2009 Almond Pollination
The number of colonies we will need from you as of this date is given at the top of this page. We hope to increase this number as we sign up additional growers in the coming weeks. With above average winter losses, in recent years, I realize that no beekeeper knows how many 8-frame colonies he will have in February. Keep us posted on your count since every year for the past 5 years we have had to scramble for bees in Jan.-Feb. Reports from beekeepers throughout the US are that bees are in excellent shape, but again, we won’t know what they will look like in February.

You have likely heard that the 2008 almond crop will be record one, in spite of bee problems during bloom (the excellent weather bailed out some growers and beekeepers). You have also likely heard of California’s water problems - 2 consecutive dry years have led to reservoir depletion throughout the state; westside growers are especially hard hit because most westside well water is unsuitable for almonds. Some growers are finding it more profitable to sell water than to farm their land. Westside water (from surface canals and reservoirs) usually costs $150/acre foot (almonds require 3+ acre feet/acre/year). Some growers are paying up to $900/acre foot for water on the market (growers with suitable well water can transfer it to canals for a price). Almond production is not profitable at $900/ac. ft. water. If the coming winter isn’t a wet one, almond growers throughout the state will have serious problems. Long-range, the picture won’t likely improve, as water-short Southern California can outbid agriculture for limited water supplies (the canal system that services westside growers extends to Los Angeles).

Counter-intuitively a few beekeepers that kept their bees on the Westside this summer report that their bees have never looked better. The reason: much acreage previously planted to tomatoes and cotton was planted to safflower due to soaring safflower prices and because safflower (an excellent pollen-nectar source) uses significantly less water than the crops it replaced.

Except for spot areas, most almond orchards are not stressed for water at this time. A post-harvest irrigation in September-October is very important in getting a good flower set in the spring and growers are making every effort to get the water for this irrigation. Because almonds are a major exported crop, and vital to the overall health of California’s ag economy, I like to think that politicians will come to the aid of growers (Sen. Dianne Feinstein is helping in this regard) but I’m not optimistic. Much water in California is flushed out into the Pacific ocean each year to provide suitable environment for certain fish species. City folk and environmentalists have historically had more political clout than ag in California’s water issues.

25-50-25
Many beekeepers subscribe to Master beekeeper Wade Taylor’s thesis: no matter what you do, 50% of the colonies in an apiary will be of good or average strength, 25% will be well below average and 25% well above average. And if you move that top 25% to another location, it will soon revert to 25-50-25 again.

Leave ‘em room
In his pollen-trap work in almonds, Frank Eischen has found that a main determinant of how much pollen a colony collects is the readily available storage space in the hive. If returning bees (or their receivers) have to spend a lot of time looking for a place to unload, the colony will collect significantly less pollen. Less pollen collected translates to less brood reared down the road; thus a top-25 colony (see above) at the start of almond bloom could become a bottom-25 colony several weeks after almond bloom.

Viruses
Bees have battled viruses for eons but only recently have they had to contend with 2 virus vectors: varroa and nosema ceranae. Some believe the a virus is causing CCD, but is it a new super virus or one or more of the “old” viruses (Kashmir, DWV, APV, et al)? Controlling Nosema and varroa can go along way towards suppressing the spread of a virus. Optimum nutrition is a major line of virus defense.

San Francisco Rules
Ask a beekeeper where much of the good research on CCD is being conducted and few would mention San Francisco. In early 2007, Joe DeRisi, UC, San Francisco, stunned US beekeepers when he isolated Nosema ceranae from honey bee colonies. Most agree that N. ceranae has been with us for a number of years and has likely replaced N. apis; its timeline may mirror the timeline of CCD. Dr. DeRisi has also made significant contributions towards malaria and SAR virus research and has received the McArthur genius award - quite a guy! Michelle Flennikan, also from UCSF, is now a post-doc Fellow at UC Davis (but remains based in SF). Drs. DeRisi and Flennikan are well versed in microbiology, virology and related fields. The bee industry is fortunate to have the expertise of these individuals at such a critical time.

LTPB or APB (not PPB)
Insinuate to a beekeeper that has been blindsided by CCD that he might be suffering from PPB (Possibly Poor Beekeeping) and the furies will descend on you. LTPB (Less Than Perfect Beekeeping) is a better term, since there’s not a beekeeper out there that does a perfect job. APB (Almost Perfect Beekeeping) should be the goal. Beekeeping practices that worked 20 years ago are no longer viable.

