Varroa resistance, Q&A panel: Robert Pickard chair, Steve Riley, Stephen Martin, Joe Ibbertson

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-06

[00:00:04][music] [music] [music] Okay. Well, we've got these uh questions and our illustrious speakers here to uh help us. Um right from the start of course we begin with Shakespeare's basic concept that there's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

[00:00:41]>> Um all things are relative and a lot of the confusion in beekeeping is caused by the huge complexity and variety of the different situations in which bees are kept and the different people who keep them. So the first question we've had in is we hear about veroa tolerance, resistance and resilience.

[00:01:05]Are they the same thing? I'll hand that over to you Stephen to start us off.

[00:01:11]>> Uh right. So this is something that's come up quite often and you will see in the literature some people use tolerance, some people use resistance, resilience. Yeah, occasionally. So these words are do mean specific things particularly in [snorts] uh in towards pathogens. They mainly came with pathogens. Um when I started I started using the word tolerance uh because I thought that this was the best explanation for it. But I soon realized that actually from a beekeeper point of view, you liked the idea that the bees were resistant. Your bees were resistant rather than tolerant that they could cope with it. And because we we don't really fully understand the the the real detail of the mechanism and we are using these words out of context um I was quite happy to switch to the word um resistance and it's mainly because it's easier for the beekeepers to understand.

[00:02:16]It sounds better if you've got resistant bees than tolerant bees at the end of the day you know it's what the beekeepers want. So we've switched to that and it's used quite widely now but you will still see but effectively it means remains the same thing is that the bees are able to deal with that. Um the the actual differences in in the real world is the actual mechanism of whether that where the resistance lies. So that's the reason I always now refer to mother as res resistance because it's just something that the beekeepers can easily uh understand and it just sounds better if you have resistant bees than you've got tolerant bees. Yeah.

[00:03:02]>> Uh anything to add to that?

[00:03:03]>> Yes, we put up a definition yesterday of rower resistance which is the only phrase we use at our club uh which is uh bees handling the rorowamites themselves. So no involvement uh in any way by the beekeepers of reducing mit. So no treatments, no biotechnical measures, uh no drone culling, no sugar shaking, no funny business. It's all down to the bees handling the mites.

[00:03:30]>> Okay. Joe, anything?

[00:03:32]>> Um just that it's a resistance is a better descriptor of what the mechanism is. And the mechanism is um a behavior.

[00:03:40]So they are resisting the might by knocking back its population. they're not tolerating its population. Um, and they're not in in ways they can be tolerant and can be uh resilient, but the main mechanism is resistance. And that's that's why we kind of go with that one.

[00:03:58]>> Okay, thank you for that. Um, question number two. I am a beginner and bought my nucleus online from a recommended company. I didn't want to treat my bees with chemicals and they died.

[00:04:13]I asked my association to look at them and they said it was something called parasitic might syndrome. They told me that they always treat for veroa and anyone who doesn't treat will lose all their bees.

[00:04:27]I'll start with Steve on this one.

[00:04:30]>> Yes, that's a sorry tale. Um I think just be wary of buying uh bees currently from bee suppliers. uh an awful lot of them are uh based on uh imported bees.

[00:04:42]They're heavily treated and by the time they arrive they'll probably have low level of mice but they will have low levels of resistance mechanisms in them.

[00:04:53]So the mites will increase very quickly.

[00:04:56]Uh so we found that the might resistance have occurred uh in our local bees and I think all the case studies on row resistance uh have shown that as well.

[00:05:05]These are openly mated uh queens and all locally adapted to their microclimate, their pathogens locally and their flora uh and flows. So uh so I think that's the first thing about that is if you're a the second thing if you're a beginner probably best to take your local advice uh from a local mentor when you're first starting. Uh the early years there's a lot that can go wrong, right? and your judgment hasn't been hard hardened by uh experience. Uh and it gets easier with age, although sometimes you wouldn't believe it. Uh so in your early years, I would uh take your local advice from your uh your local association. Probably treat your bees unless they've come from uh a fellow ver resistant beekeeper. Uh and just keep life simple. Enjoy your beekeeping. take some honey maybe in your first few years uh and then start the monitoring process looking for the ver resistant traits. Number three then why does the national B unit say that there is no evidence of veroa resistance first of all is that what the national B unit actually says >> that's they have said that yes they [clears throat] are seem to be so Kirsty stating if if she's asked she will point people to the rural resistant website now which is good Um yeah, it's it's it's a difficult one because the evidence says otherwise. I mean, we you know, the evidence we've shown the last few days and got people like Steve here that haven't treated for many years. You know, they've written books about it.

[00:06:50]So, everything's there. Um yeah, it's a difficult one. They're getting backed into a I think into a corner as more more evidence comes out, more beekeepers come out that haven't treated for many years. Um, it's very it's a very difficult one to to answer, but >> yeah, >> I'm surprised that they would say that because we know across the world that there are lots of species of bees that adapt to dealing with these sorts of mites. Uh, Apis sran japonica in in Japan um has really lots of different things it can do to cope with veroamite.

[00:07:31]And I remember in the Philippines I saw apis sarana with veroamites on them because they've lived with them for a long period of time and they would clean the mites off one another. But when I mixed them with apis maleifa they wouldn't clean them off the apis maleifra.

[00:07:48]>> They'd only clean them off apisana. So, we've got lots of evidence that different subspecies and species uh of bee around the world can adapt to living with veroa and they can adapt several different techniques to do it. So, there's no reason why our bees shouldn't be able to adapt if they're given the opportunity uh to uh undergo natural selection.

[00:08:15]Question number four. Can the updated Veroa calculator be used for developing veroa resistance?

