[Pollinator] Feral Honeybee Health

Wed Sep 7 14:49:12 PDT 2016

Some personal thoughts from a small scale beekeeper (currently 31 colonies). If you are inclined to read 
more I selected links to some articles, studies that you may find interesting and hopefully . The traits described in the papers and articles referenced are likely a key part of feral survival:

A comment on traits and our bees. Honeybee queens mate openly in the air, some miles from their home colony at drone congregation areas. These are areas drones from colonies in a wide radius go every day(weather permitting of course). The queen will mate with 15,20,25 drones. Thus she has diverse source of semen to fertilize the work eggs and is less likely to mate with one of her brothers from her colony. As a result, a portion of the workers will have various combinations of characteristics 
strengthening the colony by not being 100% susceptible to disease etc. So it is not likely, in open mating for an entire population of colony to carry a certain trait and the level of the trait being expressed may vary. However, it does not take the whole population to carry a trait to convey benefit. Breeding/selecting programs involve instrumental insemination where characteristics can be established. Managed colonies without these traits strengthened by breeding and selection can 'dilute' as it were the genes carried to the mating area, and conversely as more commercially available queens have these traits built up, our swarms and drones can raise the level in the area. Even small beekeepers can select for hygienic behavior when they choose a queen from which to graft new queens.

It is said approximately 90% of the feral honeybees died as a result of the spread of the Varroa mites. Interestingly 
there was found a hygienic trait that apparently exist to a higher degree in about 10% of honey bees, regardless of 'race'. ('race; in European honeybees are same species, different variant such as Italian, Carniolan, Caucasian plus hybrids and stocks that have been developed such as Buckfast, New world Carniolan, Minnesota Hygienic.) 
Personally I have always thought these hygienic characteristics, along with the already mentions factors (swarming, comb size, small colony) contribute to the survival of those 10% feral population. I don't know of any observations that would classify any feral losses to what comprises CCD. CCD characteristics, which are numerous, seem to be more prevalent on colonies in the commercial industry than stationary ones. Frequent movement, greater pesticide exposure when in farms pollinating, poor forage when on monoculture crops.
	The hygienic trait is closely related to another behavior: VSH(Varroa sensitive hygiene- formerly called SMR suppression of mite reproduction). They are closely related: http://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/pdf/2006/01/M6002.pdf 
The hygienic behavior was bred into commercially available queens by Marla Spivak (among the top bee 
people http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/minn.html ). 
They are known as Minnesota Hygienic: https://www.beelab.umn.edu/sites/beelab.umn.edu/files/new-direction.pdf 
	The Baton Rouge USDA bee lab did a lot of work on the SMR/VSH trait. https://www.ars.usda.gov/southeast-area/baton-rouge-la/honey-bee-breeding-genetics-and-physiology-research/docs/projects/page-16/ The hygienic and VSH traits have to do with detecting problem in capped/pupating bee and removing the pupae and associated mites including the newly formed ones who now cannot mate. The hygienic trait also has for a while been associated with better control of American Foulbrood, chalkbrood and other brood diseases. The VSH trait apparently give the bees the means to sniff out specific cells that have Varroa. http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/vsh.html#what 
	Grooming behavior where bees groom each other causes some mites to be dislodged from the adult bees. The mite fall, and many of us use screened bottom board so there is some reduction of adult mites in this way. I imagine feral colonies, usually occupying hollow trees, if they have a high grooming tendency and a fair amount of empty space under the lower combs may have a number of mites fall to the bottom of the hollow and not get back to the brood nest.
	Another related grooming behavior recently getting more attention is what is  dubbed 'ankle biters'. Bees with this characteristic are very aggressive to a Varroa mite and will bite the mites' leg causing the mite, now punctured to desiccate and die. Lot of work at Purdue: https://extension.entm.purdue.edu/beehive/pdf/2016_BC_Article.pdf  and apparently additive so if beekeepers start to re-queen with bees carrying this perhaps it will increase in the feral population as our bees swarm and feral queens mate with our drones. More: http://www.mountainstatequeens.com/ 