Queen Problems
Problems with queens have been rampant in recent years - mainly supersedure a few weeks after being introduced. The literature overflows with reports of queen supersedure from bees infected with Nosema apis. Stress from confinement is a major contributor to the rapid spread of Nosema in colonies, in packages, in queen cages and queen banks. In one case no nosema apis was detected when queens and attendants were caged, but high N. levels were found 2 days later. When ordering queens make sure your supplier has a good handle on Nosema; and get the queens into your hives with minimal storage delay. Some beekeepers are having better luck with cells than with mated queens; less nosema may be the reason.

Genetics
Improved stock may be the ultimate solution to current bee problems. Some beekeepers are experimenting with survivor queens - from breeders that do not apply chemical treatments. Sue Cobey (UC, Davis) traveled to Europe and Asia this summer and is bringing back semen from promising stock. Sue and Steve Sheppard (WA) will be testing some of this “new” genetic material. Manipulating genes and RNA in bees and viruses (and maybe in varroa and nosema) holds promise.

Apivar and Hivestan
Canadian beekeepers recently got clearance to use Amitraz-treated strips (Apivar, from France) for varroa control. Many US beekeepers are and have been using the amitraz product, Taktic; Apivar strips may not be effective on colonies that have had multiple Taktic treatments. There is talk that Taktic may be pulled off the market and that honey buyers may implement a zero tolerance for amitraz. Another chemical, Hivestan, was supposed to have been available to US beekeepers by now but possible adverse effects on bees at above-label rates (and possibly at label rates) is holding up its release. Beekeepers may have to sign a release that the manufacturer is not responsible for any bee loss from Hivestan (if it is ever released). A few beekeepers are experimenting with the active ingredient in Hivestan.

Don’t Forget Tracheal
It has been found that bee colonies that have a high infection of Nosema Disease and also are infected with the tracheal mite will dwindle rapidly and be weakened within days to the point of extinction.
Glenn Stanley, January 1995 ABJ, p. 43

Is High Fructose Corn Syrup a Poison?
A recent study by Diana Sammataro and co-workers (Tucson) showed the following:

Adverse effects from CS are much less, or minimal, when the product contains significant sugar (e.g., Type 50 syrup). See also Sept. Bee Culture, pp 21,22,for an informed chemical discussion of HFCS.

Keep ‘em Young
Just like people, old bees are much more likely to succumb to viruses and diseases than young bees.

Global Patties - Back in Business
Regulations preventing shipment of pollen from Canada to the US prevented Global Patties from selling their pollen patties to US beekeepers. Global now makes their patties in Montana. Standard patties are 4% pollen ($1.07/1# patty); higher pollen % is available. Contact Global at (866)948-6084. Distributors in 3 western states are: CA: (209)606-1941, MT: (406)494-4488, WA: (360)652-8967.

Neonicotinoids
Many beekeepers are convinced that the widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides in recent years is a major contributor to CCD if not the sole cause. Project ApisM (see www.projectapism.org) is funding a 2009 study that will analyze nectar and pollen from un-treated blueberries and cranberries; this study should shed some much-needed light on the subject (pollen from almonds and other crops may also be included). Question: Why isn’t the EPA funding such studies before pesticides come on-line?

Honey-B-Healthy
Many beekeepers are convinced that Honey-B-Healthy results in healthier bee colonies (material cost is about 50 cents/colony). Call (866)542-0879 or see www.honeybhealthy.com for more information. Bees love the ingredients in H-B-H (esp. lemongrass) and some beekeepers are putting the material in patties laced with fumagillin with the idea that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down (some beekeepers mix fumagillin with powdered sugar to get the “spoonful” effect). Look for copy-cat materials and check out www.beeologics.com (thanks, Eric).

Healthy Be Honey
In addition to the National Honey Board website, there is a new website devoted to the health benefits of honey: www.benefits-of-honey.com And look for a honey-health book by Kirsten Traynor (no relation) that should be out next year.

Resting Equipment
CCD investigations note that when supers from collapsed hives are put on good colonies, the good colonies come down with CCD. To avoid disease buildup in the soil, farmers will fallow fields or rotate crops. Nosema spores can last for months in empty hives. Putting equipment from dead colonies onto good colonies may be counter-productive; an economical sterilization method is needed. Sunlight can be effective (if it doesn’t melt the comb).

California Cotton Acreage
1995: 1.3 million
2006: 600,00
2008: 280,000

Dept. of Clarification
Rotating comb does NOT mean poking a hole through the dead center of a frame and spinning it around your middle finger.

Words of Wisdom
Read the label.

Catch the Buzz
Kim Flottum provides a tremendous service for the bee industry with his on-line Catch the Buzz news alert. See www.beeculture.com, then click on Catch the Buzz to sign up.