[00:08:22]>> Um well yeah it's just another tool in your arsenal. So all the things we've been talking about you know evidence of things on the bottom boards uh mic counts. So it just gives you an idea an estimation of what your might populations are in that in the in the colony. Whichever monitoring method you use. There are caveats which you need to read. It's not all methods are not accurate at all times. It is an estimate and the more you monitor the better information you're going to get about how things are changing in your colonies and it allows you to make an informed decision. The number of people which now basically say yeah we don't see mites but I still treat twice a year seems to be to me crazy. So it's just another tool in the arsenal. um where basically it's very simple to use and it gives you more information um that you can use to make an informed decision. Treat when you need to treat, treat and don't treat when you don't need to treat. So it's it's there for the beekeepers asked us to do this the BBKA. So we've done this. So it's just say another tool in your arsenal. So it's it's there for you to use. the veroa came here in 1992 and yet you still see lots of wild free living bees. Um so and often you will open a wild colony and find no on it at all. So it's quite obvious that the local the natural population free living has definitely got some sort of mechanism to cope with the onslaught of rower because it's a long time since 1992 and if it was so devastating uh you'd expect them all to have been wiped out and Joe knows quite a lot about that I think. Do you want to?

[00:10:10]>> Yeah. You know, you always have that initial loss, new pathogen, parasite, whatever works its way through a population and they rebound. And in in our situation with um managed colonies as well as free living colonies, okay, the free living population was probably hit the hardest as we've got biotechnical and chemical controls for Veroa.

[00:10:32]In areas it may have been the populations that were free living may have been receded by the managed beekeepers. Some stragglers may have held on in certain locations, which I suspect in my area, but those colonies will replenish the cavities and where the habitat where they live. And there'll be a turnover.

[00:10:53]So once that initial impact has occurred, there'll be a turnover of the, you know, the best surviving the longest and the the not so good ones perpetuating short term and the the least best ones dying, you know, fairly quickly. and it will process until everything's stable and balanced once over. And I I do believe with the MBU, there was a time when a blanket rule to spread across to everyone and to say we need to treat our colonies, you should be treating was applicable that we, you know, mitigated the worst case scenario.

[00:11:25]But I do think now with all the information, all the people who've been treatment free for 15 years, 20 years, uh, and their bees are surviving perfectly well, we should be trying to foster those pockets and those areas and those people, uh, and those conservation areas and trying to work with that rather than trying to maintain a a blanket rule for everyone.

[00:11:48]>> I mean, I haven't seen a veroa in my colonies uh, for at least 10 years. Um when they first arrived we did used to have to treat particularly with one apery at the lady hustie honey farm that I had to look after which was 250 hives and you did have to treat for veroa. The important thing about treating for veroa is you to make your treatment as brief as possible. So use one of the various methods of debrooing the colony either by caging the queen which I'm not particularly in favor of. I'd rather take the brood in the spring out of the colony, put it in a a medical apiary and put all the brood removed from all the colonies, commercial colonies into a medical apiary. And then of course there's nowhere for the mites to hide.

[00:12:39]You only need to treat for two or three days and you'll kill every mite in the colony. And where you've removed the brood, you let that brood uh emerge with a a caged queen to stop the laying any more eggs. and allow all the brood to emerge. You treat that for two or three days with a goodaraside and you will kill every might there. You can then bring those bees back to your commercial apy or you can start new colonies with them. The main thing about treating, if you have to treat because you're under such uh enormous pressure, if you have to treat, then make it as brief as possible so that you're not contaminating other products in the hive and you are eliminating all the veroa immediately. There's nowhere for them to hide. Um I think just to pick up on Joe's point, he made really important point there about the advice from the national bee unit. Coming back to the original question is that they really are stuck in the past. If you look at the information that's given out now and the information that was given out in 1990s when I was there, it's pretty much the same. It hasn't changed. But in 20 or 30 years of evolution, everything has changed. As we as as Joe was saying, the fererals have come back. We've got beekeepers haven't treated for many years. say it just needs to be they need to keep up with the times in a way and and update their information based on current information and not what was happening 20 years ago which was correct 20 years ago but it isn't correct now.

[00:14:12]Yeah. One of the things that muddies the water is really assessing how many uh veroa are being carried by migrating drones or by swarms to reinfest aperies that have previously been cleared. And as you know, a drone may fly seven miles and join a colony, fly another seven miles and join a colony. And if that drone has come from an infested hive, that drone can spread veroa over a huge area. Um, if you've got water to the southwest of your apiary, a large amount of water as I have in Cardiff, I have the seven estuary and bees don't like to fly across large expanses of water. So the incoming um migration of swarms and drones is very low uh from the southwest in my particular area. But you could be in a different position in the east or in the center where the migrating um veroamites coming in on drones and swarms is much higher. Um I don't know if you'd like to say anything about that Steven how critical that can be. I think it's yeah from a whole perspective when people are either treating or um they're they're not treating got resistant bees the raw levels are fairly fairly low. So the numbers that have been moved around by drones is probably a fairly small amount now. Uh again in the past so reinvasion movement of drones was really important when colonies were collapsing. Yeah. In the early days in the 90s, we would get a thousand mites coming into a colony in a day when you know when a colony had collapsed close by. This still occurs, but it's extremely rare now because most people are either I say they're either treating and keeping the raw levels down or they are not treated and the bees are keeping the raw levels down. So the levels of aurora in the environment for reinvasion is is really a fraction of what's going on that that did go on in the past. are in a completely different dynamic now. Um, places like Australia, they're going to go through this dynamic as their fererals collapse, but as Joe's nicely showed that the fererals now probably surviving much better than they ever have in the past and they are not collapsing. So, we're not getting these as American calls and might bombs. So, it will reinvasion does occur, but it's very rare relative to what it was, you know, 20, 30 years ago. We're in a completely different situation. And I think with the drones, yeah, they'll spread them around, but again, it's a really small number that they're moving.

