American Bee Journal • October 2019 Vol. 159 No. 10 • The Classroom

Jerry, I read that you thought that treating for AFB with antibiotics a couple of times a year was not a good idea. I thought you would promote treatment for AFB before it becomes a problem, not after?

So you have to have a vet charge about $40.00 to write a scrip for Terra, didn’t your parents get you vaccinated for childhood viruses?

American Foulbrood is not a virus, it is a bacteria. And we don’t have vaccines for honey bees.

An antibiotic is not a vaccine that stimulates and enhances your immune system long term in the event of future exposure to viruses. Antibiotics are just a temporarily effective short term treatment for bacterial infections, not viral infections.

Are you taking an antibiotic every day because you are afraid of getting a bacterial “strep throat”? Probably not, as this is not a preventative. Taking antibiotics (anti=against, biotic=life) can cause significant collateral damage to you personally as it kills “good” organisms in our intestines that help us digest food. Same with honey bees.

To use the “strep throat” analogy, what would you do to prevent it and not have to have a doctor prescribe an antibiotic? You would stay away from someone with a known infection, wash your hands often, keep hands away from your face, and cross your fingers. If you do get sick go to the doctor for an accurate diagnosis and they may prescribe antibiotics so you don’t get worse and end up in the hospital.

How do you prevent a bacterial AFB infection in a colony? Keep them away from your known infected colonies by destroying the infectious colonies, be a good beekeeper manager and inspect colony regularly, do not interchange frame/comb from colony to colony if the disease is suspected. If the colony has only 1-2 cells of AFB go to the vet and get a prescription for an antibiotic so it doesn’t die and infect other colonies.

So, if someone gets AFB (small amount), gets a vet a sample, wait for the lab work, get the report back that your hive has it, get a scrip, fax it to Dadant, wait for the medication, within a week you will have your medication.

John get the Vita AFB test kit and in 90 seconds you have the result. Show it to the Vet.

I medicate two times in the spring and one time in the fall with antibiotics after all of the supers are taken off for processing, not hard, just taking care of the bees properly.

You are hurting your bees by killing off their microbiome (organisms in their gut that help them digest beebread and nectar) by using antibiotics so casually, causing additional stress. Did you know that using antibiotics on honey bees when there is not an identified disease can shorten their life and in some cases cause symptoms like Nosema because they cannot digest beebread as the organisms that actually digest this food have been killed? It goes right through them. Plus you are wasting time and money. You are not taking care of your bees properly and being a good honey bee manager by your decision to not use current honey bee health data, but that is totally up to you.

Hi Mr. Jerry! I was on YouTube watching documentaries and found one made by NatGeo discussing how killer bees are bad news for North America. NatGeo backed this up by saying that “killer” bees are incredibly aggressive and transfer their aggressive behavior into Apis mellifera. Nat- Geo basically says in the documentary that we should try to halt the spread of killer bees in any way possible. However, at the same time, NatGeo (like all the media) says that bees are dying and that everyone should support bees. Shouldn’t we be kind of glad that Scuttellata is breeding with our bees, because of the varroa-resistant genetics that they introduce? Am I missing something, or is NatGeo dramatizing a really good thing? Sorry if this question is long and confusing.

I was the Chief of the Florida Apiary Inspection Section when African bees entered the state as stowaways on shipping traffic across the Gulf of Mexico from Mexico, Central, and South America. My first experience with this invasive species was when a 900-pound horse was killed by African bees. I was at the autopsy of the horse and the vet pulled out 2-3 pounds of bees from the horse’s lungs and stomach. These African bees when they attack don’t kill by using lots of venom stinging hundreds of times on the outside of an animal’s or human’s body. They follow the CO2 stream to the animal breathing and go up, in this case, the horse’s nose and mouth, stinging on the way down. The stings cause swelling of the trachea and lungs and the horse died of asphyxiation (suffocation), not envenomation. We had several human fatalities, dozens and dozens of pet and livestock and wildlife deaths all in the same way. It made me sick and tremendously afraid for beekeepers who could be blamed by those not familiar with the difference between the races of honey bees.

The defensive, aggressive gene is carried by the drones. So, interbreeding with European bees by African drones can result in those queens then producing defensive workers whose father was an African drone.

