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.

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.

by ERIK OSTERLUND
Sweden
honeybee@elgon.se

Bornholm in the Baltic

In the May 1998 issue, I began to tell the readers of this magazine what was being done with the Elgon bee on the island Bornholm in the Baltic. Two apiaries of Poul Erik Karlsen were treated for the last time in autumn 1994. Almost all of the rest of his colonies were treated for the last time in autumn 1995. In 1998 he successfully wintered 200 colonies. In the May issue of 1999 I mentioned that Karlsen had treated 90 of the wintered 200 colonies with 200 - 250 ml of 85% formic acid evaporated from soft boards. One reason for this was to get a picture of the number of Varroa mites in the colonies. One hundred and ten colonies were not treated at all, as usual for several years. The average total number of mites in the colonies in autumn 1998 could be calculated to average around 1500 mites.

Of the 90 colonies, 87 died during the winter 1998/1999 and spring 1999. Of the 110, one died due to mice. Explanation? The acid affects not only the mites, but also the bees to some extent–probably more if the bees already are affected through a number of mites in the colony that is over a certain level. That’s why in a strategy where formic acid is used, it is very important to keep the number of mites very low throughout the whole season, so that the bees that will form the winter cluster will be as little negatively affected as possible.

Today Karlsen is wintering about 100 colonies, as he is getting older and has some back problems. Every year, however, he always makes a good number of nucs that will form mating nucs, new colonies for himself, to be sold, or to be combined with colonies that have failing queens.

In the beginning of the 2000 season he saw a few colonies that didn’t develop well enough, maybe due to mites. As soon as he had new queens, they got a new one. This is the way he has solved this kind of problem for a number of years now. You can say the treatment he uses is selection and breeding.

Colony A superseded its queen and the new fresh queen handled the mites. Photo: E Osterlund

Karlsen is helping a growing number of beekeepers with new colonies. One friend has purchased a new colony twice from him, but both have died from what he thinks are varroa mites. Is this just bad luck getting the poor variants that always show up in all breeding? Maybe the apiary site is part of the explanation. It is situated in the shadows of a big tree at the bottom of a hill. Karlsen said this place always felt a little cooler than the surroundings. Maybe it is such a place as was described in a lecture in Tucson 10-12 April 2000.(2) Where you place your bees seems to affect the mite growth.

The number of honey bee colonies is still very low on the island. The average honey crop the season of 2000 was said to be between 0 and 25 kg. Poul Erik Karlsen had an average this same season of 48 kg.

In October I visited Karlsen and asked him to show me the worst colonies he could find and the best concerning being affected by varroa mites. He showed me several strong colonies on two stories, in a number of apiaries, and also a number of new good looking colonies made up the same year. In two apiaries he had one colony in each he had had under observation to see what happened. Both were in June/July dwindling on one box with too many “wingless” bees. Karlsen sometimes doesn’t give such a colony a new queen right away, to keep it with mites for a while, as he sometimes wants a colony with many mites for test purposes. If he doesn’t “save” a few such colonies, he happens to find, he will have problems finding colonies with too many mites, when he “needs” them. For example, if he really wants to test a new eventual breeder queen, he can put it in a hive with a lot of mites, to see if the queen can handle the situation. That’s what he has done more than once. In 1999 he put two sister queens in two such colonies he had that year. One of the sisters did well and that one Karlsen used as a breeder last season. The other one failed.

The new queen in Colony A with some healthy brood and bees in October. Photo: E Osterlund

One of these two colonies (A) failing in 2000 had an old queen. That colony had been a good colony for a number of years with this same queen. The other failing colony (B) Karlsen had obtained from a friend who originally had purchased it from Karlsen. His friend treated with formic acid, but perhaps didn’t treat his colonies well enough to keep the mite level low the entire season last year. Karlsen didn’t know the status of these colonies when I visited, but they had to have had strength enough for him to decide to feed them extra sugar for winter prior to my arrival. Anyhow, it was interesting also for him to check them now. Colony A was a strong colony now with no sign of any “wingless” bees. What had happened? It was late in the season, but there was some brood left, but no obvious sign of varroa. We found the queen; it was a new one. The bees had superseded the old one themselves. A new queen with rich amounts of pheromones and maybe mated to drones with good genes–was that the explanation? Also, probably a period without brood when supersedure was occurring helped reduce varroa numbers. Colony B looked the same, but there we found a few “wingless” bees. However, we had difficulties finding any varroa in the few patches of brood. They had also superseded their old queen. Had the formic acid applied last autumn also affected the pheromone production of their queen?

We checked a two-story hive that Karlsen thought housed a good colony, as it superseded its 3-year-old queen last year. He had bred from that colony, No. 482, as discussed in the May 1999 ABJ article. It had shown mites in spring each year, but had handled the situation well. Her daughter was obviously a poor variant, as the colony now surprised Karlsen because it was just a small remnant with many wingless bees and visibly many mites. “I will kill it tomorrow,” Karlsen said. I was not surprised. There has to be some on the negative side among all variations of descendants, especially from a colony that had shown visibly many mites during a period of the season. I told Karlsen to watch out for the other daughters of No. 482.

For Poul Erik Karlsen, the Varroa mite today is just another “disease” that “helps” him to avoid the worst colonies and select the best ones from which to breed–no big problem at all actually. Karisen and I have been discussing the size of the bee and the cell it’s born in. For those interested, it can be noted that the Elgon bee in general is smaller than, for example, the Buckfast. The cell size Karlsen uses currently is 5.3 mm. He molds his own foundation.