[00:16:50]It's not something we need to worry about, >> right? I tried to show last night the uh uh in just three generations of mites breeding, they can produce a huge amount of mit. So that's just in nine weeks.

[00:17:04]And I think people who have non-resistant bees sometimes think there's a reinvasion happened, but actually it's just the ability of their own bees not coping with stopping grower from breeding.

[00:17:18]That's helpful.

[00:17:20]Next question. At my association's visit to a member's apiary, we saw uncapped cells in [clears throat] two out of the seven hives.

[00:17:30]We were told that uncapping in straight lines was a result of wax moth damage.

[00:17:37]If not in straight lines, there we were told there was a genetic problem with the queen and we should buy another queen to replace her. I went to a talk where I heard about hygienic uncapping.

[00:17:52]Um, is this different? And if so, how do I tell the difference between hygienic uncapping and other types of uncapping?

[00:18:02]>> Well, they pretty much answered the question in their own statement there. I think yeah, wax moth generally travels in straight lines and you'll see that um repercussion on the cell cappings. It's clustered usually in certain areas and certain ages of bees as the as the brood brood age um develops. So, you'll see patches of um uncapping in different areas. purple eyes. That's usually symptomatic when you you when they're uncapped is the purple eye stage. So you see the little purple eyes looking back here, purple to pink. Um and if you were to go back the next day, that's that's you know a good way to observe the behavior because if you go back the next day, usually within 24 hours, a lot of those open cells have either been chewed out or recapped. So that's a very handy technique to to look for that behavior.

[00:18:48]But yet it's that that's been a common misnomer for for years and you know and those of us in the know you know have watched people going look at my frames with you know no uncapping etc. And we're like that's not really a good sign is it? Um you know now that we know better you should be looking for that imperfect comb that has those uh uncapped cells in. And it's not um a genetic problem. It is a genetic positive. That's what you want to be seeing in your >> That's a really important comment, I think. Steve, do you want to?

[00:19:22]>> Uh, just a small point. So, uh, so bees uncap to investigate and it's and it's not just for grower and wax moth, but they uncap chalk brood, uh, which I'm sure people see, uh, and sack brood as well. So, it's just part of their hygienic traits. So I think um going back uh a while the NVU used to call this bold brood and the recommendation was to recre. So um we just we're a bit we have a bit more knowledge about it now. So it's just a good thing when you see that uncapping.

[00:19:54]>> Yeah. So that's really important because if you get any uh bee books written quite a few years ago, you'll see bald brood described uh as uncapped uh developed uh pupy. Um and you'll be told that it's automatically a bad thing, but it may not be a bad thing at all. It may be a very good sign that the colony is checking out uh the state of the brood. Um, the reason why you get straight lines with wax moth is of course the wax moth lava is eating through the comb uh and driving a relatively straight line. So the bees will then attend to the pupy that have been damaged in a straight line. So it's easy to understand that uh particular situation. What I did notice when I was examining uh apes colonies in Asia was occasionally you'd come across a very clear indication that those bees that were locally adapted to veroa mite and other types of might actually when they capped a cell they left a hole in the middle of the capping and you would see all the brood would have a little hole in the middle of the caps so that the nurse bees could sense what was happening. happening underneath the cap.

[00:21:15]Whereas our bees don't do that. So they have to actually remove the cap to find out where a particular smell is coming from. Uh it might be an acetate smell for example that's being released by the uh cell because the mites are damaging the the puper.

[00:21:36]And the in next question relies on you knowing a little bit about tropylapse.

[00:21:42]Tropilaps is another parasitic mite that you normally find on apis dorsata in India for example. Um it's slightly different to veroa because it doesn't particularly show a differential attitude to them to the drone brood. Uh whereas veroa does tend to prefer to get its eggs into drone brood. The advantage of course in natural selection is the drone brood is larger, significantly larger than the workers. But if you're a mite that's grown on a large bee like apist dorsata, there's less differential for natural selection to work on if the eggs are laid in the drone or in the worker. The reason I've given you that introduction tropylapse clari of course was the basic original tropylapse might and it is expected that this will gradually start moving ac around the world more than it is at the moment and this question says will hygienic behavior designed against veroa help against tropyaps.

[00:22:52]Um for me almost certainly um one of the things we saw in the reason I believe this is when one of the things I saw in China is that they have mixed aperies there. So they have apas sran and apus maleifera in the same apery effectively. Um and they're quite easy to tell apart once you get your eye in. And all the colonies in all the apis maleifera colonies in China are fairly heavily infested with tropelapse. They control them using various mitoides along with veroa but surprisingly there is not a big problem in apus psana and troplaps is a new pest for apus psana so somehow or other when I ask the question to the Chinese they just say well it's why would anybody interested in it and said well yeah I mean it's the mechanism so we don't know the mechanism we don't know why it is but it just an observation that that apus psana is able to deal with tropical elapse and I suspect that this will be again it'll be along with their ability to detect and remove all based on the hygienic behavior cells that are infested um with tropalapse. Now if Apus psa can do it, apus maleifera will be able to get there as well because it's a sister species and we think that the raw resistant mechanisms is running in very similar lines in aprana as apas maleifa. So I think in tropical elapse eventually there'll be a a leading time as as as as there was with veroa they'll need to learn their unique smell or you know they learn the new behaviors and adapt to them. Um but I think if you've already got vero resistant colonies that's going to give you a leg up um when tropes eventually arrives.

[00:24:46]>> Yeah.