California Bee Convention
Nov. 11-13, Lake Tahoe. See www.californiastatebeekeepers.com or call (209)667-4590 for more info.

The late E.F.Woods was the inventor of the Apidictor.

“Sound engineers are familiar with a phenomenon known as the ‘cocktail party effect’. This is the ability of the human brain, in a room full of chattering people, to pick out and concentrate on one conversation, not necessarily the loudest. Eddie was blessed with this ability and it served him well when listening to the medley of sounds that his microphone picked up in the hive.

One sound that caught his attention was a sort of warbling noise that varied between the notes A and C sharp; that’s 225 - 285 Hz in terms of frequency. He noticed that this sound got steadily louder, then it stopped and a day or so later a swarm took off.

Eventually, he decided that it was made by the 4-1/2 to 6 day old nurse bees, his reasoning being as follows:

In a normal colony there are about 4,000 nurse bees, half of which feed the brood and the other half, the queen, who eats 20 times her own weight in a day.

When a colony decides to swarm, its first action is to reduce the supply of food to the queen in order to slim her down into a condition for flying. This puts some of the nurse bees out of work and reduces her egg laying. Hence, a few days later, there are fewer larvae to feed so more nurse bees become unemployed and the whole process is progressive.

The nurses have to get rid of the energy that would go into food production so they probably stand there exercising by flapping their wings, fanning in fact, but how do we account for the peculiar frequency?

In flight, an adult bee flaps its wings 250 times a second but when fanning, it grips the comb and this brings the frequency down to 190 Hz. (Hz is just an abbreviation for Hertz which is the engineer’s word for ‘times a second’.) However, a young bee’s wings do not harden completely until it is 9 days old and until then the resonant frequency is higher. It may be that 4-1/2 day wings resonate at 285Hz and the 6 day old ones at 225Hz and the sound is a mixture of single frequencies rather than a collection of warbles from individual bees.

Eddie built a simple audio frequency amplifier with microphone and headphones and incorporated what is known as a bandpass filter. This allowed the frequency band 225-285Hz through to the ear and blocked off the rest, making it easier to hear.

Note that the flight frequency of 250 Hz falls in this band which is why the tests should be made in the evening after flying has stopped.

Eddie stressed that the warble does not necessarily indicate a swarm; it indicates that the queen has gone off laying and there could be other reasons. In any case, it means a brood nest inspection is needed.

If you give a hive a knock with the flat of the hand, the bees hiss at you and this is something that Eddie listened to very carefully. Under normal conditions it is a short sharp noise, lasting about 1/2 a second, starting and finishing quite suddenly; the bees are alert and defensive. If a swarm is in the offing, the bees are in a happy-go-lucky mood, the sound is not so loud, rising and falling less sharply. Eddie described this as a loyalty sound and he fitted another filter to help pick it out.

With this instrument he found he could get up to three weeks warning of swarm preparations and was alerted 10 days before queen cells were started.

He fitted the instrument with a 3-position switch for listening to the normal hive noise, the warble and the hiss. With added refinements he called it the Apdictor, patented it and marketed it in 1964, selling about 300 worldwide.

The reason it never caught on, I suspect, is because most beekeepers were non-technical and very conservative. How often have you heard them say, “It was good enough for my father and it is good enough for me”? Nevertheless, those beekeepers who mastered it swore by it and some are still in use today, 36 years later. Last year I was instrumental in getting faults cured for two users who were anxious to get faulty ones working again.

Today we live in a more technical world with advances in miniaturisation, chips and so on and I think such an instrument would be more acceptable.

Indeed, my vision is of a detector in every hive with a little transmitter that sends a signal back to base whenever the warble exceeds the critical level.

Having ‘inherited’ many of Eddie’s papers, I have been able to study his work over the years, have written a small book about it and can supply technical data if anybody happens to have an Apidictor that needs repair.”

- T.R.Boys

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Download PDF file

A relatively cheap way to render wax is to use a solar melter. The heat is free and a side benefit is the bleaching of the wax by the sun.

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A form board is used to install foundation, nail frame wedges, and embed wires. It can be used for all three sizes of frames. Place the frame over the form board and the platform extends up to the middle of the frame, allowing the foundation to be easily nailed in place, frame wedge nailed, or the wire embedded.

