"Why don't we sample drones?" with Dr. Zac Lamas
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- Опубликовано: 2 авг 2024
- In this compelling presentation Zac Lamas shares findings regarding the aggregation of Varroa mites on Drones and discusses sampling methods and protocols being developed to improve detection and infestation levels. The presentation is followed by a studious and thought provoking Q&A.
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Thanks to Zac for sharing this work, and to SBGMI for hosting the lecture. I've long fretted about the inaccuracies inherent in the different mite sampling methods available to us, and I'm glad you're finally cracking this open and revealing that a lot of our established varroa "knowledge" are actually sometimes oversimplifications or downright incomplete stories. We just had a paper come out in Apidologie looking at mite populations in collapsing colonies in observation hives, and the biased distribution of mites there also revealed that there are important subtleties to varroa distribution in colonies.
This is fantastic and has given me a great idea regarding varroa counting and varroa management. This video will be my Shout-Out for tomorrow, March 31, 2023. Thank you, SBGMI Media, and Dr. Zac Lamas. This is going to be the launch of new management techniques based on your research and observations.
Thanks for the hat-tips Fred. The SBGMI was honored to host Zac's presentation as it truly was an adequate demonstration of a portion of the SBGMI credo, "A collaborative and thoughtful mission fostered through education, intelligent dialog, and practice that will carry out natural management of honeybees in Michigan and abroad utilizing scientific principles..."
@@sbgmimedia You are very welcome! This video is sending me in another varroa management direction :) I really do appreciate that you've shared it here.
@@FrederickDunn cant wait to hear about it!
@@FrederickDunn hey Fred - the SBGMI will offer your viewers 20% on our annual guild membership until April 15, 2023 if they use code FRED20 at www.sbgmi.org/shop - This will give them further access to more great content just like Zac's presentation from Dr. John Harbo, Dr. Jamie Ellis, Dr. David Peck, Dr. Robyn Underwood, Les Crowder, Michael Bush, Steven Repasky, and more...
Thanks to Fred for pointing this to the talk!!!
FREDS shoutout,,,,had to watch this,very informative and Fred with the R & D (research an development)
Fred sent me over, glad he did. Great information
Welcome - make sure to check out our other offerings. Fred viewers get 20% off membership at the SBGMI and we have 10 hours of conference videos available to members!
hello mr dunn sent us here and i subbed good info!!!
Thanks for stopping by!
Popped over on Frederick Dunn recommendation.
Thanks for popping over!
Your parents and interns are awesome. Please thank them from the beekeepers of Connecticut! Last year my hives looked great in June - tons of honey. Then total collapse of all 7 of my hives.
I as well was sent here by Frederick Dunn and am so pleased for the referral. This greatly helps my research projects on resolving the Varroa issue. It never made sense to me that the varroa would leave a good food source for a less quality (drone to nurse bee). I look forward too seeing your future research.
Frederick Dunn gave a shout out about your video/research and it makes sense. Thanks for your work on this. Great info. 👍
That's most eye opening research I've seen yet . Answers alot questions. I planned on playing with drone frames in my cell starters .. i know its causing immune problems down the road having high levels of viruses in the starters. Probably drop drone frames in everything could very well be the answer to making honey all summer not have everything crashing later on from all the honey production
Fred gave a shout out to you so I came on over and watched, and learned, more about varroa. Great presentation and I like Fred's thoughts on caging some drones to get a count of varroa. Thanks again. Also, thanks to all of Zach's helpers and his parents.
Thank you for this it totaly changes the way i look at varoa control .
We already use drone freezing comb to trap mites.
Controlling it on drones will definately improve control
Outstanding research!
Cảm ơn bạn vì những thông tin hữu ích
Never give up.
Nicely done!!
Outstanding!
Awesome presentation. Last year I started sampling drone capped cells, in one hive I went and by hand opened several (5 to 10 per frame with cells) drone cells and checked for mites. If I found more than a few I removed all the drone cells in that hive and checked for mites of every cell. I was surprised how many have 3+ mites.
Sounds like detecting and treating early and varying the treatment is pretty important.
Thanks from Ireland
I know little about bees but I know how important they are to the survival of humanity and that makes anything to save them very important, thank you for caring and sharing ❤your findings.
Thanks for caring Dorothy! Thanks for watching! Be sure to subscribe and like!
Excellent presentation. I love finding evidence that some things I thought I knew were partially incorrect or completely wrong. Mites congregating on adult drones now makes that list.