 Some research specific to feral bee survival:
http://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/pdf/2007/01/m6063.pdf 
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0150362.PDF 
Other articles:
http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/hygenequeen.html 
http://pinkpages.chrisbacherconsulting.com/2000_Nov_-_Hygenic_Behavior.html 

Hope that is of interest,

Jeff Pfoutz
Beekeeper(15 seasons), Leesburg, VA

-----Original Message-----
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Today's Topics:

   1. Feral Honeybee Health? (Peter Bernhardt)
   2. Re: Feral Honeybee Health? (Maraiah Russell)
   3. Re: Feral Honeybee Health? (Stephanie Parreira)
   4. Re: Feral Honeybee Health? (johnrpurdy at gmail.com)

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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2016 19:49:43 -0500
From: Peter Bernhardt <bernhap2 at slu.edu>
To: Bee United <beemonitoring at yahoogroups.com>,	Pollinator List-serv
	<pollinator at lists.sonic.net>,	Peter Wyse Jackson
	<Peter.Wysejackson at mobot.org>
Subject: [Pollinator] Feral Honeybee Health?
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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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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2016 12:51:36 +0000
From: Maraiah Russell <maraiah.russell at kidszoo.org>
To: Peter Bernhardt <bernhap2 at slu.edu>, Bee United
	<beemonitoring at yahoogroups.com>, Pollinator List-serv
	<pollinator at lists.sonic.net>, Peter Wyse Jackson
	<Peter.Wysejackson at mobot.org>
Subject: Re: [Pollinator] Feral Honeybee Health?
Message-ID:
	<9881A656E1A5C749A633F547C9C48A91704493A6 at FWZ-EX2K10.fortwaynezoo.org>
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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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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2016 21:16:19 -0700
From: Stephanie Parreira <parreirastephanie at gmail.com>
To: Peter Bernhardt <bernhap2 at slu.edu>
Cc: Bee United <beemonitoring at yahoogroups.com>,	Peter Wyse Jackson
	<Peter.Wysejackson at mobot.org>,	Pollinator List-serv
	<pollinator at lists.sonic.net>
Subject: Re: [Pollinator] Feral Honeybee Health?
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	<CAMiYSDr9fxdZpuDmDho35MeVtiLcUUV=odGVvfcvFDCpMrkNBg at mail.gmail.com>
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Hi Peter,

I think very little is known about feral bee health. During some public education events about bees, I have encountered a few landowners who have told me that they have large feral colonies near their property (several in old barns) that have been there a long time and seem to be prospering, despite the common assumption that because feral colonies are not treated for *Varroa *mites, they would be more likely to fail. In this case, the reason for that might be that those colonies are not near any large apiaries or managed colonies that may be able to transfer mites or diseases to the feral hive. But all in all, no one has surveyed how many feral colonies are present in the United States or compared their rates of failure to the failure of managed colonies. (If anyone knows of existing literature that does examine these things, please point me in that
direction.)

Stephanie Parreira

On Tue, Sep 6, 2016 at 5:49 PM, Peter Bernhardt <bernhap2 at slu.edu> wrote:

> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Pollinator mailing list
> Pollinator at lists.sonic.net
> https://lists.sonic.net/mailman/listinfo/pollinator
>
>
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Message: 4
Date: Wed, 07 Sep 2016 13:17:47 -0400
From: johnrpurdy at gmail.com
To: Maraiah Russell <maraiah.russell at kidszoo.org>,	Peter Bernhardt
	<bernhap2 at slu.edu>,	Bee United <beemonitoring at yahoogroups.com>,
	Pollinator List-serv <pollinator at lists.sonic.net>,	Peter Wyse Jackson
	<Peter.Wysejackson at mobot.org>
Subject: Re: [Pollinator] Feral Honeybee Health?
Message-ID: <20160907171747.4862091.94488.21700 at gmail.com>
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