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The reason I made this bar was due to the lack of pillow block adjustment when using the Maxant Chain uncapper. The uncapper I bought from Maxant, although very good and well engineered, lacks the ability to adjust the distance between the flailing chains. The factory holes do not allow the chains to be moved in either direction, thereby causing all the frames to be uncapped to the same dimensions. This is a problem for those of us that run our honey supers with nine frames. Our frames are wider than those who run 10 frames per super. From the factory, my uncapper removed the cappings and about 1/2″ of the comb from both sides. Although this increased my wax yield, it cut the comb down to about 1/4 inch. I wanted the chains to remove the capping and then very little of the comb. This bar is made from Stainless steel and installs in less than 20 minutes.
- Dave Verville

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Download PDF file

Text, photos and illustrations: Erik Osterlund

(This text was written as a base for a lecture held at Apimondia 1999 in Vancouver.)

Brother Adam liked to share his experiences and his bees with interested beekeepers. Photo: Erik Osterlund.

Due to his early experiences the Benedictine monk Brother Adam came to look at different races of bees in a similar way as we usually look at locally strains of one and the same race. With this I mean in the possibilities of using them in the same breeding program. Every strain and race was looked upon as a possible genetic resource.

That means that in principle there is nothing mysterious with the Buckfast or its breeding principles. It is like any other bee, or could be like any other bee. But you are free to take from a bigger source of material when breeding the bee.

A key word in Buckfast breeding is drone control. Most often you only select the mother colony of your new queens and let them mate randomly. Or you may put together your best colonies in the same apiary, which you make your mating area for your virgin queens. That’s no bad principle at all in general. But to make a faster progress you must have more control of what kind of drones your queens will mate to.

Let me say here that if you don’t aim at fast progress, but just want to preserve or make a slow progress, making a mating apiary with your best colonies regardless of their genetic relationship is a good way, according to my own opinion. But when you cross different strains that are quite different genetically, you will in the next following generations get a quite wide variation, so you need a narrowing of the genetic upset of the drone side to make progress with a reasonable speed.

Brother Adam in his home apiary at Buckfast Abbey in 1983 showing the nice performance of one of his Greek combinations. Photo: Erik Osterlund

Brother Adam established a special mating station in an isolated area of Dartmoor for this purpose, a desolate area with little vegetation, few bees and a hard climate. He also used instrumental insemination to a certain degree. But the mating station on Dartmoor has always been the corner stone in his breeding.

The starting point for the drones on his mating station was always one single colony. Due to the heritage of drone you can supply, not only one, but very many, mating stations with the same drone heritage, derived from the same single colony, is possible.

If you find a desired colony, not only one hopefully, but a number of them, and also of some different origin to avoid future close inbreeding, you of course breed virgin queens from it. You can call this colony a ‘Mother colony’. But you need drones for those virgins. And another colony you find, may actually would fit very well as a complement to your first colony, to give a lacking quality, or to strengthen another, or both.

How do you combine these two colonies? If you take drones from the second colony, which we can call the ‘Father colony’, you don’t get the full heritage of the colony. You only get the heritage of the queen, as the drones of the colony only gets their genes from her. In a way that’s not bad, because the queen is the most important individual in the colony and influences the colony a lot through her pheromones, maybe even more then we normally are aware of. But 50% of the genetic heritage in the workers, come from the semen in the queen, the drones she once was mated to, may be of vital importance too, to the performance of the ‘Father colony’.

Workers give the full heritage of the ‘Father colony’. But they can’t mate to our virgins from the ‘Mother colony’. But virgins bred from the ‘Father colony’ are sisters of the workers and also give a portion of the full heritage of the ‘Father colony’. When these virgins are mated, for our purpose here not so important to what, and laying in their own colony, they give drones. And these drones give heritage from only their mother and thus a portion of the full heritage of our desired ‘Father colony’.

A ‘Father colony’ then give their heritage through the drones from its daughter queens. And you can have many daughter queens, so you can really supply with enough drones, even if only one colony is the ‘Father’. Of course you can, and should if possible also make selection among the daughter queens, even if the most important selection was done when you choose the ‘Father colony’.

When making a pedigree of the breeders used according to Buckfast principles, the colony from which you breed the young queens can be called the ‘Mother’ and the colony that has supplied the queens which are heading the drone producing colonies can be called ‘Father’. In this way you can get a pedigree that is similar in appearance to pedigrees for mammals. You make in the form of a tree, or like Brother Adam, just on a line. In the latter case you follow the ‘motherline’ and the mating for one queen in the line in every generation given.

In reality you may not decide beforehand definitely which colony will be the ‘Father’ a certain year ahead. But you may have a number of them, which you take daughters from, with the purpose of choosing one sister group for the mating station. The performance and wintering ability of the sister group may give the last selection argument. And this is actually how Brother Adam worked.

This method is used when your goal is to develop your strain, and develop it quite fast, and make it more stable. When you have reached such level that you don’t want to risk what you have got, you may end up in a downward path, if you go on to long with this method. You will end up with too close inbreeding, even if the pedigree don’t reveal it. But if you constantly try out new strains and races and eventually incorporate the result in your main strain you probably don’t end up there, if you watch out and avoid the closest inbreeding when selecting ‘Father colony’ for your ‘Mother’ colonies. That’s the way of Brother Adam. He was always curious on new races and strains, and their eventual possibility to contribute to the progress and development of the Buckfast bee.

If we work with the Buckfast bee as it is, our method may be to look at local works with the Buckfast bee as different sources for tryout. And get breeding material from each other now and then for tryout purpose and eventual incorporation in our own local variety of the Buckfast bee.

When we stop using new races in a Buckfast type of breeding it is even still more important then before to avoid close inbreeding. Close inbreeding is our biggest enemy destroying what we have achieved. With inbreeding you loose a lot of the genetic varieties, and further progress becomes less possible and less probable. But in rare instances, especially when you just have crossed two very different strains or races, it can be a tool to help you get more predictable results in the following generations.

It’s important though, in all this theorizing, to remember that it is not the theories that give you good bees. You have to actually do the work, make tryouts and watch the bees. Watch the bees carefully. Maybe they are telling you that you are doing the right thing. Maybe they tell you that you are working after the right theories. Maybe they will give you good colonies and you don’t understand why these odd colonies are that good. Be humble enough to admit that it is a possibility that you don’t know everything and take care of such colonies in your breeding. Work according to your theories, but make also some choices and tryouts by so called intuition. And let the bees tell you afterwards what you have got. Brother Adam always advised you: Let the bees tell you.

And when selecting Mother and Father colonies, don’t only look at single colonies. Look at the sister groups as a group, how they perform compared to other sister groups. But without your ability to discern differences between the colonies you have little help of any breeding system. It is of vital importance that you can see the differences in performance and behaviour. And be able to take in account differences that can influence the result, as strenght of the colonies the queens are introduced to, when they are introduced, if the colonies have different kinds of hives, if they are managed differently, if they are placed in different apiaries with different nectar flows and pollen availability.

Keep watch for positive ‘extremes’ among your colonies. When you combine different strains, at a certain stage among the generations, you may get a wide variation concerning certain qualities. Of course you shift the queen in colonies with too bad such variation. But if such an odd colony show up that has a good and maybe rare quality in a very remarkable way, you have to use that colony, at least a little, in you breeding, even if it to some degree may have a less desirable quality. Take care of the positive extremes.

Brother Adam said that you need at least 100 colonies to be able to be sure to be able to make progress in your breeding efforts to develop your bee. Also he said that you have to look in the colonies and get to know the bees yourself if you are the one who will make the selection of breeders.

Brother Adam never hesitated to share his findings and his bee with other beekeepers who wanted to try them and to use them. He always answered your questions, but you most often had to find out the questions yourself and do ask them to get the knowledge, besides reading his books.

Today the Buckfast bee from Buckfast Abbey contains heritage from mainly A.m. ligurica (ligustica) (North Italian), A.m. mellifera (English), A.m. mellifera (French), A.m. anatolica (Turkeish) and A.m. cecropia (Greek). The Buckfast bee of today may also contain heritage from A.m. sahariensis and A.m. monticola.

Important races which are included in the Buckfast strain are Mellifera from England and France, Ligurica (Ligustica) from Northern Italy, Cecropia from Greece and Anatolica from Turkey.

Brother Adam made many journeys, especially around the Mediterranean, to find find different races and strains to try out. One of his last journeys was to Tanzania in Africa to find the black mountain bee in East Africa. And one of his last statements was that the African continent is a genetic treasury.

When you hear of Africa, the first thing you may think of concerning bees is so called Africanized bees in America, which in principal as its base has a number of colonies of A.m. scutellata from southern Africa. You then may think of extremely swarmy bees with a very strong defensive behaviour. And this Scutellata bee is common in the southern and eastern lowland parts of Africa. You shouldn’t forget here that this bee is very important economical base for beekeepers in South Africa and that since the arrival of it to South America the honey production has grown substantially.

The honeybee races in Africa are at least as differing from each other as the European races are between themselves. African honeybees are not only Scutellata (the Africanized bee), but also the interesting and promising Monticola from the East African mountains.

What could be surprising is that there are other bees of another extreme relatively close to Scutellata in Africa. Above the mountain rain forests on the mountain slopes in East Africa you have a bee with a relatively very low swarming tendency. Actually, when combined with the Buckfast bee, you get an extremely low swarming bee, that given ample room for egglaying, food storage and for the bees themselves, they don’t need any regular swarm control. They may even get along with the old queen till the colony just die with her without even trying to shift her. But that’s going too far concerning low swarming tendency. That bee is A.m. monticola. On some of the mountains it is black, on other they are more brownish-red in color. But they are usually bigger in size than Scutellata and much more easy to handle. They have less hair and often black hair, especially on the thorax. Who knows what other interesting bees may be found on this huge continent.

After the reports of the resistance of Scutellata to the varroa mite in South America and the reports from the expedition of Brother Adam to East Africa I began to get the idea that African races may have something in common that makes them more tolerant to the varroa mite. Later on I have realized that it is in first place a tolerance to secondary infections following the mite, possibly in first place virus infections from APV and DWV, and viruses contributing other types of infections like nosema. Now lately I have also realized at least one trait they have in common compared to European strains of today, namely the size. Is that of importance?

An opened loghive on 3500 m on Mt Elgon on the border between Uganda and Kenya. It is fully built with wax, contrary to loghives low down on the mountain side. Those loghives were seldom as full of waxcombs as this one. The colonies swarmed long before. The colony was relatively friendly and easy to handle. It was actually wrong time for drones when we were there. But this colony had a very old queen and had kept a large amount of drones, apparently in preparation for shifting the queen as soon as it was possible.

When an opportunity opened up to form an expedition to Kenya, I jumped on this train and we were four that went there in March 1989. Michael van der Zee from Holland, Erik Björklund, Dr Bert Thrybom and I from Sweden. Many Buckfast groups in Sweden and from other places supported this trip.

We came back to Sweden with pieces of combs with eggs, and semen in small tubes. Queens were bred and inseminated. The semen was used after some glucose had been addded to give the semen energy to move. More queens were bred from the resulting queens and the first crosses done.

In the beginning the colonies were kept in genetic isolation from the environment, queen excluders on the bottom boards and the like, until more experiences from the bees were secured. Very soon it was evident that this bee was no threat, but a possible resource.

Tests were being made in varroa infested areas to find out eventual varroa tolerance. Concentration were made on the growth rate of the mite during one season and the total number of mites compared to control colonies. The first findings were positive but not sensational at all. The number of mites were somewhat lower and the development time of the brood was and is somewhat shorter.

After some years my attention was called upon to the secondary infections and I realized that the worst enemy was not the mite itself, but these secondary infections. No colony died just by many mites, but due to other extra ordinary developments of different types of diseases. Most often so called wingless bees were reported. And I have seen no other explanation for these deformed wings then the Deformed Wing Virus (DWV).

A question rose in my mind that I had never seen written down anywhere. What is the normal amount of varroa mites in a tolerant colony? Everyone seemed to be concentrating on the growth rate of the mite and the total number of mites in a colony, but no one gave a number of mites which was the goal to not reach. I came to realize that the concentration probably should be made on secondary infections instead of on the number of mites, even if both areas are of great interest.

As the bee I have bred from this Monticola-Buckfast crosses are differing a lot genetically from the main Buckfast strain I feel I have to call the new combination something else then Buckfast, so I call it Elgon. But it is bred in the spirit of Brother Adam and according to the principles of Buckfast breeding.

Today one of the most successful Elgon breeder is Poul Erik Karlsen on the island Bornholm in the Baltic, belonging to Denmark in Scandinavia. 1999 season was the fifth for many of his colonies without any type of treatment against the mite. For the rest of his colonies it was his third season. And they are thriving and giving him good crops. Around him have been and still are in a small scale, other beekeepers with big problems. He lost many colonies just after the arrival of the mite to the island. And so did others, and still do. Today there are not more then 4-500 colonies on the island, of which Poul Erik has about 200. Before the mite arrived there were 2500. Is his bee varroa tolerant? Well, Poul Erik doesn’t care what they are called. He is happy not to have to treat anything and to have thriving bees that give good crops.

An apiary of Poul Erik Karlsen on Bornholm. Many of his colonies had not been treated anything against the varroa mite for five years, when the photo was taken.

There is though an interesting experience from Bornholm to tell, that have to give us something to think about further and more to investigate. Do chemical treatment increase the susceptibility to secondary infections like viruses? There are reports that indicate this. And if it is so, we have no great use of tolerant bees if we use chemical treatments, and we will have great difficulties discovering such bees if such treatments are used. Do all kind of chemical treatment have the same kind of bad influence in this respect? Probably not and hopefully not.