[00:24:47]>> Anything? There was a bit of research in 2020 uh from uh Casper Benderfeld's team uh from Germany out in Nepal where they uh and I'd encourage people to go and have a look at it but the brief overview was they tested apisurana with uh uh tropialaps and they also tested VSHensitive hygiene carnica. So carnica the bees mainly used in Germany uh with tropelapse and both the apisana bees and the apis maleifer bees the vssh carnea were doing brood removal quite similar to what we're seeing with veroa sensitive hygiene. So, uh, early days, we don't know yet. Um, but we need more of that type of research just to try and get at understanding what it is that Apisana does. Uh, and we still, I think the UK research, UK based research going out there is great and it's raising awareness and fear levels as well, but we need to move on to uh, the solution mode, I think, is more quickly than it took us with with uh, with with veromites.

[00:25:58]>> Yeah. I I think tropy lilaps will come um because bees are moved around the world so much uh in the postal service um and there's no reason why tropilap shouldn't establish itself here. So I think having bees that are resistant in some way to veroa can only be helpful uh as far as tropylapse is concerned. An associated question on tropylaps is uh won't it kill the non-treated colonies?

[00:26:31]>> Well, if the non-treated colonies are resistant, there's a less chance. But yeah, you it'll kill both basically to start with.

[00:26:41]>> Yeah. Um, it's that adaption time and how far they're adapted. We don't know until we've got more, like Steve said, we need more research to work it out >> to give better advice to beepers.

[00:26:54]>> Bees are extremely adaptable. We're talking about a creature that's 40 million years old. The oldest human honeybee fossil is is from the Eosene period. It's 40 million years. This is a very adaptable creature. Um, and if you give it a chance, it will adapt to any normal threat. Parasites are a particular threat because they have a habit of evolving either into a pathogen or a symbiant.

[00:27:24]Most of you here will have the technological ectoparasite, the mobile phone, um, which clamps onto human beings and downloads their data.

[00:27:37]And that data is then used by central authorities to control your behavior as consumers or as voters in the political system. And it's very dangerous for young people. It can become quite path pathological and obsessive. But for older people such as myself, it can be an extremely useful symbiote because it replaces my memory. But nothing stays the same. Uh and as we evolve into a creature that is a unification of uh microchips and biological systems, uh we're going to see some biological uh developments repeated um in the new development of the cyborg society of the future. Luckily, I don't have to survive long enough to live in it. Um, if the only colony with signs of Veroa resistance is rather badteered, what should I do?

[00:28:41]>> Steve, I'd give them to Joe, I think, for [laughter] >> it's it's a point of perspective, isn't it? I'm I've been doing this a fair while and you know our area has got mixed um genetics predominantly amm you you know you get colonies uh you know good and bad and I I would think initially you might want to keep hold of them but it just depends how bad tempered they are. If they if they're all over you and you can't move, you can't see anything through your veil, you might not want to keep over them. If you can handle them fine in good weather, uh, and and and flourishing conditions and they're perfectly fine in those circumstances, I'd keep hold of them. Um, personal choice. You know, beggars can't be choosers, so to speak. If all your colonies aren't showing any resistant behaviors, and those ones are, >> it might be the only thing you have to work with. Uh, so yeah, personal preference on that one.

[00:29:41]>> I think I think you become more of a natural beekeeper. Don't inspect so often. [laughter] As Joe said, wait for the sun to be shining and and the bees are very busy.

[00:29:53]>> Be a Wolf Cooper uh many years ago used to come over to talk to me at my home in Cardiff and we'd sit down and talk all night about traits in bee behavior.

[00:30:05]He didn't used to worry too much about badtempered bees, but he really worried about followers and anklers.

[00:30:14]He said bees that bite your ankles or attack your ankles definitely need to be weeded out. And bees that meet you at the entrance to the ape [laughter] as a result of their past experiences uh definitely need to be weeded out. But of course, badtempered bees can sometimes just be very hardworking bees and they could have traits that are very desirable.

[00:30:39]>> Yeah.

[00:30:40]>> In the right circumstances.

[00:30:43]Okay. I have solid floors on my hives because I didn't see the benefits of open mesh floors. I don't want to change back. Is it therefore difficult to monitor? Oh, it is therefore difficult to monitor. Is monitoring that important?

[00:31:04]>> Yes.

[00:31:04]>> Yes, we'd all say that.

[00:31:06]>> Um, yes. If he got solid flaws and doesn't want to go back, then he just needs to use a different method. So, that could be worker brood. Um, or just using sugar shakes, alcohol washes, um, just some way of basically ranking his colonies if he wants to do some sort of selection program. Yeah.

[00:31:27]>> So, you don't have to use might drop.

[00:31:30]That's just one of the the the methods.

[00:31:32]It's one of the easiest and it does sample the entire colony, but there is other methods to use. If you the Americans almost universally do alcohol washes, so different countries use different things. Yeah. So, you don't have to get rid of your solid floors.

[00:31:48]>> Yeah. you can take a sample of bees and anesthetize them with carbon dioxide uh and examine them individually to see what mites they've got on them and and a lot of the mites will drop off then onto the bottom of the container. So there are lots of ways of monitoring but if you want to really look after your bees uh conscientiously you need some sort of monitoring and then you will get used to what your particular method of monitoring is is revealing. It's not a good idea to keep chopping and changing with different types of monitoring.

[00:32:22]Stick to one and then see what it means as it translates into the productivity of the hive. Anything else you would add to this?

[00:32:31]>> No, I was asked this morning by a Swedish, sorry, a Swiss beekeeper who has uh a solid floors and um if he should or if there's some other way of sorting it out. And I was just explaining the open mesh floors, most of us of a certain age were just told to buy them. That was our normal >> uh mechanism. It's now become quite useful as it happens. But uh uh but people with solid floors need to be handy uh with a saw and nails. I think there's probably a way beyond me, but of just having a sliding floor they could put in and out.

[00:33:06]>> Okay, next question. Do you see uncapping and removal of drone brood?