Beekeeper A in Skane

In the very south of Sweden, in the county of Skane, two beekeepers wanted to test their Elgon queens thoroughly. They therefore made up an apiary each, quite isolated from other bees. Beekeeper A made 10 nucs in 1997 from big colonies treated the last time in autumn 1996 with Apistan strips during 6 weeks. In 5 nucs he put Elgon queens; in the other 5, he put Buckfast queens. By the autumn of 1997 he had already started seeing a few wingless bees in the 5 new Buckfast colonies.

In 1998 nothing special happened with the colonies. They gave a normal crop and wintered normally. In 1999 the colonies appeared to be normal, too, with a normal crop and wintering–no wingless bees. In 1999 naturally fallen mites were collected during 14 days in the first part of June. In the Elgon colonies there was a daily downfall of 14-28 mites, average 22. For the Buckfast 39-67, average 49. Honey crop–Elgon 41-51 kg, average 45 kg.; Buckfast 43-53 kg, average 49 kg. The fifth Buckfast colony had problems with its queen, remained small throughout season and gave no honey. It died during winter. Two other Buckfast colonies and one Elgon colony also died during winter/spring 1999-2000. Half of the frames were full of food, but no bees were left in the colonies. (See Figure 1.)

In spring 2000 the remaining colonies developed well, but not as good as the other apiaries of Beekeeper A, as the spring flow in this apiary was not very good. During 16 days in May-June 2000 natural downfall of mites was collected. For Elgon the daily downfall was 25-34, average 30. For Buckfast 44-49, average 47. In June, Beekeeper A discovered some wingless bees in all the colonies in this apiary. He now stopped his test. The foundation A uses has a cell size of 5.4 mm.

Beekeeper B in Skane

The other beekeeper in the very south of Sweden, beekeeper B, also started a 10-colony test apiary in 1997 with Elgons and Buckfasts in a similar way as beekeeper A. The test site of B had a better spring flow and a good main flow. It was placed high up on a slope, but still protected from most wind. B did not collect

Part of the test apiary of Beekeeper B. Photo: E Osterlund

downfall of mites in 1999. The honey crop that year was an average 60 kg for Elgons and 45 kg for Buckfasts. All colonies looked strong and normal when wintered in 1999. All “pure” Buckfast colonies were gone in spring 2000, some of them leaving full frames of food and no bees. During 18 days in May-June natural downfall was collected. It was 5-21 in daily downfall, with an average of 14. Colonies with the largest number of mites were observed to have the biggest bees. The colony with the smallest number was observed to have relatively small bees. A number of queens are made from this colony. They are all smaller than average in size. Their progeny is small in size, in spite of the fact that they were reared in 5.5 mm cell size.

Another mite downfall was collected immediately after the first 18 days. Now the daily downfall was measured to be 6-25 (multiplication with 120 gives the total mite population to be about 700 - 3000 in these colonies at that time), with an average of 16. (See Figure 2.)

In October 2000 I visited beekeeper B and he took me to his test apiary, so I could check the colonies there. I observed the colony with the largest number of mites, to have two groups of bees concerning size - one with big-sized bees and one with small-sized. I draw the conclusion that this could be due to the fact that the colony had superseded their queen in 2000 and that the new queen could be mated, at least partially, to small drones. All the colonies in the apiary were strong and looked very healthy. All the surviving colonies had superseded their queens themselves, some in 1999 and the rest in 2000. Is the size of the bees part of the explanation for the relatively long survival of these colonies? Is 1000-3000 mites a ‘normal’ number of mites in “mite-tolerant” bee colonies?

Beekeeper C in Smaland

A little north of beekeeper A and B another beekeeper, called C, received four Elgon queens from me in 1999. He put them in nucs made from bees and brood frames from some of his ordinary colonies. They expanded enough to be able to be wintered. He didn’t use any treatment against the varroa mite in these new colonies in the autumn of 1999. His other colonies were treated with Apistan in autumn 1999. In spring 2000 he used drone comb to trap mites in all of his colonies. He thoroughly looked for mites in the removed drone comb. In the drone comb taken from the colonies treated with Apistan in autumn 1999 he

E4, the colony with Beekeeper B which had so few mites and was strong and healthy. Photo: E Osterlund

found some odd mites. In the drone comb from the new colonies, started as nucs in 1999, he couldn’t find one single mite, though he looked carefully. Of course, they had mites, but these results tell us that if it wasn’t the Elgon queens causing the low mite count, then making nucs is a very effective method in getting new colonies for next year with a very low level of mites. Even if you use brood combs when you make the nucs. Probably the correct answer involves effects from both the Elgon queens and from making nucs.

Israel

The first positive tests came with some pure Elgon colonies and the first cross (F1) Elgon colonies and this was reported in the May 1999 issue of ABJ. In autumn 1998 new tests were started with F1 Elgon colonies, Buckfasts and two different Italian strains. Colonies were established in three apiaries. No chemical treatment or any other kind of treatment was performed. After one year the tests stopped in two apiaries due to high numbers of mites combined with uncertainty of how to compensate the beekeepers if many colonies should die. In one apiary with originally 33 colonies the test continued. This apiary originally had 11 F1 Elgons type A (Group A), 11 F1 Elgons type B (Group B) and 11 Italian colonies type Zrifin (Group C).

Normally beekeepers requeen every year in Israel due to the harsh environment and year-round brood rearing. So, in autumn 1999 all colonies were requeened in the test apiary. F1 Elgon colonies received new Elgon queens mated to Italian drones. Italian colonies received new Italian queens. The mite level was high. Chaim Efrat, who gave me this information, said that shortly after the introduction of the new queens, the colonies looked healthier. He suspects that the procedure of requeening itself is positive for the colony’s ability to fight the mite.

During winter some colonies disappeared. A control group of 15 Italian colonies that were treated with chemicals twice a year was kept in the test apiary; called Group D. In July 2000 some of the colonies had superseded their queens. In autumn 2000, the colonies were requeened again in the test apiary, this time with some Elgon queens mated with Elgon drones.

They hope to be able to secure a number of colonies, Elgons and Italians, that can be used as breeders to develop a more varroa-tolerant bee adapted for their type of climate. The cell size in Israel is 5.6-5.7 mm.

Comments
With all these experiences during these years, from Bornholm and from the south of Sweden, it would be wrong not to say that Elgon bees are more tolerant to the Varroa mite than ordinary bees. All Elgons are not alike in Varroa tolerance, like all other bees. It is also quite obvious that you can make it easier or more difficult for the bees, whatever type of bee you have, by how you manage your bees. Also, the climate has an influence. There were many research reports on this issue presented at The Second International Conference on Africanized Honey Bees and Bee Mites in Tucson 10-12 April 2000.(3)

If you want to take advantage of the bees’ own fighting ability against the mite to the highest degree, you can’t use any chemical in order to be sure not to have any interference with the natural varroa tolerance of the bees. Chemicals don’t only have an effect on the target pest. A whole, small scale or large scale, ecological system with possibly many different kinds of “bugs” and microbes are affected in a way that, in practice, is impossible to know beforehand. Sometimes it may even result, a short time after the treatment, in an even better environment for the “bug” you wanted to get rid of.(4)

A strategy taking care of the natural tolerance of the bees has to be developed. Eric H. Erickson has done this.(5) There’s room for more such research. Erickson has also been involved in research concerning the possibility that smaller cell sizes of the wax comb can help the bees against the mite.(6) As far as I know, there are only two studies published in this field.(7) The first with positive input and the second with negative. For a “full scale field study” you could call on the experiences of Ed and Dee Lusby in Tucson, Arizona, which give positive input on small cell size.(8) There is certainly room for more research in this area.

Today I dare to say it is possible to achieve bees that are tolerant to the Varroa mite, not only in one odd place, but in most places. I have understood there are more bees than just Elgon bees that have higher tolerance to the Varroa mite. The Russian bees imported into the USA are another strain, a strain that in Germany also now has been confirmed to be more Varroa tolerant.(9) Still another example is the bees developed by Erickson in Arizona.(10) However, to really preserve tolerance I have no doubt about it that strategies without any chemical have to be developed.

A Varroa-tolerant bee is achieved, not only through breeding, but also through management methods adapted to the environment where you live. It would be most valuable in todays situation to see more research funds used for integrated management and breeding systems for different environments.

References

1. Osterlund, Erik, 1991. Exploring Monticola - Efforts to find an Acceptable Varroa-Resistant Honey Bee. Am. Bee J. 131:49-56.
Osterlund, Erik, 1993. The Elgon Bee - a Hobbyist and Commercial Bee With African Genes. Am. Bee J. 133:504-507
Osterlund, Erik, 1998. Varroa Doesn’t Kill Bees, But Virus Does! And what has happened to the Elgon bee? Am. Bee J. 138:377-381.
Osterlund, Erik, 1999. Do We Have Varroa-tolerant Bees in Europe? Am. Bee J. 139:369-373.
2. Ostiguy, Nancy and Sammataro, Diana, 2000. Using Environmental Factors to Manage Varroa Mite (Acari: Varroidae) Levels in Honey Bee (Hymenoptera. Apidae) Colonies. Second International Conference on Africanized Honey Bees and Bee Mites, 10-12 April 2000, Tucson.
3. Sammataro, Diana, Ostigny, Nancy, Finley, Jennifer, Frazier, Maryann, Camazine, Scott, 2000. A New IPM Approach to Manage Varroa Mite (Acari: Varroidae) Levels in Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Colonies, Second International Conference on Africanized Honey Bees and Bee Mites, 10-12 April 2000, Tucson.
Vorisek, Fritz E, Webster, Thomas C, Thacker, Etta M, 2000. Control of Varroa jacobsoni with Bottom Board Traps in Honey Bee Hives, Second International Conference on Africanized Honey Bees and Bee Mites, 10-12 April 2000, Tucson.
Webster, Thomas C, Thacker, Etta M, Vorisek, Fritz E, 2000. Measurement of live Varroa Jacobsoni mitefall in Honey Bee Hives, Second International Conference on Africanized Honey Bees and Bee Mites, 10-12 April 2000, Tucson.
Velthuis, Hayo H W, Kraus, Bernhard, 2000. The Impact of Humidity and Temperature Gradients in the Brood Nest of Honeybees on the Reproduction of Varroa jacobsoni: Laboratory Observations, Second International Conference on Africanized Honey Bees and Bee Mites, 10-12 April 2000, Tucson.
Velthuis, Hayo H W, Kraus, Bernhard, 2000. The Impact of Humidity and Temperature Gradients in the Brood Nest of Honeybees on the Reproduction of Varroa Jacobsoni: Field Experiments, Second International Conference on Africanized Honey Bees and Bee Mites, 10-12 April 2000, Tucson.
4. Carson, Rachel, 1994. Silent Spring (Chapters 15 and 16), Houghton Mifflin Co (Pap); ISBN: 0395683297.
Swift, Fred C., 1991. Effects of Fenvalerate on Control of European red Mite (Acari: Tetranychidae) on Peaches with Acaricides, Journal of Economic Entomology, vol. 84, no 4:1348-1352.
5. Erickson, E.H., Hines, L.H., and Atmowidjojo, A.H., 2000. Producing Varroa-tolerant Honey Bees from Locally Adapted Stock: A Recipe, Am. Bee J. 140:659-661.
6. Erickson, Eric H., 1997. Helping Honey Bees Fight Mites, Agricultural Research magazine, May.
7. Message, D, and Goncalves, L.S., 1995. Effects of the size of the worker brood cells of Africanized honey bees on infestation and reproduction of the ectoparasitic mite Varroa jacobsoni Oud. Apidologie 26:381-386.
Davidsson, Mia, 1992. The influence of cell size in Varroa reproduction, Examination paper at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Summary at http://www.algonet.se/~beeman/research/cell.htm An article on this work published in Swedish by Fries, Ingemar, 2000, Har storleken betydelse?, Bitidningen October 2000: 11-13.
8. http://www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/index.htm
9. Koeniger, N., Berg, S., Fuchs, S., Worobic, m., and Ullman, U., 2000. “Russische” Bienen aus den USA gegen Apis mellifera carnica aus Oberursel: Varroavermehrung im Vergleich, Den tsches Bienen Journal, Oktober 2000: 400-401.
10. Erickson, E.H., Atmowidjojo, A.H. and Hines, L., 1999. Varroa-tolerant honey bees are a reality, Am. Bee J. 139:931-933.