In August 1998 Poul Erik Karlsen on Bornholm treated 90 of his colonies with formic acid to find out the level of the number of mites in his colonies, as he had not treated at all for a number of years then. 60 of these died of dysentery during late winter. Another 25 of these didn’t develop properly during spring and secondary infections and the mites took over in these colonies so he killed them. If Poul Erik had had new mated queens available of his own strain he would have had just shifted queens in the strongest of them to try to restore them. He had finally three left, of which the bees shifted the queens in two of them. He has of course bred from these three colonies.

Of his 110 untreated colonies, of which many went into their fifth year without treatment, one died of mice. He used these colonies to make divides and build up his number of hives again. Is the right conclusion that chemical treatment decrease the tolerance to secondary infections?

Also an initial investigation in Israel have given interesting results concerning the possibility of Elgon bees being virus and varroa tolerant. More tests are on its way there. Also more tests are being done in Sweden and in other places.

The experiences of the possibilities of Elgon bees to tolerate secondary infections and the varroa mite have been more differentiated. It is evident that as I myself don’t have the mite in my apiaries, I might select the wrong breeder concerning virus and varroa tolerance. I am dependent on beekeepers that have the mite, that they make tests, which contribute to my breeding, as I can get pieces of combs with eggs from selected colonies to graft from. So I warn people to think that if you manage to get queens from Erik Österlund you will get varroa tolerant bees. I would guess, that if you get queens from Poul Erik Karlsen on Bornholm you have a bigger chance of getting such bees.

Let me also say that it seems, if these bees are more tolerant, that this tolerance is connected in a big deal, to the queen and her pheromones. It seems as if these pheromones can have a valuable effect on the harmony and how well the colony as a whole functions, both in a hygienic behavior against infected brood and in its immune system.

Erik Österlund

- Erik Österlund

(This text appeared in the proccedings of the Apimondia conference held in Vancouver 1999.)

Buckfast breeding program is breeding principles developed at Buckfast Abbey by the Benedictine monk Brother Adam. Buckfast is a small place in southwestern England where there have been a monastery in very old times which was restored in the 19th century. In the beginning of the 20th century the young boy Karl Kerhle arrived there from southern Germany. He became Brother Adam and devoted his life not only to the monastery life of the Benedictine vows of prayer and work but also to be a tool to give us in first place a good breeding program, but also a good bee.

There is nothing complicated or mysterious about the Buckfast breeding principles. They come from common sense without prejudices. They use ‘natural selection’ where you let the best possible genes that can contribute, do it. To your help you have the bees themselves. Brother Adam often gave the advice: Let the bees tell you!

There are two key words for Buckfast breeding, cooperation and effectiveness. The goal is the highest effectiveness: Best result with least possible input. To achieve this goal all involved components have to cooperate, from genes from different sources to people from different places. In the bees the genes cooperate and the beekeepers who breed them do it also. Without these guidelines there wouldn’t have been any Buckfast bee and without them the Buckfast bees will cease to be. Also, most important, to achieve such a goal is an effective and integrated management system, adapted also to the environment and different nectar flows. Such a management system is though not the issue of this lecture, but can be learned from Brother Adams books and from other experienced beekeepers. Key principles here are generous amount of space for egglaying, the bees themselves and for storage of food in appropriate timing with the development of the bees.

Brother Adam was led into combination breeding, a kind of crossbreeding or hybridbreeding, but not of the kind you most often think of when you hear these words. When the tracheal mite and the acarine disease almost devastated the British beekeeping in the beginning of this century, Brother Adam found that the darker brown North Italian bee and its crosses was resistant to the effects of this internal mite.

Brother Adam was led into looking for good traits in different strains and races of bees and combine them and refine the combinations in selecting the most desirable combinations for further breeding. Today the main Buckfast varieties have influences mostly from A.m. ligustica (North Italian), A.m. mellifera (English), A.m. mellifera (French), A.m. anatolica (Turkeish) and A.m. cecropia (Greece).

For this purpose he understood that control also of the male side of the combination was of vital importance. A mating station, which you provide with drones from sister queens was his way. And it has worked very well. If you look at the whole colony as an individual and you want to combine two good individuals, which means traits from two good bee colonies into new colonies, you have to use virgins from one of them and drones from daughter queens of the other one.

Brother Adam could not have reached such a standard of his work without the help of other people. Many have they been, both known and unknown for the ‘public’. The first you think of are of course the monastery where he lived. Many has helped around the world with supply of knowledge and practical help finding interesting strains of bees and transportation help. When more and more Buckfast beekeeping ‘centers’ have been established in various parts of the world, they also have helped in different ways.