African bees did not evolve to have to deal with a harsh winter in Africa. As a result, they don’t generally store a lot of honey. And if they are disturbed or flowers quit blooming or the number and negative pressure results of pests, parasites, and diseases grow they simply leave en masse this colony location looking for a new and better home environment. They are leaving all the bad things behind. It’s called absconding. It is not swarming/asexual reproduction. The whole colony just leaves and looks for a new start.

Varroa infestation and reproduction cause colony health issues and stress which they recognize. The response is to “abscond” and leave most of the varroa behind, start over at a new colony location and outreproduce the varroa for X period of time until varroa population catches up and then the colony absconds and they do it again.

So the bees themselves are defensive and aggressive. They don’t store a lot of honey and they abscond as needed, even responding to beekeeper smoking and checking the colony. It isn’t a great idea for beekeeping in North America and suburban and urban beekeepers, my opinion.

I am creating a new electric fenced apiary and had to move my bees a couple of miles down the road to my friend’s. How long do they have to stay there? I miss them.

You only have to miss them for about a week. Plus they are probably glad to have some vacation time in a different location.

I’ve been following your sentiment regarding the thermal treatment of colonies. I should disclose that I am a beekeeper and have followed thermal treatment since the USDA funded the original SARS study 1996-97 which determined that application of heat kills varroa. We, the keepers of the USA followed manufacturers of chemical solutions down a path of desperately seeking solutions to save our hives. Innovators outside the USA took our research and began producing crude devices to thermally treat colonies. Over the decades of thermal treatment’s progression, we entered an era of digital controls which began stabilizing temperature ranges, staving off the prior inadvertent consequences with those systems.

The current product I’m using is the most modern of such devices. I am not marketing so I will not disclose the name of the product. I’ve used this exclusively for years and I’m totally chemical free. I seek and share publicly about the effectiveness of the device and even loan my equipment out to anyone who wants to see for themselves prior to ordering a device.

Reviewing your position and references regarding thermal treatment leads me to believe you’re either (1) ill-informed or (2) have some underlying bias against the most effective varroa management system available to beekeepers today. You are most certainly missing an opportunity to enrich your readers and help them in the fight against mites.

“Honeybees maintain the temperature of the brood nest between 32°C (89.6F) and optimally 35°C (95F) so that the brood develops normally. This is the goal of a honeybee colony in order to be as productive and healthy as possible. Research has shown that even small deviations (more than 0.5°C) from the optimal brood temperatures have significant influence on the development of the brood and health of the resulting adult bees. Bees raised at sub-optimal temperatures are more susceptible to certain pesticides as adults (Murzycki, 2009). Interestingly, pupal developmental temperature affects the probability of the task allocation in the resulting adult bees (Matthias 2009).”

Regarding the above statement, the reader/researcher/person seeking validation must read to understand the context of what has been stated. The statements above have been parroted in multiple articles and publications forever. Anyone knowledgeable in field studies of bees (not lab studies) is aware of the many array of hive monitoring programs out there. Using data derived from monitored hives in the state of Texas only knows that this statement is inaccurate. The means and methods by which science derived this data in a lab setting must be thoroughly considered. It doesn’t take a PhD to acknowledge honeybees need oxygen and fresh air. It also doesn’t take a PhD to know that honeybees manage the micro and macro climates within a colony. If your citations and claims were true, there would be no bees in Texas. Furthermore the tens of thousands of thermal treatments that have been completed would have resulted in the demise of the manufacturer and product brand; instead, Beekeeper Tested and Approved has resulted in an industry growth away from chemicals and happier beekeepers with healthier more productive hives and lastly, zero to near zero hive losses annually.

I understand this may be a surprise to you. It remains a surprise to active thermal treatment users. I will further state that more scientific testing needs to be done because product users all agree, something else is happening besides killing varroa that leads to the results we see.

“Temperatures of 101F to 106F kills most all varroa mites. Beeswax comb starts to soften at 120F. Honeybees die at 114.8F we think but studies show our Honeybee clusters on the scout Japanese Hornet raising the temperature 118F which terminates the Hornet. Honeybee larvae as you read above are biologically designed to develop optimally at about 93F. Queens and the sperm that is stored in them are negatively affected at higher than 93F.”

In your statement above, I’d like to specifically note that much of this is highly inaccurate.

https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/312564379_The_ effectiveness_of_thermotherapy_ in_the_elimination_of_Varroa_ destructor

I would further challenge you to look at live and recorded data of what is occurring in the hives and not simply parrot a laboratory’s non colony performance. Your credibility cannot be based upon poor, outdated research used out of context. It does not bode well for the ABJ.

The modern thermal treatment product terminates varroa under capped brood using a slow warming trend to mite kill temp of 104F and ranges a narrow range to 106.5. Please note in the study above and including the published references that varroa are sterilized prior to reaching the temps where they are damaged at varying degrees depending on their duration of exposure 101.5F. I’ve personally witnessed recorded internal hive temps in Texas on a 118F day. Real life continued performance of queens at hive temps of 104, brood survival negates the lab work. Why? Bees are permitted to manage their micro and macro climates above the individual cells AND they are not deprived of oxygen.

I have both great respect and disrespect for the Honeybee Health Coalition. They produce great educational data which is invaluable to beekeepers. Simultaneously, they are funded by the chemical companies and their board is loaded with representatives of the chemical industry. The participants from the scientific community are benefactors of the chemical industries’ funding of their programs. The ethics violations here scream bias. Their recommended methods are biased to chemicals while painting nonchemical methods in a negative light. An uninformed reader of their recommendations will never know that survivor stock queens are available that systematically survive 3+ years treatment free. Wild survivor genetics do as well. Brood breaks and OTS beekeeping are proven methods. Thermal treatment works and screened bottom boards have no value whatsoever in beekeeping. This makes the people of the USA look bad when the rest of the world knows better.

Regarding the original poster’s comments regarding Dr. Ali McAfee’s important quest for understanding of premature failures of mail order queens and the underlying research. I would think as a writer for the American Bee Journal, you would want to know and correct the context of the statements you published. You cannot inhibit the colonies’ ability to manage their micro-climate. Oxygen deprived bees suffer harm. Heat alone doesn’t cause the infertility in the field. Why? Bees are free to do as they do. Three attendants in a sealed package with a queen don’t make a colony and certainly doesn’t provide for fresh air and thermoregulatory abilities. A colony in Las Vegas or Arizona in the summer does. So does TEXAS and Florida.

So, what does misinformation get the Apicultural industry? Misinformation and confusion. Distrust of the scientific community and industry leaders who have apparent underlying motives.

We the beekeepers of the chemical free/thermally treating industries quietly sit and watch this stuff and feel betrayed and embarrassed by ill-informed commentary. I will warn you; the industry is growing very tired of the great divide that exists between the chemical promoters and successful chemical free keepers. Time has long passed for you to move forward and become knowledgeable outside of chemical industries influence. If you are going to speak out against a thriving/successful industry and essentially call these people fools based on a fool’s interpretation of research taken out of context, you should expect your opinions and views to not be taken seriously. You really should seek to become educated on the topic you speak out against.

I wish you the most success and the best firsthand education about a segment of the industry that is growing and growing and will leave the old naysayers behind. If you’re willing to learn more, feel free to reach out to me or any of the thousands of keepers your commentary attempts to discredit. I am personally happy to share with you about thermal treatment successes anytime you’re willing to learn.

I am glad you are finding success in this varroa treatment method for you personally.

I have shared researched biological data with you and others about the tight rope of using this method to control varroa and not damage honey bee eggs, larvae, pupae, and adults of all castes. Heat kills not only varroa but the young larvae and pupae of honey bees specifically.

The ultimate sign of success will be that this technology is adopted by a large percentage of beekeepers.

The Honey Bee Health Coalition is a great organization that has produced many educational outreach documents. The “Tools for Varroa Management Guide” is the best.

Editor’s Note: The Honey Bee Health Coalition describes its mission as “a crosssector effort to promote collaborative solutions to honey bee health challenges.” It lists on its website 47 members, consisting of 16 beekeeping organizations or companies, 10 commodity groups, 7 agrochemical groups or companies, 6 environmental or conservation organizations, and a handful of government, university and other groups. If the goal is “collaboration” between stakeholders, it seems that this is how you would do it.

Third-year beekeeper in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have a question about an article in the July issue titled Winter In July. It states the bees in the jar should be placed in the sun for a few minutes prior to shaking to dehydrate the mites so they fall off. There is no citation in the article about this. I was taught to put the jar in the shade so the sugar doesn’t get too clumpy and interfere with mites falling out. The Honey Bee Health Coalition guide doesn’t say sun or shade.

I have been doing powdered sugar rolls all three seasons of beekeeping and haven’t lost any bees yet, so I’m pretty comfortable with my technique being at least accurate enough to treat with formic when necessary and keep my bees alive. Any input on the sun vs shade technique? Folks in my club suggest the heat would be too stressful and possibly cause them to regurgitate which may interfere with the varroa falling out of the sugar as well.

First, I really appreciate you being proactive in sampling for varroa and determining the appropriate time to treat. You are waaaaay ahead of most newish beekeepers. Good job!

Varroa mites are removed using the powdered sugar method as it gets in between the foot pads of varroa and the adult honey bee when they are in the dispersal mode riding around on adult bees in the brood nest area. They simply can’t hang on as easily and they lose their grip and fall off. It has nothing to do with dehydration which would take a very long time.

Powdered sugar is very dry as it comes out of the box or bag fresh and is very attractive to humidity in the air. It is most effective in dry weather as it will absorb humidity quickly and clump up in the sampling jar (it’s happened to me), perhaps preventing loosened varroa from being shaken out through the sampling jar screen. It really doesn’t make a whole lot of difference if the jar is in the shade or the sun per the relative humidity issue. Humidity is humidity. I would not suggest putting the jar in the sun as it simply adds to the sampled bees’ stress as they may overheat and throw up as your friend said and it doesn’t contribute to you getting a more accurate count.

Can bees feel pain and if so, do they experience mental and/or physical suffering?

I have a question. I probably perform a more routine and consistent mite monitoring program as anyone in North America but unable to participate in your program, because I monitor using the “mite drop” method. Let me explain my monitoring program. I have “cafeteria” style trays underneath all of my colonies. Currently, I clean the trays monthly, wait 2 to 3 days and log mpd data into HiveTracks. I have tried to submit my mite count data via HiveTracks, but since the mite drop method is not recognized as an approved monitoring method, the data is only for my use. I can tell you since I have started using this method, my colony losses have declined to almost none.

I am not sure why the mite drop method is not recognized as a method of monitoring for mites. It appears any method used is simply an indication of mite infestation and not an absolute mite count. I simply use it to monitor for the mite population to begin to increase above the threshold, at which time I treat. The key is to maintain a low count and not allow the mpd levels to “explode” out of control.

I am a hobbyist beekeeper, usually running 15 to 20 colonies, depending on how many splits I have going and time of year. I am encouraging my local association and beekeepers that I mentor to use this method. We also demonstrate and have a workshop scheduled for July 13 with Dr. Brett Nolan from UGA. However, for me and reaction from most is that the alcohol and powdered sugar method are just too time consuming. So, the results are, most don’t monitor at all, or only monitor once per year as your Mite-A-Thon appears to encourage. As a result, we have people that just treat spring and fall as most beginners’ classes teach, which I have found to be very ineffective. If you go into the spring with mite levels at or near the threshold and perform a single spring treatment, the mpd levels will most likely explode to 100’s mpd by July or August. If you consistently monitor, go into spring with low levels, treat as needed in May while temps are still below 90 degrees with formic acid, your mpd levels can be maintained at a manageable level thru the hot summer days (I live in hot, humid SC) until cooler temps of September. If between May and September monitoring indicates mite levels high enough for concern, I monitor weather forecast and apply formic acid when forecast of temps below 90 degrees for at least 3 days. If mpd levels are high enough, I will place treatments with temps forecast in low 90s.

So, I believe, we should encourage all beekeepers to use any effective option to monitor for the pest that causes all beekeepers the most problems. If I try to maintain low levels, but have neighbors with bees that don’t treat, they cancel out my efforts.

I would like to hear why the mite drop method is not recognized as a way to monitor for varroa.

Data indicate that in order to keep managed honey bees at a healthy equilibrium with universal infestation with varroa mites the varroa population has to be kept at or below 3 mites per 100 honey bees.

Above this metric then treatment options are to be engaged or individual and colony health declines from the Varroa/Virus Legacy. Below this metric one can make a decision to treat or not treat.