Thanks! What I like about our finding is they provide a parsimonious answer to a lot of our observations
Fantastic research Zac really ground breaking, Fred told us about you so came over to watch. Don't have varroa in Sydney as yet but by the sounds of things won't be long until we do (can't believe that some bee keepers flaunt the regulations and are the cause of spreading varroa) Will certainly change the way we test and treat thanks for all your research
Francine, I shared the research with an Australian researcher and they shared it amongst their colleagues. Hope y'all have the most up to date info in dealing with Varroa.
I read that Australia has given up on verroa
If some hives are kicking out its drones and some others are still letting them in you would see an increase in concentrations of mites in the hives that still have drones .
Thorough research bringing new protocol tool for IPM. The information is presented clearly.
Cheryl, you're welcome. My family and I have worked on a project for two years in Vermont with Troy Hall and Michael Palmer. We are trying to see if sampling drones in the spring can predict future mite infestations in the fall. This is the real service we are trying to provide for IPM
My grandfather kept bees in Guyana, but as he got older, he needed to pass on his apiary, but only my mother shared interest. She pleaded with her brothers to continue with it, but they refused.
We live in the UK 🇬🇧 so there is no way she could take it on.
The apiary was given away to another farmer who, too, was passionate about maintaining bees and not just selling off the honey.
My grandfather kept precise notes on his bees, which went back years. From it, he also dealt with mites and predators insects.
Thank you for sharing your findings. 🐝🪷🐝🌼🐝🌳🐝🌻🐝🌺🐝
Mixed feelings over the range of the delivery in seeing the value of those drone impact counts up against just dismissing the German research outright as of no interest. I felt that was a moral breakdown right there, particularly when during the closing phase I hear you say we should be altering our language to reflect inclusion not alienation.
As support for my proposed natural biotechnical management (NBM) model your direction feeds directly into that as drone brood manipulation is central to NBM.
Your work is bookmarked at this desk.
Shad
Great info Zac. Thanks for sharing. I found this topic fascinating and insightful. Your discussion of the broader impact of varroa as a vector for pathogens such as DWV and the impact to the colony was really interesting and enlightening. Thanks!
Thanks Keith, I super appreciate the comment! I wish we knew so much more about the broader impacts of Varroa, and the transmission dynamics of DWV. Every time we talk about this system we are talking about at least two parasites: the macroparasite (Varroa) and the microparasite (DWV). Both have extremely short generation times (days and hours) compared to its host (without manipulation and depending on climate: less than annually to several times a year). Super fascinating for us to study, but I hope by showing where the mite feedings are occurring and the harm caused that we can better guide best beekeeping practices.
I've seen a pollen trap that had the unfortunate effect of trapping/sifting out drones trying to leave the colony. Sounds like a simple engineering problem to make a drone sieve/trap that can be mounted on the exit of a colony to catch enough drones to do an alcohol wash on them early season.
So can a varroa mite tell when a drone bee is getting old and switch to a worker (what is the mechanism for the transfer) or do mites just move to the worker bee because the drones are mostly gone? Great and interesting work!
I have been skeptical of alcohol wash for a couple years.
SBGMI Sorry if I missed the detail on what is considered "detection" on the 40 young drone sample in alcohol wash. is even 1 "detection" warranting "split and requeen" ? or maybe some other number or a repeated detection perhaps?
Thanks for the video!
Could a drone hangout be created somewhere in the hive maybe with a small amount of queen pheromone. This location would be serving Apivar or Oxalic acid to deal with drone varroa? Or maybe this setup is in an open air common drone cleaning station.
Kevin Hawes
Second 5...
Not nurse bees but drone larva
Edit: 6 minutes in, you have my full attention as it seems you have a solid foundation...
I'll touch back.
Minute 19:00, I see where the 'nurse bee' claim comes into play.
• I expect I may be wat thing this more than once. Thank you for the well considered content. Solid observation based and documented study is how progress is made.
I'm a newbie here and not a beekeeper in any way but interested in picking up the hobby/lifestyle. Definitely interesting topic glad to run into it. A dumb question...Is it safe to consume raw honey now with varroa ramping across the states and parts of the world?🤔🍻✌🏽
So treatment for mites sounds good in spring, and monator moving forward. Is there a treatment for the viruses?
I was wondering if you could tell me do drones give off a pheromone like queen bees but specific to drones. And that mites are attracted to said pheromone that is even present at every stage of a drones life hence the attraction to drone cells and preferences to drones in the hive?
We are currently investigating that question
Can you someday let us know how do you determine something as small as a might has what virus or if none at all? 😮
I didn't make it the whole way through yet, and maybe this is covered. Should we be doing OAV or other flash treatments at night when drones are in the hive?
