Tropilaelaps: the main features

Introduction

After several warm days of bright sunshine and stunning visibility, it’s still and subdued here today with a dampness that’s accelerating the decay of fallen leaves and chilling down the air to 10°C. That familiar sweet musty autumnal scent fills the air again. The bees are flying but no sign of ivy flowering yet in the usual nearby places. There’s yellow pollen coming in so they must be visiting it somewhere. Louise has an ivy nectar flow on just 10 miles away. She’s a new beekeeper but her BroodMinder hive scales are giving lots of useful information and she’s miles ahead of me at the same stage in my beekeeping of 21 years ago.
I have two leatherwood trees (Eucryphia rostrevor) planted around a year apart in 2010 and 2011.  The taller one in the front garden bloomed for nearly two months right up till a few days ago, and the other one round the back has just started flowering this week which is surprising. This is a rich source of pollen and nectar so if it’s warm enough the leatherwood should provide something for the bees and the last butterflies of summer. I hear that Asian hornet has arrived in Northen Ireland so I’ll be watching the ivy carefully for signs of this beast here.

Convention

The highlight of October has been the Scottish Beekeepers’ Association (SBA) convention in Fife which was one of the best that I’ve ever attended for lots of reasons including; top notch speakers, slick organisation and smooth running, a good selection of trade stands and a great turnout making the place buzz. I really enjoyed catching up with some of my old friends and making new ones. Thank you, loyal blog readers who introduced yourselves and spoke to me. It’s good to know that you like hearing about day-to-day things and what’s going on in my neck of the woods, as well as the fruits of my literature searches. I’m really chuffed that you recommend Beelistener to others. I also appreciate offers of guest blogs; thanks Keith. I’m looking forward to yours. Keith has a demanding day job but still manages to successfully run 25 colonies in Fife.

Professor Stephen Martin spoke in the morning about chemical recognition in insects and that was fascinating. At the end of the day he presented the often poorly understood and controversial subject of varroa resistance in honey bees. Unfortunately, there was no time for questions. This was my only real gripe about the convention, apart from running out of tea and bacon rolls before I reached them.  I managed to be first in the queue to ask a burning question but I’m sorry if I crushed your toes getting past you in a hurry Phil, Lorraine and Carol! Anyway, Dr Martin tells me that if our bees have managed to develop resistance to varroa by the time tropilaelaps arrives, they should manage to defend themselves against it and it should not be such a challenge for them and us.

I’d heard my friend Megan speak before in New York about the pollinator initiative that she was heavily involved with when I visited her in 2019. I knew her presentations would be good but I was still completely blown away by her engaging and lively style and brilliant communication skills. I’m not the only one to think so and I’ve heard others say similar. Lots of positive comments on Facebook too. (You can read the New York  blogs here and all about my adventures with Megan in the Catskills, https://www.beelistener.co.uk/other-insects/pollinators/beekeeping-holiday-in-new-york-part-3/ )

Megan talked about her work with rural development first up, and after lunch she shared how she and her partner Jorik run 300 colonies and a bee supply company sustainably being mindful of honey bee genetics and the advantages of local bees.

Visit

Today, I’m back down on level ground after a wonderful visit here from Megan and Jorik. We drove north together on Sunday and spent yesterday visiting the wild bee tree colony that I found in 2019 (continuously occupied since).  For the rest of the day, we were just hanging out at my place talking before heading to Nairn and looking out over the Moray Firth from a restaurant with a view of the blazing red sun going down behind some trees and outlining them in black like a work of art.

Tropilaelaps

Tropilaelaps spp. have been around for a long time in Asia. The genus is Troplilaelaps and there are four species:

• T. clareae whose hosts are Apis laboriosa and A. mellifera
• T. koenigerum hosted by A. dorsata giant honey bee
• T. mecedesae hosted by A, dorsata, A. mellifera, A, florea, and A. cerana
• T. thaii hosted by A. laboriosa

Tropilaelaps clareae was first detected in the Philippines around 1961. It was found on dead bees and field rats that were nesting near these colonies. It sounds worrying that tropilaelaps might be spread by other animals, but scientists have a lot still to discover and we don’t know enough today to say that rats will be a problem spreading these mites.

Although A. mellifera (western honey bee) is a host of T. clareae we needn’t worry about T. clareae at the moment because these mites have not been found outside their native range. The map below shows where we know for sure that T. mercedesae mites are currently thriving. We do need to concern ourselves with this mite because it was spread from Uzbekistan to Georgia on packaged bees and it is flourishing in the tropical region of the Black Sea coastal area. You would be correct in thinking that some parts of Georgia are cold and less hospitable to tropilaelaps. It is after all bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, the Black Sea on the west and is sandwiched between the Caucasus mountains to the north and south which form barriers to a degree. However, the region in the middle has milder winters these days preventing broodless honey bee colony states. It’s then a hop, skip and a jump along the Black Sea coast to Turkey.

With the help of my smart and lovely daughter-in-law Maayan, and her technical design skills, I’ve put together the key points to illustrate the worrying truth—there are more differences than similarities between varroa and tropilaelaps. This means that there will be completely new challenges to face and a lot more research needed to help us cope well. I think that we have a head start on tropilaelaps with scientists like Maggie Gill and her colleagues in the UK and overseas working hard to learn more.

This is a great resource https://www.honeybeepests.org/tropi from Auburn University and worth a visit.