Sampling from honey bees in the open brood area every 4-6 weeks is recommended so as varroa emerge from parasitizing honey bee worker brood, primarily, they become exposed and “disperse” looking for more honey bee larvae to reproduce on. It takes worker brood approximately 21 days to complete development so varroa that have successfully reproduced on these worker brood are also emerging every 21 days. If a queen is laying 1500-2000 eggs per day that means that 1500-2000 workers are emerging every day from 21 days ago and 1500-2000 tomorrow and the next day through the season. If these are infected at X % then those varroa are increasing their population regularly as well and increasing their % of an infestation every day.

The goal is to keep below this 3 mites per 100 threshold as safely and efficaciously as possible so the Varroa /Virus load that is horizontally transferred throughout the colony stays low as possible. Not only does this keep that colony healthier but the transfer of mites to adjacent colonies stays as low as possible and the virus infection as well.

The value of monitoring generally with mite fall using some kind of tray, board, newspaper or anything under the colony to simply see varroa mites is effectively -0-. With varroa mites being a universal parasite of honey bees in North America, monitoring this way tells you -0-. Every colony has mites and every colony will have mite drop. But it tells you nothing about the percentage of varroa in that colony. If the goal is to keep your colony healthier by controlling varroa mites safely and efficiently, that means you have to know the percentage of varroa per 100 bees so that treatment can be applied at the proper time. If not applied at the proper time then the varroa population may have grown to such an extent that horizontal virus transfer has made progress and colony health will decrease and it may be on the way to a varroa bomb. If treatment is made when varroa levels are below the threshold, then that allows varroa to move forward with resistance to some treatments, and can cause additional stress to the colony directly when it is not warranted or expected to lead to secondary infections of other organisms and waste of money and time for the beekeeper.

Let me use an example that you can fine tune but if you are a farmer this will make sense. To grow the most valuable crop you have to treat with fungicides, miticides, and pesticides at times. But, you don’t make treatment decisions by looking on the orchard floor. You or a crop consultant physically walk through the orchard, look at trees and leaves, take samples and see what level of infection or infestation there might be and use that to make a treatment decision. You would lose profit and value if you just treated based on some calendar date or amorphous input of the leaves that fell off and now on the ground. It might work sometime but it won’t work all the time. You want production consistency and sampling and treating and sampling again is the proven successful method.

No different with managed honey bee health. We want consistency in healthy honey bee production and not guessing. Simply because more healthy bees are better than less healthy honey bees. And the only way to do that is alcohol or powdered sugar sampling so you know when to treat and what to treat with. Welcome to 2019.

I am working with some researchers on varroa control options. One of the things they wanted was LIVE varroa from multiple locations in the U.S. I have done this before from my colonies but have used powdered sugar as the removal agent to get live varroa mites. My problem with this method is/was humidity in my location in summer. The moisture in the air makes the powdered sugar clump up and makes it not as effective when you are trying to shake the sampling jar around and you have these powdered sugar lumps in it. It doesn’t help remove mites and it beats up the bees. What to do, what to do. I remembered seeing an advertisement for a device in Europe that uses C02 to anesthetize the bees and the varroa and remove them for sampling to determine treatment timing without killing the bee colony sampling biopsy taken. It is the same principle used for collecting honey bees in a container for an alcohol wash or powdered sugar shake, only there is a valve arrangement that uses one of those small, small cylinders of C02 that are sold for pellet guns and racing bike tire inflating. I found one and bought it.

Collecting bees and temporarily anesthetizing them, it works like a charm. It puts the honey bees and varroa asleep. And after a bit of shaking you can get some varroa to fall off. They wake up in a few minutes. The bees wake up in a few minutes as well. It is very cool.

I was thinking, it does remove some mites but is it removing as many as an alcohol wash? If you are sampling for varroa to ascertain when to treat, is it as accurate as the alcohol wash? If it is, great. If it isn’t and is giving false readings, then that jeopardizes colonies as treatment might be withheld or delayed.

So, what I did was use the C02 sampling method and device on only 2 colonies in my backyard. After the C02 sampling, I took that same sample of bees before they woke up from the C02 anesthetic and did a standard alcohol wash. On the 2 colonies I did this on, I got an additional 50% more mites. Be aware that this is not a peer-reviewed research article and was conducted in Jerry’s backyard on 2 colonies. Simply think about the C02 sampling method possibly might give you lower mite removal levels than would allow for an accurate varroa sampling and treatment decision to be made.