by ERIK OSTERLUND
Sweden
honeybee@elgon.se

The small cell theory for varroa control

Two years ago I was totally unaware of any difference in the sizes of the cells in the bee colony, other than the difference between a worker cell and a drone cell (and, of course, the queen cell). I thought the foundation manufacturers gave us beekeepers what was natural and best for the bees; what the bees would choose, themselves. It was self evident in my thought, if I ever thought about it. I had totally forgotten I had published a small article on cell sizes about ten years ago in the Swedish bee journal Bitidningen (Nov 1990) (I’m editor of that journal). At that time there had been some experiments in Germany with big cell sizes, or rather cells with enlarged cell bottoms. Today you don’t hear anything about these. On the contrary, you do hear a lot about small cell sizes.

For more than 10 years I’ve been involved in trying to breed tolerance for the varroa mite into the our honey bee. Soon enough, I was aware of the seemingly higher tolerance in bees with African origin, in Brazil especially at that time. I got a strong gut feeling that African bees might have something in common, making it easier for them to deal with the varroa mite. And fate or God’s providence or whatever you would like to call it, I prefer the latter, made it possible for me to participate in bringing breeding material of an easily handled and hardy African mountain bee to Sweden (eggs and semen)(1). Like others in the field, I concentrated on the rate of the increase in number of mites in the bee colony. Soon I realized that this was a dead end. In these tests being done during just one season, the colony never reached the amount of mites where it leveled out and you got a “normal” amount of mites. You never got an idea of how the bees could handle a situation with a high level of mites, how they could stand the secondary infections and whether they would get rid of mites themselves, in any way.

Especially through the experiences of Poul-Erik Karlsen on Bornholm(2), I also became aware of the two sides of treatment with acaricides against the mite. Besides killing mites they have unwanted effects. In this case, creating a reduction of the bees’ own fighting ability against the mite, and a reduction in their tolerance to secondary infections, thus reducing what we call varroa tolerance.

Ed and Dee Lusby

Less then two years ago I became aware of Ed and Dee Lusby in Arizona and their stubborn defense of the very strong importance of a small cell size in connection with tolerance to the varroa mite, as well as the tracheal mite and secondary infections. Yes, the health of the bee, to put it simply. No, I couldn’t believe the solution was so simple. And, a difference of some fractions of millimeters couldn’t have such an impact. And, what they were talking about must be significantly smaller than what was natural to our bees.

But, I have never trusted authorities right away. People repeat a lot of what others say, and when you have heard it enough times, you recognize it and therefore regard it a truth. And what always has haunted me, since I was very young, is a statement by Albert Einstein. He said that if you want to make progress in science and community, you have to dare to question what is generally accepted and search yourself for the facts that will form the foundation for your thoughts.

So, in spite of my first negative feelings about small cell size, I knew I had to dare to find out a little more about the issue, though I thought I was on the right track with just breeding tolerance. I started emailing Dee Lusby in Tucson, Arizona, and got overwhelmed with information. I dug through it and had to admit she had found out a lot of things about what was natural to the bees. And she and her husband, Ed, had a lot of experience to back up what they were saying.

They have a totally organic approach to beekeeping. To the contrary of what many may seem to think, they are not fanatics about small cell size in the sense that it should be the only and sole solution to every problem related to bees. They say cell size is 1/3 of the answer, 1/3 is breeding and 1/3 is environment, where they especially stress natural food for the bees - honey and pollen, and only that, for emergency feeding when necessary. Are they right? Well, they can’t be totally wrong because they haven’t been using any kind of beekeeping medication for many, many years. They had gone from 1000 colonies to 104, but now they are up at 700 and steadily increasing. At the end of 2001 they count on 800, and in 2002 they plan to sell nucs on frames with the cell size of 4.9 mm.

Natural selection

Natural selection has two criteria: survival and reproduction. And they are both dependent on a) the environment and b) the gene pool of the population.

Natural honey bee selection has been underway for a longer time than man’s selection process. Natural selection is able to recognize every kind of trait and every kind of variation and its influence on survival and reproduction in the environment, where the population is living. Man is just a beginner at this science.

The issue of bee size
Man wants to interfere wherever he can and most often he thinks he knows best. And since the days when wax foundation first was made, man has manipulated the size of the cells in the beehive. And since breeding queens began, man has preferred big queens and big bees. Bigger bees had longer tongues and bigger honey sacs (but fewer flying abilities due to aerodynamics). The most popular bee most of these years has been the Italian bee. It has been bred yellower and bigger, and from being probably the smallest European bee(3), today it is the biggest in many places, if not most. For good or for bad? - probably for bad.

The size of the bee
The size of the bee is dependent on a) the heritage and b) the size of the cell it’s born in. This later is connected also to how the larvae is fed by the nurse bees. Photo 1 illustrates how genetics for smaller bees and smaller cells give bigger bees in bigger artificial cells, but all genetics seem not to be affected alike by the cell size.