Jordan, when I use a flash treatment I place it into the colony in the evening so that the immediate effects are not so harsh on the bees (ii.e. cooler temps)
Is there any study into the possibility of using drone pheromone to draw mites away from broodcomb and into a trap?. A sticky board inside a mesh screen that has been impregnated with perfect age drone pheromone idea. Something the bees cant get to but attracts the mites to their sticky end. I imagine it could be really beneficial especially later in the season as the bees evict the drones and mite levels spike.
Give me (and the bottles of compounds on my office shelf) until the end of the season for more on that front!
Was there any progress on this?
I have never heard that they prefer nurse bees. Infact we put drone comb in to attract the mite to them. To help control them.
The video explains that varroa prefer drones as an adult host, research has long confirmed they prefer drone brood, but the accepted norm in varroa monitoring is that mites aggregate on nurse bees and then climb into the cells...
Mike, yep we are just uncovering that their preferred adult hosts are also drones. I agree tho, drone comb removal is an excellent mite control. It isn't a silver bullet, but an excellent control strategy. Why aren't more people doing it?
I went back to watch they keep queen video it says it is private
Stay tuned. We will have it posted up after some minor editing
The first hour was very interesting (if I was obsessed with varroa mites). A ton of work went into the research obviously. The response to James's first question chucked it for me. Comparing bees to humans, ignoring the relative speed of selection when high mortality is involved, and resorting to treating and requeening in the face of "high" mite loads (essentially starting from scratch constantly). Still an interesting talk.
Hey, thanks for sharing your opinion. I did 3 years on the drone work and the transmission work. The transmission dynamics of mite-bee-dwv is similar to vector-host-pathogen relationships of tembusu, west nile, JEV, salmon isavirus, yersinia pestis. I usually acknowledge in each talk someone could treat or engage in management practices equivalent to treating when mite levels get too high. The fact is there are two parasites we are always dealing with mite (macroparasite), viruses (microparasite) all which have far faster generation times than the honey bee (days/hours versus year). And like the other systems mentioned, these are unstable when uncontrolled on the host population. So respectfully treating and requeening with a new queen to test her ability to suppress mite reproduction is viable advice. It isn't for everyone, but again, its recommendation based upon my findings.
I think it's about goals. Some of us have a production goal with our bees. We want our honey😁 and pollen and propolis and clean wax.. royal jelly, venom.. nucks... and we love to work on hives.. select for more, if we can. Others just want bees in a box that survive everything chance and nature throws at them. Some have a hive because is modern to be a beekeeper... l just don't see how can you learn anything without those first years of "digging" in your hives.. and how can you resist not working on timing them for max production on your flow ? I don't know, maybe not having a long dearth every summer makes a different beekeeper. Mine wouldn't survive the summer without me doing all kinds of manipulations and a different method to adapt to the conditions of that year. In 50 years my area completely changed.. from selling barrels of honey to regular 35 - 40 Celsius drought. Bees can't adapt to it without help.. natural swarms are all gone. Being able to do treatment free these days is a rarity, not something you should push on to others that don't have those beautiful conditions
Great presentation! Maybe my queen catcher tool will be used for drone catching and sampling this year.
That's a great idea!
Very interesting input. This news will be gamechanging in both threating methods as well as resitence queen breeding....
🌷🌷🌷thanks sir
suggest checking your clip sound levels before uploading very quiet speaking vs LOUD intro music. on a phone or tv maybe not a big deal but in my 7.2 surround system I about had a heart attack.
Sorry about that! It was a tad loud. We'll look to normalizing it.
SO...
IF...
You were to put drone comb in the brood chamber and add a second drone comb about 10 days before the original started hatching then removed the original drone just before it starts hatching and froze it
And kept rotating drone comb in like this as long they will lay in it .
Mite reduction!!
Next year !!!
Question - do the mites fly attached with the drones most of the time .
Im guessing so as they spread drones from hive to hive while drifting .
Maybe drone excluders /traps might be helpfull as well
Great information. somewhere i learned early on the drone/mite connection, and have always approached mite mitigation from that base - through monitoring, drone cut-outs, queen caging and treatments. the last few years, i've had HUGE honey producing (healthy APPEARING) colonies collapse in the fall and i've been suspecting this as a "varroa/disease concentration" issue. the information presented confirms my thoughts. i'm anxiously awaiting the development of a varroa mite trap (something we can have in/on all year long) and stronger immunities in the queens' genetics. thank you - i shared this link with MANY of my beekeeper friends.
jyst wanted to add randy oliverz method for washes,using dawn ultra dishsoap, as a better alternate to alcohol,... and thank you to you and your team,great research
When harvesting or sampling drones, do we take adult drones or pull in hatched drones from the comb?