[00:33:15]>> Okay, I'll take this one. [laughter] Um, so I think beekeepers will say yes and that is true. However, when we've actually there's been three studies done at the moment, which is not a lot, so it the debate's still out there, but in Cuba, Hawaii, and South Africa, we looked at um removal behavior in drone brood. And what we found was that some colonies do recapping, but it's not targeted at infested cells. Um, some colonies do no recapping or very little.

[00:33:54]Some colonies do a lot of recapping of drone brood. Um, but when we actually looked whether themselves were infested or not, there were there was no difference. It was just random. They just seem to be uncapping random cells and then recapping them over. Why? We don't know. Um, why there's a colony difference, we have no idea, but it wasn't targeted at the mites. So, what was happening in the drum brood? They were targeting sorry they were targeting the mites in the worker brood very well yes but they weren't targeting the drone brood it seems illogical to us but as I was explaining before apas sa doesn't do this um it appears apas maleifra doesn't do this um and it appears that you get this effectively drone culling where you get lots of mites going to the cells early on and their reproduction falls very low. But I've had lot quite a few beekeepers say, "Oh, I've seen recapping. Look, here's a cell that's been recapped. It's a drone cell, so you're wrong." And then I just say, "Well, that's fine, but was it infested?" "Oh, we didn't look." So, yeah. So, we know that they'll they'll uncap and recap drone cells, but targeting them at the moment, there's no evidence. But it it you know, there's more studies to be done. More people need to come and try this. But if you do find uncapped drone cell in your colonies, sure, take the drones out to see whether they're infested and then do a control, you know, sample ones that haven't been uncapped and see if you get a difference rather than just assuming if it's uncapped. It's actually >> it's infested. You need to do a little bit more looking really.

[00:35:37]>> Steve, anything to add? Well, we have an interesting discussion here because both Joe and myself see uh drone uncapping and recapping, right? Uh and uh also some evidence of chewing out. Uh so we had made perhaps a lazy assumption that they do target drones once they've got rid of most of the uh issues within their worker brood, which is a priority.

[00:36:02]Now, it could be um and and that's my most hygienic colonies. I will see um them having a look at the drones. So either the science needs to catch up or um uh Steven is right and uh there's no evidence yet actually that they are successfully targeting mit drones. It should be a piece of cake for them, shouldn't it? You think there's probably multi-infestation some of those drone cells which the hygienic behaviors with the abilities should be able to find and sort out. Uh but they definitely prioritize worker brood first which is quite right for the survival of the colony. Uh I think they probably have a go and they're interested in drones after that but we don't have the scientific evidence and when you when you ask a beekeeper to do the scientific evidence you know our eyes glaze over and you know and you know it's back to the scientists. So we're we're waiting for a bit more research generally on the drones I think be fair. So yeah that's an interesting point. Um bees are are always willing to to be cannibalistic.

[00:37:07]Uh so the cannibalistic behavior is used in many aspects. For example, if if an egg is laid in the wrong type of cell and the workers don't want that egg to develop, whether it's a drone egg that's been placed in a worker cell or a a worker egg or female egg that's been laid in a queen cup and the workers don't want it to develop into a queen, they'll quite happily eat it. that egg immediately. So, there's a lot of cannibalistic control going on inside a normal healthy uh bee bee colony. Is raising queens from bees that show signs of resistance going to cause inbreeding problems?

[00:37:49]No. [clears throat] No. it. Unless you're replacing thousands and thousands of queens made from one queen large scale, you you're not really going to have much impact as a hobbyist beekeeper. Um there was some work done by Tom Cely and I I see this get quoted as a a genetic bottleneck, but essentially the Arno forest bees um you know a large proportion of the population was knocked out. And what he found in those colonies was yes, the mitochondrial DNA was massively reduced.

[00:38:20]So queen lines were reduced right down but through natural processes of uh drones being released through failing colonies and colonies might not living might not be living perpetually but you know dying out over a couple of seasons drones were bringing back genetic material. So the nuclear DNA the information the variation stayed but it was just the amount of queen lines reduced and that happens within our beekeeping environment.

[00:38:49]there's going to be some treating beekeepers up the road that are making no selection. You know, there'll be several colonies in chimneys or barns or whatever around the corner. So, you making selection in your small population is a is a drop in the ocean.

[00:39:06]It's it's not going to have a a significant reduction in genetic material like that because there'll be genetic material within the location. I I think the best example of bees being able to mix up their own uh alals, their own chromosomes is uh the there's a subspecies of apis maleifera which lives around oases in the Sahara desert, right? So there's no mixing there apart from themselves. So it's the ability to mate with uh various number of different drones uh and the recombinate high recombination rate of their alals. they can just mix up their genetics. So there's no issues I think for hobbyist beekeepers. There's potential issues for commercial breeders when they're using single drone semination. I think that's where the potential issues are, but I don't think we've ever we've never seen any any issues at all and I've not come across any in the UK either. Yeah, this is a related question because we all think of the honeybee uh since since since since it's not changed significantly since the meiosene period which is 26 million years ago. We think of it almost as a perfected formula one creature uh where if you change any part of it, you're unlikely uh to to be doing the right thing because you're going to be affecting some other part. And this question says, "Do you lose other traits by selecting for veroa resistance?"

[00:40:35]It's an interesting question.

[00:40:37]>> Yeah.

