Jeff Pettis Bees that Survive Varroa

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Жыл бұрын

A lecture given by Jeff Pettis at the 2022 National Honey Show entitled “Bee that survive Varroa”. The National Honey Show gratefully acknowledge the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers for their support and Bucks County BKA for their sponsorship.
Varroa mites are a major threat to bees and beekeeping but not all bees are damaged by these mites. Why is this? Some bees evolved with the mite such as the Asian honey bee Apis cerana and they have unique defence mechanisms not found in European honey bees Apis mellifera. I will report on one of these populations, from Brittany France, and discuss possible resistance mechanisms that honey bees use to fight varroa.
I grew up in a farm community in rural Georgia in the US and fell in love with bees and beekeeping as a student at the University of Georgia. After completing my studies at Georgia in 1985 and Texas A&M in 1991, I joined the USDA-Agricultural Research Service as a scientist and worked in that role for over 20 years. I published on bee biology, varroa control, the effects of pesticides on bees and CCD. I left USDA in 2016 and now run a consulting business on bee health and manage around 100 colonies of bees with my son Kevin in Salisbury, MD USA where I live. In my spare time I serve as President of Apimondia and enjoy birding and kayaking.

Пікірлер: 20

@BeekeepinginNorthernOntario Жыл бұрын

Thank you.

@rickwarner516 Жыл бұрын

Thank you

@houstonsheltonbees814 Жыл бұрын

Thanks 👍 good health and God bless

@derekmasselink2993 Жыл бұрын

Great presentation. Looking forward to more presentations like this. When is Dr. Stephen Martin’s work going to be shared at the NHS?

@Rob_Brock Жыл бұрын

Great presentation! I was interested in the comment that southern continents aren’t treating. Instead of a possible connection to the environment differences with northern continents could this be more of a first verses third world issue? We in the US have “productionize” bees to the extent that they can’t survive is the topic to consider? We see this with other livestock and agriculture in our corporate farming. We want bees to live but only if they produce and that level of production is expected to go up every year. Would our bees survive better if we expected less profit?

@MinnesotaBeekeeper Жыл бұрын

Fascinating talk. Any idea how the hell can we test the Apivar strips to make sure the strips themselves are good? Huge manufacturing quality control issues.

@noahriding5780 Жыл бұрын

Apis Serana is about 80% of Apis Mellifera size. And it so happens Serana only has varroa in drones. SO... it must be that varroa probably don't like the normal worker bee cell size of non-drones. Considering the female varroa are larger,... its possible they can't navigate the smaller worker cell size in worker serana. And this supports some of the ideas that people thought that artificially larger comb size induced by humans were more disease and parasite vulnerable in apis mellifera.

@sweetharmonyapiaries Жыл бұрын

The accepted logic is that varroa prefer drone cells due to the longer pupation period.

@gammosiuwong2912 Жыл бұрын

What size strip do you use for fluvalinate? I thought fluvalinate was slow acting - do you see dead mites within 6 hours?

@nickford5549 Жыл бұрын

Pretty well established at this point sugar roll is pretty inaccurate

@thomashanna1253 Жыл бұрын

Dawn dish soap is best!

@farmer998 Жыл бұрын

they all are inaccurate dependent on collected bees, bee hatch , drone hatch, to many variables

@farmer998 Жыл бұрын

out breed the mites in the spring do what the bees want create more hives for every large hive you have for honey make four other nuc's to provide bees and brood for your honey hive when they need a work force when honey harvest is over make more hives. pull drone brood every two weeks on all hives allowing it to mature in one sacrificial hive that you treat you will be containing the varroa in to central location and dribble weekly .make queens and hives combine to build honey hives brake down to control varroa by removing drone frames.