Book Review & Bleeding Varroa.

Introduction.

The recent heavy rain brought an end to warm autumn days here and it’s back to fairly bracing weather. I was lucky yesterday to have made it to my hairdresser appointment before the storm arrived. My choice of transport was Shanks’s pony, or the bicycle. I chose the latter because it gave me time to knit a few more rows of the sweater I’m working on before heading uphill for more or less 3 ⅟₂ miles. I pushed the bike a fair bit but I walked in through the salon door at the appointed hour dead on 12 noon. Going home was a breeze and took me a few minutes which included stopping to pick some exceedingly fresh chanterelle mushrooms below birch trees at the roadside. A surprise autumn bounty, and worthy of a meal in themselves alongside a couple of rashers of bacon later in the day.

Book Review.

Laurie Croft invited me to review his latest book; this time a collection of fictional short stories with a beekeeping theme. I’ve also read one of his latest non-fiction books called, From Bolton to China: The Story of Lillian Kershaw. I find other people’s lives fascinating, especially if they are brave and adventurous like this heroine.  It is about a young woman going out to China in the 1930’s to be a missionary during a dangerous time in China at the birth of communism when Western religions and missionaries were not  welcomed by the authorities.

Title: The Golden Age of Beekeeping

Author: Laurie Croft

Publisher: Elmwood Books, 2024.

ISBN: 978-1-7384451-2-7

Paperback, 136 pages

Cost: £8:99

Available:  laurencecroft@hotmail.com & Northern Bee Books

The Golden Age of Beekeeping by Laurie Croft is a collection of seven short stories based on beekeeping themes. Croft is the author of five beekeeping books including “Honey and Health”. This is his first fictional work. He is a retired university lecturer in biochemistry, and a beekeeper with over fifty years’ experience. Croft has been aware of, and interested in honey fraud long before it became the prominent problem that it is today.

This title was chosen because the author regards the time between the early 1950’s and late 80’s as the best time for beekeeping, and he regards it as his golden age before the arrival of varroa and complicated diseases. The other recently published book with the same title is about American beekeeping history.

I don’t usually review fiction which is very much dependent on individual tastes, therefore the following is an overview of the content. However, one thing is clear; this book is not an educational publication to learn about beekeeping from. Its purpose is to entertain and evoke a nostalgic look at the past. There are some nice illustrations and the author has demonstrated his artistic talents on the front cover.

The stories are light hearted and written in a tongue- in- cheek style with twists. They centre round various topics such as swarming behaviour, defensive behaviour, honey bees as weapons, and honey fraud. Some of the stories are humorous while others are dark and spooky.

Croft clearly had fun writing these stories and trying his hand at fiction after decades of writing factual educational material for magazine articles and books. These stories will appeal to the imaginative general reader who enjoys the quirky and unexpected, and who might also pick up interesting facts about fascinating honey bees. The characters in the stories will remind readers of a past era if they too lived through the “golden age”. I expect that the story of the obsessional beekeeper will resonate with many other beekeepers as it did with me.

Studying Varroa.

I’m taking varroa monitoring pretty seriously and I’m still counting the daily drop on 3 colonies and checking them against the numbers of bitten varroa found each day. Today, the colony from free-living stock had a natural mite drop of 16 and 7 of them had damaged legs and shells. If you look closely at this photo, you can see that there is haemolymph oozing out of this freshly bitten stump. A friend tells me that it is highly likely that this bleed out will kill the varroa. It was alive when the photo was taken.

Filing Information.

I love a wet day because I don’t feel bad about not being outside and can get lots of indoor jobs done. It’s lashing with rain and time to cannibalise magazine articles today for my information folders, and get rid of the journals. I’ve learned from experience that I never do read through piles of journals again, and storing them is a waste of space. Anything else stored in the loft might cause the ceiling to collapse. Rather, I cut out the best articles and file them so I can easily find them again. Joe Ibberston’s excellent article in October’s BeeCraft tells the story of his fascinating beekeeping journey. Joe inherited his first two colonies 14 years ago from a beekeeper who obtained them from a free-living colony swarm and he has never treated them, or any other colony, for varroa.

French Honey Bees Survive Varroa.

I got hold of the references listed in Joe’s article and was interested to read a paper about how honey bee colonies in France survived varroa in the early days (1999-2006). Here is what I gleaned this morning.

Research.

Le Conte and colleagues studied honey bee colonies in France to find out how they lived without varroa treatments. They documented the ability of honey bee colonies to survive without treatment, and they compared the mortality rates of these colonies with control colonies that had received varroa treatments.

Natural Selection Works Best.

There was an interesting discussion around ways to get varroa-resistant bees, and Le Conte considered selecting for traits that might decrease varroa population growth as a way to breed bees better able to cope. However, he concluded that this way might limit genetic diversity and cause the honey bees to lose other important traits which might interfere even more with their lives. Also, it might force the mite to adapt and possibly become stronger causing further problems. Instead, he chose to study how unmanaged colonies used natural selection to cope with varroa. Interestingly, this method selects for a host-parasite balance which might sound perverse but is likely to be much more sustainable than  beekeepers choosing to select for one trait. So, basically we should get out there and collect swarms from surviving free-living colonies.

The study apiaries were in Le Mans and Avignon and the colonies were obtained from both free-living tree colonies, and those living in abandoned apiaries where no treatments had been given. 52 colonies came from beekeepers who had not used varroa treatments for 2 years. There were 2 groups of colonies which were all free from disease at the onset (apart from having varroa). One group had no varroa treatments over the 7- year study, and the other control group was treated with Apivar (Amitraz).

Varroa were monitored by using a screened bottom board and counting the natural drop 2 or 3 times a week over every month depending on the amount of brood present.

Mortality.

Regarding mortality, in only one year (2003) was it higher in the untreated group. Colony losses were attributed to queen losses and problems with supersedure. Over the 9-year research period, losses for the untreated group, through varroa infestations, were not greater than those treated with Apivar.

The varroa drop was 3 times lower in the untreated group than in the control group which was attributed to natural selection developing a mechanism whereby the balance between host and parasite was stable. The study took place outside major agricultural zones so environmental factors might also have contributed to the outcome. Reducing stress by disturbing the colonies only when manipulations were needed may also have played a role in the success of the non-treatment group. You can read this paper here: Honeybee Colonies that have Survived Varroa Destructor – Yves Le Conte et al. (2006) https://hal.science/hal-00892292/document

Honey Production.

Honey production was higher in the treatment group, but I know that I would prefer to have robust colonies that didn’t need any chemicals or manipulations to manage the mite.