[00:40:38]>> Um I would say no. From from looking at bees that are long-term ver resistance, things like Cuba, um ones which are in Latin America and Africa, they're exactly the same as all the other bees I look at that are are resistant. Um and I think we had a really good example when I think the NDB group were looking at a series of colonies. spent a week looking at disease and colony productivity, handling the bees and uh at the end of that I gave a talk about vero resistance and people in the group said to me says yeah but these were all resistant bees they're aggressive they don't produce honey um you know they're not very good bees and I said well yeah the bees you've been looking at for the week for the last week what are they like and they went they're amazing bees yeah they're really good they're healthy they're really productive if I said, "Do you realize they hadn't been treated for over a decade?" And they just couldn't believe it because they hadn't been treated for many for well for over a decade. They just had no idea. And so you cannot tell if I if I got you a ver resistant apery and a treated apery, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference at all. There's no trait. People imagine these traits with things like oh they're they produce less honey but the actual data says otherwise that you know honey production for other reasons as well in Africa and Latin America is skyrocketing whereas in the in the United States is actually falling. It's staying roughly the same here. So they're very productive but it the productivity of a honeybee colony is is based on the amount of forage. So I don't think there's any other traits. I mean, it's a hygienic trait that these bees have had for millions of years. They've slightly adapted it to deal with a new pest. So, if they suddenly lost a trait that that was important to them, these colonies wouldn't be at a selective advantage and would disappear. And and that just doesn't happen. It's not a trade-off of either or. The bees have basically developed where it's a balancing act, but they're not going to lose a trait.

[00:42:54]It's just up in one of them. And when people like um Tom Celely actually mark all the bees in a colony individually, they find up to something like 30% of the bees in the colony are not doing anything. They're not foraging. They're not nursing. They're just sitting around. And you're all going, "Oh, these bees are so productive." Actually, most of them are not. They just sit there.

[00:43:18]Sometimes under certain circumstances, yeah, most of the bees will be out foraging when there's huge nectar flows on. They live in an invariable a very variable environment and it's an insurance policy. I think that's why they just don't do anything. They're there just to help out when things get really tough. So they just sit. So you think that this is an optimal machine.

[00:43:39]It actually has a lot of built-in redundancy when we actually start looking at it. So the fact that they would either lose a trait or become less efficient at honey production or more aggressive, these are just beekeepers sort of seeing things. You know, the bees, like Robert said, they haven't changed much in in in sort of millions of years, and they've got this really beautiful hygienic behavior set up, and they've just adapted that for another pest, and they will continue to do that.

[00:44:09]And it's not at the expense of something else. It's pretty much just it's just a small adaption, a smaller shift which allows the bees to operate in this slightly new environment which they're dealing with all the time.

[00:44:23]>> Yes, I think if you inadvertently damage their ability to overwinter, for example, or deal with some other disease, then of course relatively their failure rate would increase relative to other colonies around them. So they wouldn't be as successful uh as some of these treatment free colonies obviously are. So in a sense if some other damage is done it will [clears throat] show in the survivability of the colony. Um and the person who's selecting for veroa resistance will notice that um that the colony is not doing as well. So it shouldn't be the problem that this questioner uh poses. Um this is an interesting one because it's just a matter of giving people the right words um to come out of the closet and say I am a treatment free beekeeper.

[00:45:16]My mentor said that as a keeper of livestock I have a responsibility to treat my bees to keep them healthy and mentioned the animal welfare acts.

[00:45:29]When I asked how they were going to become resistant, uh, they said I would be irresponsible if I didn't treat. What should my response be? Look at the science.

[00:45:42]Um, yeah. I mean, this come out of the closet thing. I will just do how many people don't treat? Just put your hands up.

[00:45:53]>> Yeah.

[00:45:55]So if I asked that same question three or four years ago, I would say pretty much almost no hands would go up. So there has been a a change. This comparison with livestock, I think, is quite quite dangerous one.

[00:46:13]>> Spurious.

[00:46:13]>> It's very speurious. I think it's the right word there. Is that I mean, what's a healthy colony?

[00:46:22]Is the healthy colony one that you're having to shove pesticides in to keep it alive? Or is the healthy colony one that's dealing with with what Joe has?

[00:46:32]Has Joe got healthier colonies than than Steve has or somebody that treats?

[00:46:39]It's a perception. It's a use of words and and use I think analogy with using sort of animal welfare. We're going down that road that um we talked about yesterday in the pesticides where basically there's this thing where well we've got this problem we need to treat it with pesticides without knowing what's going to happen down it. It's that's the only solution we have and we've been shown that it isn't the only solution. In fact, there's other countries which don't they still use pesticide but they haven't treated and and now they're got healthier bees than probably we have. Um I was once on the health the healthy bee board and I asked the government I said okay fine you what's your goal and they said to have healthier bees. I says that's great. So how do you measure if the bees are healthier? Well they have less disease.

[00:47:32]I says well that's impossible. You're going to have more disease. Your bees in five years time will have more disease than they have now. And that's simply because we've got better at detecting disease.

[00:47:44]So, you know, 10, 20, 30 years ago, you didn't have any bee viruses. Now, all your bees are loaded with loads of bee viruses. Are they more healthy? If it's a number of diseases they have, then no.

[00:47:58]They're much sicker than they were 10 year 20 years ago because they didn't have lake si virus and chronic paralysis virus and all the other viruses we now know about. So it's this this aspect of being healthy, it's very difficult. And I think to me jaw jaws bees will be the healthiest. Um and one thing I've noticed when I've gone around the world is in South Africa and probably most of Africa in fact, they don't treat for anything. They don't treat for foul brood. They don't treat for American foul brood, European small hive beetle, all these things. They have very what I would call resilient bees. When I was there, they were trying to kill colonies with American foul brood as an a study to see if they could kill them.

[00:48:44]>> And it it was a real it was some of the colonies died, but most of them recovered quite quickly. So there of the idea that their bees are very resilient.

[00:48:56]They'll deal with it with themselves and that's why they took the choice not to treat for Vero when Burough first came.

