Honey bees, Varroa mites and unintended consequences

I had not considered that selective breeding for less propolis producing bees may be a reason why traditionally managed colonies produce less propolis. It is an interesting thought experiment to ponder.

However, one thing that the article didn’t mention is that most managed hives, with removable frames, are made with wood that has been planed/sanded smooth on both sides. This makes everything uniform and easy to paint the outside of the boxes, but also limits where bees can/need to place propolis.

I have seen (can’t find sources at the moment) some beekeepers recommending roughing up the inside walls of the boxes - either with low grit sandpaper or a wire brush - so as to create a more ‘natural’ hive and thus induce the bees to coat the inside of the hive with propolis like they would do in a tree hollow.

Interesting. Some nitpicks and comment.

> Bees use the hexagonal cells of their waxy combs for two jobs: storing honey and raising youngsters.

And storing pollen, and curing nectar.

> They began by analysing honeycombs that had been prepared by queens as nurseries.

Comb is prepared by workers, not the queen.

> This is that beekeepers themselves have also, albeit unwittingly, helped the mites to multiply.

This isn't a new problem. Diseases such as American Foulbrood are spread by bad beekeeping and could be eradicated if beekeepers did better.

> Some larvae are thus killed outright. Survivors are weakened, making them vulnerable to infections. And that vulnerability is enhanced by open wounds left by the parasites’ feeding, which are exploited by pathogens carried by the mites. These are known to include deformed-wing virus and acute-bee-paralysis virus.

It's very depressing to see bees with curled up wings stumbling across the ground in the morning. Bees trying to shake off visible varroa and patchy brood cells with half open cells and starved, dead bees hanging out. It's basically always varroa treatment time, with brief spells where you collect honey. Varroa are awful.

There is a lot of research on this. Varroa treatments have eliminated the selection pressure but there are wild bees that have adapted. More propolis is one adaptation but there are also other genetic traits that help control it (e.g., brood recapping behavior) and other beekeeping practices that help the varroa (e.g., keeping hives next to each other). Trying to focus on a single thing as the miracle cure for varroa doesn't work. Most of this has been known for a while now:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T7CB8E7jKBc

> Though honey bees are not, contrary to popular mythology, declining in numbers around the world, Varroa mites do thus cause serious trouble for apiarists, particularly in the West.

Is this true? First time I'm reading this (as opposed to the opposite, that honeybee populations are collapsing).

We don't have Varroa destructor in Australia... yet. We know we'll get it, probably within the next decade, and it will be awful. SHB was a huge wake up call here, about fifteen years ago.

What we really need are terminator genes / CRISPR to become more culturally acceptable - we could sort this out within a few years.

~ 10 years old, and only slightly related, but interesting documentary:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_than_Honey