Untitled
I grew up on a farm on which the apiary and all connected with it was a major part of the farm's output. Honey, beeswax, nukes (a queen and 10K or so worker bees as a starter colony, sold to other apiaries in the spring if they'd had too many winter losses), fertilizing services (drop a couple colonies off at a berry farm after dark, pick the colonies up two weeks later, profit!) and other products. It's been over ten years since I spent any serious time with bees, but the bees themselves did a great job on the varroa mites. Sentinel bees at the hive entrance would pick the mites off the incoming bees. The problem was if the colony had a solid floor the mites would just climb back onto the next bee that passed nearby. If the solid colony floor was replaced with a mesh, the mites would fall through to the ground below while the bees could still go about their business. We would still sometimes treat for varroa, but making it easier for the bees to handle varroa how they had evolved to was the first line of defence. This was Canada, regular Italian bees, hard winter kills of whatever wasn't properly winterized.
评论
5 条预览评论 · 正在加载完整讨论请先登录 h4cker 账号，然后连接 Hacker News 后发表评论。
Instead of letting the Varroa destructor (its scientific name, representative of its devistation) fall to the ground, place an oiltrap below the mesh/screening. And then those V. destructor can fucking drown. "See you in hell, tell'em who sent you you little inbred pancake bastards..." [•] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_destructor> [•] –Former Beekeeper (Bush-method, with Illinois mediums and screened oiltraps)
a mesh bottom board, is one part of an integrated plan. varroa mites are obligate to brood, so interruption of brood cycle should be integrated into your cultural plan. here we are on the edge of swarming season, which is perfect time for artificial splits of hives. you intercept swarming by moving roughly half the bees and the queen into a "package", and removing brood from the original hive except for one frame of brood. rehive the artificial swarm after 2 or three days. this creates a break in brood cycle, allows adult bees to clean and shake free of mites, interrupts the mite brood cycle, and mitigates swarm loss. some will cage the queen to break brood cycle however this is stressful, and must be accompanied by more hive space, or reduction of bee population.
This is one for https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights! (I mention this so more people can know the list exists. All are welcome to let us know at hn@ycombinator.com when you see comments we should add!)
> We would still sometimes treat for varroa, but making it easier for the bees to handle varroa how they had evolved to was the first line of defence I thought this was very dependent on the species -- European honeybees did not evolve to deal with varroa mites, because the mites originated in Asia. Asian honeybees, and honeybees bred with them, do have better ways of dealing with the mite; you said regular Italian bees, were they really not hybridized? I don't have any actual field experience here, just curious!
There is recent article from scientific beekeeper that goes into detail about these using their own venom as a cleaning agent.