[00:49:02]However, in our policy, and I'm not saying we changed this, is that we've killed every single colony with American file brood ever detected for the last 50 years in the UK, what chance of the bees ever been able to develop any sort of natural resistant to American file brood, which they have done because they wouldn't have survived it, you know, over millions of years before. So this is this debate that you you you know you have and just got to think about how well the bees are adapted but yeah the way we keep bees is very much we look after them we manage them the way that you know Joe's natural bees you know they have to deal with all these things and if they don't deal with American file brood that colony dies then that's gone but if it does deal with deal with American foul brood the colony survives but you don't know about that because you you you're not monitoring the things. So yeah, I think this analogy with animals and being healthy is is difficult.

[00:50:04]>> Yeah, I I think it's a furious comparison. Um when you look at any species, you always see in nature that it interacts with many other species, both microbial, fungal, etc. And it's all part of the web of life the way they interact.

[00:50:23]For example, you may automatically by reading a book think that the presence of viruses is a bad thing for your bees.

[00:50:32]Um, but in reality, the right balance between viral populations and the host population is all part of the system for the continuity holistically of a natural situation.

[00:50:47]For example, in the human case, um we can only build the placenta in in a female human because we adopted we actually took over some viral DNA during our reptilian ancestral times which allows us to build cells without in membranes between the cells and without that we couldn't build the human placenta. So that is built by a chunk of viral DNA that we kept from a viral infection millions of years ago and it made the evolution of humans as they are possible. So it may be that our bees will get some useful bits of viral code from some of their infecting viruses that they will be able to use in the future to offset some of the damage that we are doing to their environment. If someone is selling queens that they claim to be veroa um uh resistant uh because they've got certain hygienic traits, are these reliable uh if obtained from bee suppliers that advertise them?

[00:51:55]>> Argumentative argumentative you'd have to look at what their protocols are for selecting. I I haven't seen very many assays that that deliver resistant bees.

[00:52:09]In the grand scheme of things, survivorship long-term is the best, you know, judge of anything overall. And, you know, low might counts, observations of the hygienic behaviors. Um, I think it's been proven that pin kill and freeze kill don't deliver vera resistant bees.

[00:52:28]>> So, the proof essentially is in the pudding. If those bees have lived long term and the queens have survived for a good while and there's low m counts and the beekeeper the breeder doesn't have to do anything then that's a ver resistant bee. If it's if they still have to treat it twice a year then it's not ver resistant. If you know low you know just having a slight difference on m counts and you still have to treat it doesn't mean it's ver resistant. It's just >> a bit better.

[00:52:55]>> You need a lot of history don't you? a lot of monitoring to be sure that you can claim that you're developing an entire ap that's that's resistant.

[00:53:05]>> I think just asking the right questions of the of the supplier and finding out how they've done this.

[00:53:11]>> So whether it's you know if they're using freeze brood then you know I wouldn't touch them but there's people like Cory Stevens now in the states who are going down this line and there are people in this country who's starting down this.

[00:53:25]So just ask them the questions, how how many years haven't you treated? What traits do you see? And with that knowledge, you you should be able to gauge how how resistant these colonies are and then whether they're worth buying. And when you if you're not certain, then sure, get them, but just don't treat, but then monitor them and see how they do. And if they might levels start going up, you know, basically take them back and say, "Hey, you said I wouldn't have these are resistant and my mic levels are shooting up, so what's going on here? I I don't think it's anything to be ashamed of to turn around to anybody you're buying bees off. And really is one of the most crucial things in honey beekeeping in modern times. You should be saying, "Do you have resistant bees?"

[00:54:08]>> And you should ask for the evidence.

[00:54:10]>> Yeah. The the evidence of the evidence to a shop to buy a mobile phone as was discussed earlier, you'd be asking every question under the sun. You know, does it do this? What's the camera like? How much memory has it got? What's the picture like? you you'd be asking all those questions and if you're spending a fortune on bees to buy them from someone else, you should have seriously high expectations, you know, especially when there's so many of us that already have bees that are resistant. It should it shouldn't be uncommon and you should be able to ask for it. I >> I think at the moment you're on your own. M >> I think bee suppliers uh have given up bee breeding most of them and they're on an import model and they're just quick turnaround heavily treated and then passed on to uh beekeepers who want bees. So be wary there. I think there's a few breeders left uh in the UK uh and there's been a little bit of arm twisting going on and I think you know maybe in the next couple of years we'll see some movement there and maybe it's up to us or people who have resistant bees just to help them along a bit and uh and that will be uh the break in the dam. I think things will have to change then. Uh and and I will there be good bees you know we don't know even if they are VSHBs uh it'll be better than non-resistant bees which are just producing large amounts of mites and default wing virus.

[00:55:37]So we haven't given up. Uh but I think as buyers you should just be pretty be wary of what you're buying.

[00:55:44]>> Yeah. This person says, "I read that during a nectar flow, bees are likely to abandon uncapping and clearing out parasitized pupy. Will this increase the might load in a colony?" It goes in both directions. So, while there's heavy nectar flows, hygienic behaviors do drop down and Steve has some evidence of this in his his might counting data. Um but then conversely the opposite way round is that during bad weather and dark periods and you know the bees are more concentrating the colony and looking after the brood and you see the hygienic behaviors uptick and it's evident on the outside of the colonies on your your your floors from the bottom of the hives. You can see um undertaker bees taking out the pupil corpses and body parts being kicked out the front. You can observe it quite easily. Um so yes, it goes both both directions. So yes, that does happen, but the opposite happens as well.

[00:56:39]>> Right, this is an interesting question.

[00:56:42]Are mites adapting to the bees hygienic activity or could they?

[00:56:49]>> So at the moment the evidence is no, but they will adapt. That's almost certain.

[00:56:57]Um the reason we say that is that the from this very long-term data that we have from uh Brazil and Mexico that the m populations have been decreasing. So the infestation levels in these res long-term resistant populations used to be at 20% now it's dropped down to 4%.

