[Pollinator] Feral Honeybee Health?

[bht1113 at aol.com]

Maraiah,
   Dr. Seeley is certainly one expert. You beat me to providing his link. Thank you.Dr. Wyatt Mangrum and Randy Oliver likewise have experience along these lines.
   To me, the problem with attributing survival of feral colonies is that almost all of the reports are anecdotal. Is the colony that exists in one tree the same colony that was there two years ago or a new swarm attracted to the same cavity I'm looking now for those studies that have tagged the queen, looking for continuity (even if supersedure can thwart such endeavors).
At any rate the numbers of feral colonies, whatever the situation re parasites turns out to be, is much diminished in my experience
Barry

   CCD really does apply in the case of feral colonies.

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On Wednesday, September 7, 2016, Maraiah Russell <maraiah.russell at kidszoo.org> wrote:

I think Tom Seeley is one of the experts on this, a list of his many publications is here:

http://www.nbb.cornell.edu/seeleypub.shtml
 
The wild populations seem to handle the Varroa better, and possibly are adapting. Their natural comb size, frequent swarming, and smaller colony size have all been proposed as reasons why Varroa isn't decimating their populations like managed colonies. I have no idea about the Colony Collapse Disorder.
 
Maraiah Russell
Fort Wayne Children's Zoo
From: Pollinator [pollinator-bounces+maraiah.russell=kidszoo.org at lists.sonic.net] on behalf of Peter Bernhardt [bernhap2 at slu.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2016 8:49 PM
To: Bee United; Pollinator List-serv; Peter Wyse Jackson
Subject: [Pollinator] Feral Honeybee Health?

This afternoon Dr Peter Wyse Jackson, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, asked a most important question I could not answer.  What is known about the health of feral, naturalize Apis mellifera vs. industrial hives or even home hives?  Do these feral colonies suffer from the same level of Colony Collapse Disorder and Varroa?  If you have pertinent literature on this topic please forward it to Dr Wyse Jackson.

Sincerely,
Peter Bernhardt, Prof. of Biology
Saint Louis University
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