The size of the cell
The size of the cell is dependent on a) the size of the bee, and b) its heritage.

At the end of the 19th century Cowan, editor of the British Bee Journal, measured natural worker cell size to be between 4.72 (0.186 inch) and 5.36 mm (0.211 inch)(4). The effects on the area of the cell itself and on the number of cells in a brood box can be quite considerable for different cell sizes. We can also see that worker bee size and worker cell size has an effect on drone cell size and, thus, also on drone size. And, the size of the drone has an effect on its flying and competing abilities. Smaller is better! See Table 1.

Table 1.

The least confusing way of measuring cell size is to measure 10 cells in a row from midwall to midwall (including thus one cell wall for each cell) and divide by ten, measuring over the parallel sides (see Photo 2).

But, when measuring commercial wax foundation, one direction of measuring (often along the top portion) will give higher value due to a stretching factor when milling. Therefore, measuring all three ways that are possible is a preferred method (Photo 3). According to Lusby, to be able to regulate varroa mites, the size should never exceed 4.9 mm in any direction.

Though born in 5.5 mm, I have measured my bees to build naturally 4.95-5.5 mm as the smallest size. You also see that the bees build cells intended for brood smaller than cells intended for honey storage. It can vary quite a lot. Then, it’s important to recognize what type of cells you are measuring when you measure naturally built comb. When my bees in coming seasons will be born in smaller cells than 5.5mm. they will also build still smaller naturally if given the opportunity. This was already discovered by the greatest enlargement prophet himself, Usmar Baudoux, at the beginning of the 20th century.(5) Where this downsizing will end is, of course, set by the genetics, but also by environment. The Lusbys have pointed out that, as is the case in other animals, size and color will naturally vary due to height above sea level and distance from the equator.(6)

I couldn’t resist buying a handmill from Tom Industries in California (now Arizona) to be able to find out myself how small cell size would affect my bees. The season of 2000 I tested about 70 of my 100 colonies and gave them foundation for 4.8 mm cell size. (As I milled with a thin plastic wrapping of the wax sheets, I got no stretching that the mill was “prepared” for. Therefore, I got 4.8 mm cell size instead of 4.9 mm.) One of the colonies drew the foundation surprisingly well (Photo 4).

Five colonies drew out the foundation well enough, while 10 did it satisfactorily. Some were wintered on entirely 4.8 mm cell size 2000-2001 (Photo 5.) I was amazed how small the bees were in these colonies! The small cell size had a larger impact than I thought on bee size, especially the abdomen. But this did not hinder the colonies from wintering, even better than their larger close relatives. I live at the latitude of 59º in Sweden. But, the warm Gulf stream in the Atlantic gives us a fairly good climate here in Scandinavia. Well, in the season of 2001 I will discover if these small bees can produce any honey: Probably they will, as the small size of the Africanized bees in Brazil has not hindered them from collecting a lot more honey than the previous European type.

Ten of my colonies in 2000 couldn’t draw 4.8-foundation at all, which resulted in awful combs that I melted down (Photo 6). Most colonies can’t return immediately to small cell size due to the current bees being too large, which results from enlarged cell sizes and genetically selected large bees. You have to downsize your cell and honey bee size more slowly. You can read about how to do it on the website beesource.com.(7)

Non-European Mellifera
Honey bees from outside Europe have not been under selection for larger size and are normally not kept with enlarged wax foundation, even if they, no doubt, could be kept that way, too. It is noticable that where European mellifera are kept on enlarged cells is where we have the major problems with mites and secondary infections. Could this be a part of the explanation? (Table 2).

Table 2.

Natural selection concerning cell size and size of the bee
All flying objects, manmade or natural-made, have to deal with the aerodynamic laws dependent on gravity and air friction. Air friction is subject to body area. Gravity is subject to body weight.

When you increase an object proportionally, the area increases by the factor of four and the weight by the factor of eight. That’s why a bomber is slower than a fighter, and a bumblebee is “clumsier” and slower than a honey bee. That’s why big bees and big drones are slower and “clumsier” than small bees and small drones. Quicker and better flyers, of course, have a better chance to reach the virgin queens first. It’s not difficult to visualize small drones hitting first. So natural selection most probably goes for small. And the size of drones and workers are correlated. Could that be an explanation of why Africanized drones most often reach the virgins first in Africanized areas?

In nature no one is giving the colonies new comb. The colonies use their old brood comb year after year, with cocoons making them smaller each year, thus making the bees born in them smaller. This, causes those bees to have smaller cell size. Natural selection thus selects for small - small bees and small cell size, at least, smaller cells than we use on our enlarged wax foundation. This fact pushes us to investigate what kind of effects these smaller, more natural cell size and bee size will have on the performance of the honey bee colony.

You may ask if all those large-cell sized combs that have been in the hive for many years haven’t been reduced sufficiently already? Well, maybe, but as the distance between the combs is much bigger than what the bees would choose (35-38 mm instead of 32-33 mm), most of the cocoons probably end up at the bottom of the cells, so it will take some years to get the cells small enough that way. And, these old frames don’t give the bees a smaller brood nest that will be easier to keep the brood temperature at the higher 35ºC, instead of the lower 33ºC, which can occur in the outer frames of the broodnest. It is this lower temperature that gives the optimum environment for mite reproduction.(8)

A bee business with varroa, but without any type of chemical
Dee and Ed Lusby in southern Arizona have never used any type of chemical to fight any type of mite. This caused their bee business to crash more than once when the mites arrived, first tracheal mites and then varroa mites. From having 1000 colonies in 1986, they went down to about 400 colonies in 1989 and started up again, after having changed over to 5.0-5.1 mm cell size when the tracheal mite hit. When varroa hit in 1993, they were up over 900 again, but fell down to 104 colonies in the spring of 1998. They started to give their colonies 4.8-4.9 foundation in 1997. They say 4.9 mm cell size is crucial and is the main reason why they now are back in business and increasing their number of hives and honey crops (Photo 7), while many others using chemicals are going the other way.

My wife, daughter and I visited the Lusbys in April-May 2000. I “fled” from my 50th birthday to Arizona from Sweden. That was a good choice. Lovely people and an interesting country you have over there. I received my cowboy hat and belt, though I’m not really worthy of them. I looked in 225 hives in 13 apiaries and encountered a couple of colonies that resembled the descriptions of so-called killer bees. Lusbys bred for small bees and a short cappings period of the brood for many years before the Africanized (AHB) bees arrived in the area. Their drones probably compete well with the Africanized drones. Very important, too, seems to be the observation by them that mixed colored bees, which the Africanized honey bee is said to be, don’t have drones as early and as late as black bees. So, they let their virgins mate early and late in the season. And, they go for small black bees.

Another interesting observation of theirs concerning cell size and bee size is that swarms they collect that can’t adapt to 4.9 (thrive and draw 4.9 after two months, two generations of bees), even after being forced down through already drawn 4.9 comb, will all die due to the mites and secondary infections. (They seem to be too big genetically. Maybe this has been caused through man’s selection?) One of the characteristics of these larger bees genetically is that they are on the lighter colored side.

Where can you purchase small-cell sized foundation (4.9 mm)?
You can buy your 4.9-foundation from Dadant and Sons, Inc.(9), if you don’t want to mill your own with a mill from Tom Industries.

Footnotes

1. Osterlund, Erik, 1991, Exploring Monticola - Efforts to find an Acceptable Varroa Resistant Honey Bee. Am. Bee J. 131:49-56.

2. Osterlund, Erik, 2001, The Elgon Bee and Varroa mites, Am. Bee J., 141:174-177

3. Erslev, Hans, 1950, Forer i Biavl, Forers i biavls forlag, Rosklide, Denmark. A new edition of the original from 1887, which in its turn is a translation of an English original by Cowan, Thos. Wm.

4. Cowan, Thos. Wm, The Honey-bee; its Natural History, Anatomy, and Physiology, page 180. Referred to in Gleanings of Bee Culture, April 1898, p. 261.

5. Baudoux, U.,1933, The influence of cell size. The Bee World, vol XIV, no 4, April, page 40. Baudoux, U., 1961, Handboek van de imker door, Edm. Leysen, pp 13-19 (in Flemish language).

6. http://www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/therm_map.htm

7. http://beesource.com/eob/4dot9/index.htm

8. Velthuis, Hayo H W, Kraus, Bernhard, 2000. The Impact of Humidity and Temperature Gradients in the Brood Nest of Honeybees on the Reproduction of Varroa jacobsoni: Laboratory Observations, Second International Conference on Africanized Honey Bees and Bee Mites, 10-12 April 2000, Tucson.
Velthuis, Hayo H W, Kraus, Bernhard, 2000. The Impact of Humidity and Temperature Gradients in the Brood Nest of Honeybees on the Reproduction of Varroa jacobsoni: Field Experiments, Second International Conference on Africanized Honey Bees and Bee Mites, 10-12 April 2000, Tucson.

9. http://www.beesource.com/dadant/index.htm

ABJ - August, 2001

by Erik Osterlund
honeybee@elgon.se

In the December 2002 issue of ABJ there was an article by me named “Bees Biting Mites”. Maybe the title should have been “Stinking Bees Biting Mites”.

Bees that smell during late summer doesn’t sound nice, but that’s a reality with the Elgon bees described in the named article above. Those bees reacting so strongly on varroa mites close to the entrance of the beehive, on recently hatched bees put there, and when a mite was put on a guard bee.

Already 1999 Sven-Olof Ohlsson had registered a strong odour from his bees during late summer. It was the year varroa mite was confirmed in his area in western Finland. At that time he thought that the smell came from outside the hives, the result of some male cat marking its territory with urine. But now he has found out that the smell originates from inside the hives. This fact has made him speculate if this odour may have a role to play in connection with varroa mites.

Why do the bees smell? Why those bees, that actively wanted to get rid of mites, and not those that didn’t react much at all on the mites’ presence? That’s actually how it is.

Ohlsson has also got reports from the southern part of Finland, where they have bought queens from him, that those colonies with Elgon queens stink. Actually one beekeeper got so worried that he thought his bees might have developed American Foulbrood. But that was not the case. A female beekeeper bought an Elgon queen from him. In late summer she complained of a strong smell from the hive with that queen.

Still another example. A beekeeper with mostly Italian bees winter his bees in a cellar indoors with a constant temperature of +39°F (+4°C). He puts netting in front of the entrance. In some of the colonies he had in late summer he introduced Elgon queens. He phoned Ohlsson in the beginning of December telling him when he recently checked his colonies the place was really stinking. He tracked the smell from the Elgon colonies. In those colonies he found just inside the netting a pile of dead mites. He promised Ohlsson to collect them and send them to him to be checked under microscope.

Of course these stories are anecdotal. But they are still based on real observations. And enough many observations, though not made under what we call scientific circumstances, are valid as a base for making hypothesis as a base for further investigations to get verifications or falsifications.

I have asked around a little in Sweden and on Bornholm if those people having Elgon stock have noticed any odd smell. Most hadn’t, but yes one had in a couple of couple of colonies. Actually he thought too that one of them had AFB, which it didn’t. These people asked haven’t either used any kind of drugs for a number of years. Maybe they hadn’t been nosing around enough, or the mite population wasn’t high enough, or their bees simply didn’t develop this odour.

Why this odour with Ohlsson’s bees (and maybe others)? Ohlsson can’t stop speculating he says. Could it bee that when brood is diminished and finally stops, which it does where he lives in early autumn, more and finally all mites are residing on the bees instead of a lot of them in the brood. Could this fact start a process in the colony of some kind, diminishing the mite population. The bees groom and bite mites. They pour out this stinking odour, which may cause the mites to drop, like the Thyme extract (Thymol, an essential oil) does. This defense activity is known from other creatures and insects, for example from minks, polecats and skunks, and from berry lice.

In his notes Ohlsson says he sees that colonies of common bees, not Elgons, those that didn’t bite mites, but got new Elgon queens, later in summer, some time after the introduction of the new queen, developed a very strong smell. Were they then in a mood of “demiting”, getting rid of mites. Ohlsson says he would very much like to have this researched.

Have we missed something when breeding our bees these late 50-100 years, Ohlsson asks? Have defense qualities in our bees disappeared, such as hygienic, grooming and smelling pheromones? He also thinks that most probably the size plays a role (smaller bees from smaller cells in earlier times, both directly and as a parameter in the selection process). These are things Ohlsson will concentrate on in coming years in breeding his honeybees.

Blood tests from wild animals have shown that a number of wild animals in their natural environment have survived serious virus and bacterial infections which are deadly for domestic animals and animals kept in zoos. So what have gone wrong with our breeding Ohlsson asks?

He thinks that the smell he and others have recognized is positive for decreasing the number of mites in a colony. Not all colonies of Elgon bees smell. You could of course ask why. Do they not have enough high population of mites? Have they already actively got rid of mites in some way or the other? Maybe by the help of odours, pheromones? Ohlsson thinks this may well be the case.

Maybe even putting your nose into the hive may be a good tool selecting breeders says Ohlsson, plus putting mites on guard bees and just hatched young bees with a mite on the landing board. There at the entrance, bees should start their defense, and hopefully they do.

Ohlsson is waiting eagerly for the next season to arrive. He will continue his selection and breeding work. He is confident he will not have to use any drugs, organic acids, essential oils or anything else other than the bees own ability to keep the mite level low enough to survive and thrive. Anyone wanting to contact him may do so through this mail address: kennet.broman@nic.fi

by ERIK OSTERLUND
Sweden
honeybee@elgon.se

It has been documented that some worker bees capture varroa mites on their bodies or on the bodies of other bees with their mandibles, shake them and bite them, causing damage to the parasite (Thakur et al., 1997 Rosenkranz et al., 1997; Fries et al., 1994). In Brazil the traits mentioned for explaining the tolerance of their bee to the varroa mite are low fertility of female mites, efficient grooming behavior, shorter post-capping period and efficient hygienic behavior (Goncalves, 2001). Sven Olof Ohlsson in Finland has documented through video filming how some of his colonies easily detected and reacted on mites close to them and tried to remove them. They also denied young bees with mites on them entrance to the hive. He has noted that the type of bees that reacted in this way have no problems with the mite, in spite of the fact that he has used no miticide whatsoever in these colonies. Varroa mites were detected as present in his bee colonies in 1999. Another stock of his bees has significant problems with high mite loads, which he has treated with Apistan.

Sven Olof Ohlsson lives in Osterbotten, an area in which there are a few beekeepers. His beekeeper friend and Ohlsson don’t like treating with drugs in bee colonies. So, his friend used formic acid (FA) in his colonies in autumn 2000. (Well, that’s actually a drug, too, in the concentration used.) Ohlsson didn’t use anything. Out of 130 colonies his friend had 70 colonies left in spring 2001. Ohlsson had almost all of his 100 colonies surviving. His friend probably used a little too much of the acid?

Breeding and small cell size

As a means of fighting the mite Ohlsson and his friend have concentrated on using selection and breeding their bees as a tool for dealing with the mite. They also bring their bees down in cell size as a way of helping the bees to fight the mite. Going directly from their large cell sizes, which are normally today, about 5.5 mm, to the desired 4.9 mm, mostly is not an easy task. Therefore, they have bought 5.1 mm wax from Sweden (the old size, of 5 cells to the inch). Ninety percent of all bees can handle this foundation without problems drawing them completely and correctly. When their bees are all entirely on 5.1, they will be given 4.9-foundation. They began their 5.1-insertion in 2001 and will have completed it next year for all combs in the brood boxes.

What should they do in 2001, more than inserting 5.1mm wax? Ohlsson’s friend didn’t treat with any drug. Ohlsson used Apistan reluctantly in the fall of 2001, but only in 15 of his 120 colonies - in those that had very high mite levels. Those 15 were all of another stock (here called stock B) than his main stock (Elgon) (Osterlund, 2001).

Defense against mites and clean bottom boards

Ohlsson put quite a lot of time into studying his bees closely and thinking of a lot of possibilities and solutions for his bees. We once discussed over the phone the possibility that there could be differences between bee colonies, concerning their hostility to drifting bees with mites going into other hives than their own - a defense against reinfestation with mites. During studies of his bees, he observed that his Elgon bees cleaned their bottom boards thoroughly. Some colonies seemed to be constantly occupied with carrying out debris.

Testing colonies with mites on newly hatched bees

In late August 2001 he found some colonies of stock B with huge amounts of mites, especially in the hatching brood. In one of these colonies every hatching young bee had 1-3 mites. To be noted is that at this time of the year the amount of brood has diminished a lot, so that now the increased population of varroa mites has fewer brood cells to use for their reproduction. That’s, of course, one of the reasons why you may find brood full of mites this time of the year. Ohlsson then got the idea to test his bottom board-cleaning colonies.