[00:57:17]So that explanation this is in infested brood. So the explanation is is that is two. One is just the overall might levels have been reduced or the other explanation is the mites actually are avoiding the change in their behavior to go into worker brood and and just wait as feretic mites for the drone brood.

[00:57:37][clears throat] And we could test that idea because if they're not going into the worker brood then the proportion that a feretic might should increase. And we when we've looked at the actual data, we don't see a big increase in the feretics when there's worker brood. So it just looks like at the moment that the bees are just on this stage of reducing the mite population down at some point. Yes, I'm sure natural selection will favor the mites that don't go into worker brood just like in aprana and they concentrate on on drone brood and they will then just wait. So you'll have this populate because there'll be a big selective advantage because they're the only ones that'll end up reproducing um long term. But at the moment there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence that they're they're changing their behavior. The other thing which is important to it to sort of understand in mites is they're they're so specialized they're almost clonal. They're brother sister mating most of the time. They have very little genetic variation which when they did the original genetic screening they basically almost called them clonal. So they're they're almost the same mites.

[00:58:51]You don't have to worry about inbreeding which they do a lot. Mites are very good at uh avoiding uh genetic inbreeding problems. Although they're highly inbred. It's something that mites are just very good at. They've evolved that.

[00:59:04]Um so there isn't a huge amount of variation for them to act on. there is enough because they you know they're able to get resistance to things like mitoides and things but behavioral traits are more more difficult so I suspect they will co-evolve over time to avoid going into worker brood if that selection pressure sort of continues but um yeah so that's what I think >> okay >> so it's a positive adaption >> the uh last question in this group now is uh BBKA coloss survey for 2425 showed losses for non-treated colonies of 34%.

[00:59:46]21% for treated colonies. What's happening here?

[00:59:51]>> Yes. So the so you know I put the data up and I won't shy away from it and that's a constant um difference that we've seen over the last four or five years in these data sets. um the assumption that it's veroa uh because they're not treating I don't think that's that's a correct correlation to make um because when we ask the beekeepers what you know what they think's killing their colonies vero comes out very very low down this whether they're treating or not treating it's it's under 7% of the answers um starvation seems to be a big issue so I think we don't have the data from the surveys to really dig into this to find out what what's going on. Um, part of it may be due to beekeepers which are deciding to go down the treatment free route and just as Gary Brooks said this morning and basically just stop treating going cold turkey and they they're experienced losses. That might be part of the problem. Or it may be that some of the treatment free beekeepers are thinking, well, my colonies are fine, so you know, I'll just let them go. and then they're having problems with sort of winter survival. Um, but we just don't we don't have an explanation for that. But it is seems to be a consistent results, you know. So, it's a genuine thing that from in the in Britain the people who are not treating seem to experience um between five and 10% higher losses on an annual basis. Um, that's my thoughts on it.

[01:01:23]>> Any other comments? just oddly that um a number of us longestablished beekeepers have got significantly lower than regional average um losses. So it does lend me to think that it might be as I was mentioning with my data earlier from the forests like a youth bias situation that it's new beekeepers coming in trying treatment free and suffering what is essentially their initial losses. Um and you know it does it does reiterate the the fact that you know we suggest you mitigate your losses >> and um monitor your your uh mic numbers as part of your your protocol. But we we do have to remember this is for for many people transitioning to treatment free it's the start of a story. It's never ever just a that's it. It happens like that. there are some losses uh that occur or another way to look at it there are positions where you will have to remove queens and recqueen those colonies. That's essentially what what happens there.

[01:02:23]>> So you just have to bear in mind it's a it's it's a it's a moving picture. It's not just a straight shot like that. So you know beyond loss there becomes recovery. Yeah. Um >> but it could be symptomatic of that of people's initial movement into treatment free and losing losses because they haven't monitored.

[01:02:41]>> Any last comments, Steve?

[01:02:42]>> No, I mean just to say that we we have outperformed the southeast numbers. Uh and I think you outperformed uh uh the central numbers, the BBK numbers. Uh so we're a bit more optimistic than that. I think you know if you we know the traits now, we know how to select for the right queens and deselect the wrong ones. you know, we know not to buy bee supplier bees uh and to share around locally adapted bees and uh uh and that's a good when you if you're monitoring, you'll see colonies that are not coping with rower and those are the ones that deselect and if you do that you'll find your losses will be okay. And the other uh slide we put up last night was to show you 2010 2015 in the 500 colonies or so which are in northwest Wales.

[01:03:26]Okay. The biggest area of row resistance probably in Europe and there uh they did a huge amount of work up there uh from 2010 2015 where they compare treated colonies to untreated colonies and the untreated colonies outperformed by about six percentage points over that period of time. So we think there's probably an element of selecting for hygienic behavior which is good for colony health uh and uh selecting for uh uh for uh sorry and deselecting colonies where you don't have to put uh mitoides on them.

[01:04:00]Mitoides are not a tonic for bees and they are a negative. So if you take that away and add hygiene to your colonies, you should see some good performance.

[01:04:11]>> Yeah. [snorts] Well, uh, we're coming to the end of this session. Professor Carl vonf, the Nobel Prize winner, said that studying honeybees was like drinking from a well that has no bottom. And I think we'd we'd all agree with that. Um, the honey show has done [clears throat] a special thing this time. [cough] uh it's provided these specialist independent lectures on this these closely related subjects and it's provided an opportunity for the experts to answer uh specific queries that that people have. So this is really quite a special moment for this particular subject and it's these special moments that we uh notice in our lives and remember and string together in the necklace of our life. Um, the Chinese [music] have a proverb.

[01:05:06]Sleep well, tomorrow [music] is coming and it's all yours. [applause] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat.