Last night I went to the penultimate talk in the Leeds Beekeepers Association winter programme, which was also the first I'd made it to this season which is a shame as I do enjoy going. I certainly need all the bee knowledge I can get and I like to feel part of the beekeeping world. When two gentlemen in their early sixties sitting behind me, asked each other if their bees had been out flying during the day I wanted to turn round and say 'Mine were out too'. When one of them started listing heavy metal bands I was more intrigued. It didn't look likely to be their music of choice, although Ozzy Osbourne, himself, is also a gentleman in his sixties. I wondered if this was the music they played to their bees.
The talk was by Dr Steven Martin formerly of the University of Sheffield, now of the University of Salford. He has been conducting some ground breaking research into the interaction between the bee parasite varroa and various bee viruses. . The varroa mite hit the beekeeping world about 20 years ago and had pretty much the same impact as HIV had on the human world, the carefree days of leaving the bees undisturbed and letting them get on with making honey were gone forever. Without monitoring and regular treatment (akin to keeping an eye out for headlice in school children) the varroa mite will multiply rapidly and the colony will dwindle rapidly until it cannot sustain itself.
Recently there has been a new threat to bees in the shape of Colony Collapse Disorder, where entire apiaries can be mysteriously wiped out without warning. This has only happened in the northern hemisphere and has been much more common in the United States although as Dr Martin dryly pointed out, as commercial beekeepers in the US can receive government compensation for Colony Collapse Disorder, any mysterious death of a colony will be blamed on CCD. In the US there is an additional stress on the bees, due to the commercial beekeepers transporting the bees thousands of miles across the country to the fruit orchards.
Dr Martin has suffered the intense hardship of having to go to Hawaii to conduct his research. Actually there is a good reason for this, in that Hawaii is made up of a group of 6 islands which until recently were varroa free, then some years ago it was found on Oahu, the island where most of the people live and from then it was only a matter of time until it made it to Big Island (official name Hawaii) where immense commercial apiaries are sited. Thus by acting quickly, Dr Martin and his team had a set of islands to compare, one had established varroa, one was in its first two years of varroa and the others were still varroa free. Leaving out all the details, the results of the research were that they discovered, that the presence of varroa weakened the bees sufficiently to let one virus, the Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) flourish and it is this rather than the actual varroa mites that are killing the bees.
All very interesting, however the only conclusions from the research are what we already know, that we need to keep on top of controlling varroa.
In answer to a question from the audience, Dr Martin also touched on the scary prospect of the Asian Hornet (vespa velutina nigrithorax) making it to Britain from France, where it was accidentally introduced in 2005. This is scary for our bees, as the hornets hover in front of the hive killing the bees as they return, but it is also scary for humans, as although the sting is not much worse than a bee sting, hornets can organise themselves into an attacking group. Possibly the most useful tip from the evening was, if you see a hornets nest in the woods, leave it well alone.
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