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Why hasn’t SHB spread further in Italy?

SHB sightingsSmall Hive Beetle (SHB), which appeared in Italy in 2014 and in the same area again this year, poses a serious threat to beekeeping, but it seems not to have spread very far in Italy yet. Action by the Italian authorities and a fortunate quirk of the local topgraphy seem to be helping to contain it.

In September we reported on the reappearance of SHB in southern Italy. It was a great disappointment, but there has been relief that it doesn’t yet appear to have spread from the area in which it was originally discovered.

At the Hampshire Beekeepers Autumn Convention last weekend, Nigel Semmence, of the UK Plant and Animal Health Agency, has responsibilities to try to keep out non-native species and revealed why the spread hasn’t happened as well as a very curious characteristic of SHB.

Small Hive Beetle

Photo courtesy of the UK Food and Environment Research Agency

Fortunately, SHB’s first appearance was in a valley surrounded by mountains and the sea in Calabria, Southern Italy. No-one yet knows how or when it arrived, but the mountains may well have provided a barrier to its spread. In addition, the Italian authorities imposed a surveillance zone (even larger than required by regulations). The appearance of SHB on Sicily seems to have been a result of colony movement by a Calabrian beekeeper before the beetle was discovered.

Nigel also revealed some quirky habits of SHB. When attacked by bees, they close their legs and therefore find it difficult to move. At which point, the bees often encase them in propolis. But SHB can generate signals that persuade the bees to feed them! So the bees often leave a little hole in the propolis tomb through which they can feed their enemy! Ah, the wonders of nature!

There is an excellent SHB leaflet from the Animal and Plant Health Agency (not yet online, I think).

Beetle Blaster

Beetle Blaster in place at the edge of the colony where SHBs try to avoid the bees.

And of course many Vita distributors the Beetle Blaster which can act to control SHB as well as being a sentinel to alert beekeepers to the arrival of SHB.

If SHB does arrive in Britain, plans are afoot (including the use of nematodes) to try to prevent its spread. There are sentinel apiaries throughout the country at possible entry points.

 

 

 

Herb farm apiary

Angelica. Credit: Teunspaans

Angelica. Credit: Teunspaans

A friend and I were lucky to be invited to put some hives on a local herb farm next season. Tucked away between the country roads, the farm is about 400 hectares growing a fascinating selection of herbs for their drying and oil production. Because extensive herb growing is so rare in this country, we’re not quite sure what to expect. But we do know that the area is rich in bumblebees so that should prove an interesting distraction.

My usual bible of plants and honeybees, the wonderful Plants for Bees, isn’t much help for once! The herbs are so rarely grown in quantity in Britain that not much is known about their usefulness to honeybees here.

The most interesting may be Angelica. One Chinese vendor says that the honey from angelica is:

rare and valuable …. Its colour varies from rich brown to brownish with a red tint, sometimes … with light greenish tint … It has a fairly sharp specific aroma, some bitterness and leaves a well pronounced bonbon aftertaste.

Angelica usually flowers in June/July, but the grower suggests that the crop on the herb farm flowers early.

The mint should prove interesting. It is a very rare old English variety (Black Mitcham) destined for chocolate! Like most mint, it flowers late in the year and, according to Plants for Bees, mint flowers can yield honey where it grows in quantity (rare in this country). August should prove interesting, then, as the nectar flow is usually long gone here by then and the bees should be able to focus on the mint. The honey is reported to be amber in colour with a minty taste which disappears with time (rather than thyme).

There is some coriander. Unlike its cooking components, the nectar seems to yield a delicate honey that is light amber and crystallises quite quickly. I think its flowering time is likely be quite late in the bee season.

Lovage is also grown and seems to be popular with bees, but I cannot find any reports of the honey produced.

There is also lots of chamomile, but it is of no interest to bees and, I’m told, doesn’t even produce seeds. The parsley will flower in its second year, but may be harvested before it gets to that stage.

I will let you know what happens and try to arrange some pollen analysis to see if the bees are working the herbs or finding more interesting wild plant and tree honey – not to mention whatever other crops farmers may be growing in the vicinity. It may of course be a race between the herb harvesting and flowering.

Turlough
Vita’s Guest Beekeeper Blogger

Mystery of the ‘superbees’ solved

Honeybee with Deformed Wing Virus symptoms. Photo: Sandra Blackmore

Honeybee with Deformed Wing Virus symptoms (and Varroa!). Photo: Sandra Blackmore

The mystery of the apparently Varroa-resistant honeybees in a UK apiary has been solved, and the answer has been a real surprise.

Over the past few years there have been dramatic headlines about what seem to have been Varroa-resistant honeybees in the apiary of a beekeeper in Swindon, England (not far from Vita’s HQ).  Ron Hoskins’ bees have been dubbed “super bees” and it was thought that their hygienic behaviour was the reason for their success.

However, new research presented by Catherine Thompson of Salford University at the UK National Honey Show last Friday and now published in The ISME Journal has revealed the reasons for Hoskins’ bees’ success. A non-lethal form of Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) is prevalent amongst his bees and is acting to exclude the more lethal form.

DWV is now well-known as a killer of honeybees and its virulence seems at least in part to have been caused by Varroa which, because it injects the virus straight into the bees’ bloodstream, has spread the virus with disastrous effects. Honeybees have long had DMV, but pre-Varroa spread by sex and other methods had not enabled it to spread so quickly and thoroughly throughout a colony.

For reasons that are not yet understood, Hoskins’ bees have been subject to a relatively benign version of DWV — Type B. In contrast DWV Type A is lethal. Type B has become dominant in Hoskins’ apiary and kept Type A out — or at least at very low levels. It is even thought that Varroa spreading Type B have in effect inoculated the bees against Type A!

Unfortunately, simply moving Hoskins’ bees to another apiary where DWV Type A is dominant is likely to be futile. The colony is likely to be swamped by the lethal Type A and face the disease threat common to most colonies.

Nonetheless, it is hoped that this exciting new finding may eventually help in some way to produce a break-through in helping honeybees.

At the UK National Honey Show

Judges putting their tasting skills to the test at the UK's national Honey Show.

Judges putting their tasting skills to the test at the UK’s national Honey Show.

On a fleeting visit to the UK’s National Honey Show today to hear a lecture on honeybee mating by Juliana Rangel of Texas A&M University, Vita’s Guest Beekeeper Blogger learned some fascinating new things:

Firstly, he discovered he might be called a Drone Congregation Area Whisperer! There’s a certain buzz to that title.

Secondly, 50% of honeybee queens take just one mating flight; 45% take two flights and the remainder take three or more. A very few take lots and lots! I suspect there will be a name for them soon.

Thirdly, after the lecture talking to a beekeeper from the island of Jersey, there’s a Drone Congregation Area (DCA) above his friend’s house and it seems to offer great potential to find DCAs in a very well-defined territory.

Vita’s Blogger will be back tomorrow to learn lots more.

 

 

Hilltopping

Hill-topping

Hilltopping in search of drones

In the December 2015 issue of Bee Craft, Turlough’s article In Search of Drone Congregation Areas was published (pp 7-9). Here is an update on that article following email conversations with a world expert on insect mating.

Since it’s autumn here and drones have long since been kicked out of queen-right hives, it’s back to the books to find out what else is known about Drone Congregation Areas (DCAs), those special places where drones assemble in hope of mating with a honeybee queen.

I’ve come across the topic of hilltopping amongst other insects and which has resonance with my efforts to locate honeybee DCAs.

Hilltopping, as the name suggests, is a phenomenon observed amongst some male insects to gather on hill tops awaiting a female. John Alcock, of Arizona University and a world expert on insect mating,  has observed it with the little known crabronid wasp Tachysphex menkei and other insects. However, he believes that hill-topping by the crabronid wasp is a mating behaviour of last resort: “no female … has been observed visiting waiting males”! The successful males may get their action more quickly and elsewhere. Hill-topping might be most common amongst insects where they are thinly spread.

Professor Alcock has very kindly responded to some email queries from me and thinks that next year’s plan to study DCAs in an area where there are more honeybee colonies could be revealing.

Could hill-topping apply to honeybees and, if so, in what circumstances? I’m looking forward to next season to see if we can begin to answer that.

Here’s a reminder of what action in a DCA can look like.

 

And the story so far in case you’ve missed it:

1 July 2015 In search of a mate

2 July 2015 Drone Congregation Areas

7 July 2015 Another Drone Congregation Area

20 July 2015 Video of Life in a Drone Congregation Area

28 July 2015 Do drones assemble above prehistoric sites?

3 August 2015 Drone Goal?

10 August 2015 Rediscovering the first recorded Drone Congregation Area

8 September 2015 In search of a Drone Congregation Area SatNav

Turlough
Vita’s Guest Beekeeper Blogger

 

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