He brought with him a brood frame with hatching brood from this mite-crowded colony and put a just hatched young bee with mite on the landing board of one of these Elgon colonies. The result was a rapid and strong reaction from the guard bees. Normally, a newly emerged bee is welcome in every colony. However, the mite-carrying young bee was not welcomed by the Eglon colony. The guard bees spotted the mite on the young bee and tried to catch it. The mite ran around on its host and the guard bees failed to catch it. After some minutes, the guard bees realized they wouldn’t get the mite and instead flew away with the young bee from the hive.

Young bee with mite.

The young bee is brought away.

Ohlsson got excited and went into the house for the video camera. He performed the test again and filmed it. (See pictures above from colony 1.) Colony 1 of the Elgon stock had a purely mated queen through insemination. He then tried this on a couple of colonies of stock B. Just a small reaction here and the young bees were welcome to enter the hive (Pictures below from colony 3 and 4).

Bee with mite on its way into the hive.

Bee with mite on its way into the hive.

Mites put on guard bees

Ohlsson then had a new idea. He picked up a mite with a pincett and put it on a guard bee on the landing board. When doing this on a bee in colony 1, the bee immediately started a wild dance trying to get rid of the mite, but the mite remained attached between the thorax and the abdomen. Through the dance other bees got interested in what she was doing and apparently soon understood and tried to help the bee to get rid of the mite. The bee with mite sometimes stopped still and bent over with her wing stretched out, thus making the gap between thorax and abdomen easy to see, as well as the mite. Other bees then got up on the bee and tried to dislodge the mite, but failed. And the wild dance continued and then stopped again for the same procedure. So, it went on for 19 minutes, all filmed. Then, Ohlsson got tired, tried to intervene to help the bee, but got stung in the finger and the bee flew away. (see pictures)

He then put a mite on a bee in colony 2. This had a purely mated Elgon queen, naturally mated in an isolated location (which is not difficult to find in the surroundings where Ohlsson lives). This bee succeeded in getting rid of the mite quite quickly. It took the mite in its mouth for a while and spit it out. The mite still moved, so Ohlsson directed it with the pincett closer to guard bees on the landing board. A second bee soon recognized the mite and took it, too, in its mouth for a while before spitting it out. A third bee also did this, but then Ohlsson lost tract of the mite. (see pictures)

When he put mites on bees of stock B, nothing special happened. In the case of one of these colonies, where nothing happened when he put a mite on a guard bee, it was an Elgon colony (see picture below from colony 5). The queen in this colony was an Elgon queen inseminated with drone semen from stock B.

Guard bee received a mite - no reaction.

Survival test on 5.1 cell size

To understand the full picture of the Elgon stock and stock B, it should be mentioned that a couple of colonies, which could be called Elgon, had quite a few mites. One of these Ohlsson managed to restock with 5.1mm foundation wax at the end of the season. He moved this colony to an apiary of its own, so it wouldn’t spread mites to other colonies. Ohlsson is curious to see if this colony will survive with that load of mites with the smaller cell size, even if it wasn’t down to desired 4.9-size. It could be of importance that this type of Elgon did not have a queen of an Apis mellifera monticola or A.m. sahariensis queen line, (as normally is the case with the Elgon stock), but a common stock queen had initially been crossed with Elgon drones and subsequent generations had been crossed with Elgon drones, for several generations.

Did he use any Apistan during fall 2002? Unfortunately, yes, he told me. In 15 colonies this year, too, out of 130. But, he says he will shift the remaining of stock B to his stock of Elgon next season.

More difficult to hide?

Are smaller bees better able to handle mites? Ohlsson speculates that varroa mites have more difficulties in hiding on smaller bees. He will check that when he gets his bees on entirely 5.1mm foundation next year with tests as described here. And later, when he gets them on 4.9, he will test that size. Anyway, he said, restocking his hives with small cell size wouldn’t hurt the bees. Did he get any honey this season of 2002? Oh, yes he said, about 150 lb per hive. That’s pretty good in his area.

Selection tool?

These tests are, of course, too few to say anything significant about the Elgon stock or the stock B concerning their hostility against the mite, as it is described here. Also, it’s not possible to establish beyond doubt that this hostility is the cause for the seemingly higher tolerance to the mite than stock B. And, of course, not all Elgons are alike. But, with selection they may well all show mite resistance.

Ohlsson, however, believes that there is a connection between the impact of the mites on his Elgon bees and their behavior against the mite. He also asks if performing tests like he has done is a good way of selecting breeder queens for tolerance against varroa mites? As it is not difficult for others to make the same kind of test, I’m sure others will follow his lead to see how their bees behave towards mites in tests described here.

References

GONCALVES, L.S. (2001). Africanized Honey Bee: Introduction, Adaptation and Benefits. Apimondia 2001 (FFCLRP-University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto-SP-Brazil.)

FRIES, I.; CAMAZINE S. ; SNEYD J. (1994). Population dynamics of Varroa jacobsoni: a model and a review. Bee World 75: 5-28.

ROSENKRANZ, P.; FRIES, I.; BOECKING, 0.; STURMER, M. (1997). Damaged Varroa mites in the debris of honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies with and without hatching brood. Apidologie 28: 427-437.

THAKUR, R. K.; BIENENFELD, K.; KELLER, R. (1997). Varroa defense behavior in Apis mellifera carnica. Am. Bee J. 137: 143-148.

OSTERLUND, E. (2001). The Elgon Bee and Varroa Mites. Am. Bee J. 141: 174-177.

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Stinking Bees Biting Mites - additional observations by Sven-Olof Ohlsson, Finland.

See a short video clip of the mite biting bees. (1.8 MB QuickTime)