Today the same principals described above have to be followed, if you want to keep and develop a Buckfast type of breeding system and bee. It is important to understand that Brother Adam never tried to preserve a strain or a good individual colony, or to find out a way to make the same successful combination again. He knew that this is impossible, to keep an high and totally even level of the quality. You will end up downwards with such a goal. Instead he aimed upwards, for a steady progress. Each generation was the take-off for the possibly even more successful coming generations.

You follow the Buckfast principles when you combine different established Buckfast varieties, for further stability and progress. You also follow the Buckfast principles when you try out new strains in combinations with the main Buckfast strain, like is done in for example Luxemburg, Denmark and Sweden as well as of course at Buckfast Abbey. Today, strains with possible varroa resistant traits are of special interest. Strains that at the same time are possible to make combination bees from that are easy to handle. Under trial today among Buckfast breeders are A.m. monticola (East African mountains), A.m. sahariensis (Marockoan oases), A.m. meda (Iran) and A.m. lamarckii (Egypt). One maybe interesting strain that has not been tried out yet is the mountain variety of A.m. unicolor (Madagaskar). The possible A.m. melllifera strain(s) in eastern Russia and northern China are other possible interesting strains for combination breeding.

You follow the Buckfast principles when you cooperate with other breeders and generously share breeding material with them. Why should you do that? Because it is likely there will rise very good combination at these other Buckfast breeding centers, combinations you can bring back breeding from in your turn. And the more centers of breeding there are, with related bees, the more do you avoid the biggest enemy, inbreeding. Inbreeding makes you loose important genes and it makes your bees less effective, as they among other things will be more susceptible to diseases when the inbreeding goes to far. But you need some kind of inbreeding though to make your combinations stable enough for acceptable even results. Therefore different breeding centers that regularely exchange material for tests is of vital need. And to be remembered are these words of Brother Adam to make us understand that 100% stability is not the aim: Without variation there is no possibility for further progress.

What is a Buckfast bee? Well, strictly spoken, it is a strain of bee that is bred at the place of Buckfast in England, and bee colonies that are headed by honey bee queens from Buckfast. Those queens should be bred from colonies that have reached a minimum standard for what can be labeled Buckfast. But words are the means by which we communicate. And they mean what we put into them. A Xerox copy became a substitute for a photocopy. Filofax is becoming a substitute for a time calendar. Thus Buckfast can be a substitute for a bee bred according to the Buckfast principals. Or maybe not. If different Buckfast breeding centers are differing too much from each other, maybe the resulting bee is too different to be called Buckfast. Or does that matter? Just think of all the different so called Italian bees around the world. Anyhow, if you today sell queens under the name of Buckfast, you have to have an agreement with Buckfast Abbey, to be able to get breeding material from there. And because my own strain of bees at the moment differ substantially from the main Buckfast strain, anyway if you look at the pedigree, even if it is bred according to Buckfast principals, I call it Elgon instead of Buckfast. Elgon, as my bee has a lot of influence from A.m. monticola.

What makes you a Buckfast breeder? The basic is that you have to be able to listen to what your bees tell you. Which bee colonies are giving the result you want? Or are closest to it? If you can discern differences between your bee colonies, you can become, not only a Buckfast breeder, but also a successful bee breeder. Actually it is a necessity.

Erik Österlund

by Erik Österlund

(10 important facts from the lecture held at Apimondia 1999 in Vancouver)

• Races are looked upon in connection to each other, in a similar way as different local varieties of a certain geographical race are looked upon. They are possible genetic resources for combinations.

• The Buckfast bee is more similar to a geographical race, than to a commercial hybrid.

• A key word in Buckfast breeding is drone control. And especially when developing a new strain using sister groups as the drone source is essential. The mother colony of this sister group is then the genetical ‘father’ of the new colonies achieved.

• Avoid close inbreeding. It is the biggest enemy in bee breeding, but could be used occasionally.

• Let the bees tell you! In whatever way the colony you look at has come to be, let it tell you how good it is, don’t just look in the pedigree or on your theory.

• You have to be able to discern the differences between the colonies and discover the peculiarities of different colonies.

• Take care of the positive extremes you find among the colonies and let them in some way and to some extent give forth their heritage to the next generation for a test.

• You need at least 100 colonies to be able to be enough certain to do a reasonable progress in your breeding.

• You need to look in the colonies yourself to get to know them, if you are the one who will make the selection of breeders.

• Share your genetic results with other beekeepers. You will get it back in due time and together you will get a better result then you would have got only by yourself.