you can’t do anything about it is a road to madness.

But you can do something about it. If everyone thought that we'd really be in trouble.

 

[Erichalfbee]

But you can do something about it. If everyone thought that we'd really be in trouble.

I do. Just not to the exclusion of everything else. Having already had a painful brush with my mortality and watched my husband in peril too I can’t spend the rest of my life enraged about the state of the world.

 

[Beesnaturally]

I do. Just not to the exclusion of everything else. Having already had a painful brush with my mortality and watched my husband in peril too I can’t spend the rest of my life enraged about the state of the world.

I don't do it to the exclusion of everything else. I've spent most of the day making a synthetic drum kit; now I'm looking after a grandson. Then it'll be labelling.

Anyhoo: we raise a strain of bees with no natural resistance to foulbrood (NVR bees, lets recall, have broad resistance) and have them mate with wild bees that will not be inoculated. Does this have the effect of:

a) helping the wild bees thrive
b) undercutting their resistance
c) no effect

?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

But you can do something about it. If everyone thought that we'd really be in trouble.

why not just stop interfering and let 'Darwinism' sort the wheat from the chaff.
Isn't that what 'survival of the fittest' is all about

 

[roche]

why not just stop interfering and let 'Darwinism' sort the wheat from the chaff.
Isn't that what 'survival of the fittest' is all about

But isn't part of the problem that humans have accelerated that rate of change (or the spread of pests and disease) to a rate where Darwin cannot operate?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

But isn't part of the problem that humans have accelerated that rate of change (or the spread of pests and disease) to a rate where Darwin cannot operate?

which is why we treat our bees

 

[fian]

why not just stop interfering and let 'Darwinism' sort the wheat from the chaff.
Isn't that what 'survival of the fittest' is all about

Be careful you walk on the linguistic wire..

 

[roche]

which is why we treat our bees

Exactly

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Be careful you walk on the linguistic wire..

no, I never liked pasta - especially the long stringy type

 

[Beesnaturally]

But isn't part of the problem that humans have accelerated that rate of change (or the spread of pests and disease) to a rate where Darwin cannot operate?

It is treating and (the rest of) the appalling genetic husbandry that stops bees adapting. Left to themselves they are just fine, as we've seen time and again in the scientific studies posted here. Those same studies almost always make exactly that point.

Plainly not everybody is equipped to take that on board.

 

[Beesnaturally]

which is why we treat our bees

In treating them we perpetuate the need to treat them.

Is that something you can get your head around?

 

[Mint Bee]

most domesticate animals would not survive being left to roam wild.
Rare breeds are a niche that have limited applicable to main stream animal husbandry for maintaining sufficient food production
We continue to treat them as domesticated stock or we let them die
Most don't want to go through the decimation that you encourage and cant get their heads around this

Once you can provide sufficient nucs / queens then show your adapted bees work elsewhere in multiple locations then a majority of beekeepers might listen to you. Until then its white noise to most

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Is that something you can get your head around

I think it's you that needs to have your head looked at.

 

[Beesnaturally]

I think it's you that needs to have your head looked at.

I'll take that as a no then

 

[Beesnaturally]

most domesticate animals would not survive being left to roam wild.
Rare breeds are a niche that have limited applicable to main stream animal husbandry for maintaining sufficient food production
We continue to treat them as domesticated stock or we let them die

Although we can do just as well with pretty much any bee, without treating, once we understand the trick. We don't need medication-dependent racehorse bees, and free-living bees sure as hell don't either.

Most don't want to go through the decimation that you encourage and cant get their heads around this.

If you read up just a little you'd understand you don't need to; whereupon your heads will have a chance of being around it.

Once you can provide sufficient nucs / queens then show your adapted bees work elsewhere in multiple locations then a majority of beekeepers might listen to you. Until then its white noise to most

That's ok. Let those who comprehend have some space, and perhaps you'll gain a different perspective over time. Watch and learn.

BTW providing queens (preferably in the form of nucs) won't succeed without the ongoing process of selection for resistance and vitality. If you undertake selection for resistance and vitality, you don't need any queen input. Just raise resistance in your stock.

You did read the Cuba paper John posted?

 

[rolande]

Anyhoo: we raise a strain of bees with no natural resistance to foulbrood

Bit of a side comment here. But didn't Taber say that raising foul brood resistance was a rather easy thing to achieve? I may be totally misremembering but I have an idea that he said something along those lines, he'd certainly been involved with Farrar's work on the subject in his younger days.