Adult drones from the center of the brood nest. Just randomly grab them.
Will be interesting to see continued experiments with testing scenarios. During drone season for a healthy hive, could I isolate/trap the drones for testing and not kill workers? It will be interesting to see what techniques might emerge, such as trapping a percentage drones for testing and/or to reduce varroa. It also seems that you could benefit from some automated system to look for varroa and paint/tag your bees for larger scale experiment. TSA but for bees. And it would be interesting to see the movement of bees to other colonies and how they are mite bombed since you can see your tagged bees show up in nearby colonies. Could you prevent drones from entering the hive if they are the primary means for mite bombing since drones are the predominate hive to hive wanderers? The downside is that the drones need to wander for genetic diversity.
Mark, in short- we did two years of work seeing if sampling a small number of drones early in the season can predict high alcohol washes in the fall. The short- multiple detections on drones in spring, yes. And yes, the drones drift a lot into other colonies within the apiary. They are a very likely candidate for inter-colony movement of varroa.
I live in Gloucester, VA and maintain around 16 colonies. How do I get involve in your citizen science program?
Is there a way to prevent drones from leaving an infected hive with a drone excluder, similar to queen excluder?
Probably, but why not just sample small number of drones from each colony and treat the colonies with high mites on their drones?
It's highly likely that you would block the entrance to workers moving in and out,
Great presentation! Several of my strongest colonies suddenly collapsed. The mite counts were 0-1 per 300 bees across the board less than 2 months ago. Now they are all at 30-80+. And these were the ones that started producing large numbers of drones early on (we are in south Florida). Smaller colonies at that time still have relatively low mite counts now. This might be the answer why.
"Golden goose"... well... upon inventing drone feromone bait trap, you will just select varroa for being attracted towards worker brood.
Holy crap a PhD with an awesome sense of humor. I did stop watching after the first Tiger King reference ;> Only kidding.
Yes, we almost shut it down at that point. But in solidarity and empathy - we allowed the road to recovery to continue! 😁
I have NEVER been told mites prefer nurse bees!
I have ALWAYS been told Y prefer the drones and in my 12 years of keeping bees the drone cells have been where I have found the mites.
Hi George, mites prefer drone brood over worker brood, but the long established preference on adult bee hosts has been mites prefer nurse bees.
@@zacharylamas8016 Great response, thanks.
Exactly. If you lived in my area where drones are all gone (almost over night) by mid June you would already know all this. But what do I know? I'm just an amateur. It always suprises me that beekeepers over there whayt for researchers to test stuff... here we usually whayt on them to confirm our observations... Or, maybe it's all connected to money and the way research is financed... anyway, great presentation, and now its all known and beekeepers can use it and adapt their methods and treatments.
How can an American researcher not know who Ralph Büchler is ? There's a problem of not being connected.. of looking to inside too much. There's a world of beekeeping all around you, and information is free these days. This is all too slow.. it must be over 15 years that we do brood breaks and all kinds of queen caging.. why are those old ones your new ones ? Mr. Dunn, I wrote you about it a couple of years ago.. and your answer was that it isn't natural and you won't do that to your queens.. seme ting happened with my comment about top ventilation. Please don't get me wrong. I would sound much happier if all this was already all known
If you had a real summer dearth.. you would know there is a moment right before it when you can pull out the edge frames of the brood box.. and on those edge frames you will find a bunch of drones and sick bees. And just by shaking those in a bucket of detergent and sacrificing them, you would get alot of answers...
...can mites be blown off bees with a compressor nozzle ?...
Sorry had to... haven't tried but I doubt it.
When commercial queen breeders produce queens with the genetics to resist varroa, hobbyists will be able to be not-very-good beekeepers again.
So varroa management ability makes you a better beekeeper?
@@sbgmimedia Being able to do any activity successfully when under abnormal difficulty says you're good at that activity. But bees were thriving for millions of years before humans came along, and since humans introduced them to this parasite that has wiped them out in many areas, humans have a moral obligation to support them in getting back to being able to thrive without further human intervention.
When bees can thrive living in a hollow tree out in the wild, hobby beekeepers won't need any special skills to keep bees alive in a purpose-built box.
nothing gained nothing solved
The one possible downside of artificially using an anti-Varroa mat with drone pheromone is if it causes your colony to suppress drone production. Additionally, if you used this late season, it may cause worker bees to try to remove the material thinking they're trying to remove drones? I get it there would be a barrier but it may stress the worker bees.
Only time will tell and it may be effective.