Apiary News, Evolutionary Changes and White-Eyed Drones

Introduction

It’s pretty cold today and feels like snow is coming. The bees are all at home on a rainy day. Yesterday was sunny. Though only 7°C, I met some foragers out collecting pollen on viburnum and mahonia along the village as I went through with my litter picker and bag to collect roadside rubbish.
I think it was Stiliyan, the Amm queen rearer from Aberdeen, who told me that he always seals off the open mesh floors of his poly nuclei when he rears queens in early summer. I remembered to completely seal up the floor of the nuc that is going into winter on five brood fames and five shallow frames of honey. It seems to be paying off already as this little colony has a steady temperature of between 24-26°C (humidity stable too at 55%). This compares with a single brood box National poly hive running at 23°C, and a double brood box poly National running between 16-19°C. The latter colony bees may have moved upstairs and all the sensors lie on top of the first brood box. None of the colonies have started tucking into winter stores yet according to hive weights.

Towards Treatment-free Beekeeping

Louise and I are going overseas on Saturday to give a couple of presentations on Towards Treatment-free Beekeeping, and Using BroodMinder Sensors Alongside Thoughtful Beekeeping Practice. OK, so we cross a road bridge to get to Skye but it’s still an adventure. Neither of us have left home for months. I’m not currently giving evening presentations but the Skye beekeepers are flexible and willing to host us on Saturday afternoon.

Putting together my presentation has been challenging. The topic is both in its relative infancy, and somewhat controversial. Also challenging is the fact that I’m still feeling my own with way with it— or, more accurately, monitoring my way along the path two years on.  I’m grateful for the National Honey Show lectures and have tuned into the best from Professor Stephen Martin, Steve Riley and Joe Ibbertson from 2026 to update myself. https://www.youtube.com/nationalhoneyshow

A big thank you to Cynthia and Peter for coming over to listen to my presentation and offering really useful advice on improving clarity and flow.

One of my messages is that it is possible for small evolutionary changes to take place over relatively few years. Using the example of Darwin’s finches on the Galapagos Islands, and the work done by the Grants much later, makes it easier to understand how small changes can occur. Many people still don’t believe that honey bees can adapt by natural selection to resist varroa over just a few years. Rosemary and Peter Grant studied medium ground finches in 1976 and then again after the very severe 1977 drought. They were able to demonstrate that longer beaks developed in the finches that had adapted to eat the hardest seeds after the soft ones dried up in the drought. This change happened after only a few years.
The rest of the presentation focuses on understanding and recognising resistant traits and hygienic behaviours, monitoring varroa levels, using integrated pest management (IPM) and thoughtful beekeeping practices to reduce varroacide use and work slowly and steadily towards varroa resistance while maintaining healthy colonies. Quite a challenge. Here is an infographic on IPM that we put together.

White-Eyed Drones

An article in this month’s American Bee Journal by Brock Harpur and Riley Shultz caught my attention. It was about what mutations and inheritance can teach us and featured white-eyed or ‘ivory’ drones. Quite relevant to me because someone in our local beekeeping club told the story of finding white-eyed drones in a hive recently and being advised by an old timer to cull the queen. I’d never heard of that advice myself and would never have considered bumping off the queen. I have seen mutant drones a few times over the years but never more than a few of them have appeared.
Some really interesting research by Shultz et al.¹ busts the myth that inbreeding causes the problem, and suggests the drones are not blind either but see things differently so cannot successfully go out on mating flights. In the study, the colonies with mutant drones were good honey producers, and natural selection worked against the alleles causing the mutation. So, the mutation is removed naturally from the population without any need for beekeeper interference.

Reference.

¹Riley R Shultz, Jonathan M Nixon, Dylan K Ryals, Amos C Buschkoetter, Izaak R Gilchrist, J Krispn Given, Bradley N Metz, Armando Alcazar Magaña, Kyung-Mee Moon, Bobby Thanepohn, Julia Mahood, David R Tarpy, Leonard J Foster, Brock A Harpur, The life history of recessive deleterious alleles as seen through the eyes of a honey bee (Apis mellifera), Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 43, Issue 7, July 2026, msag156, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag156