BEYOND THE HIVE
Whether it is “fair” to the bees to leave them defenseless is only a small part of the controversy; the larger and more problematic question is what to do with a collapsing colony. When a colony begins to collapse from excessive varroa
load, two separate processes help the mites migrate from the collapsing colony into a healthy colony. According to Peck and Seeley,1
the most important process is robbing by work-
ers from a healthy colony. As a varroa-weakened colony loses the strength to defend itself, it becomes a lure for other bees that steal the honey and inadvertently carry mites and their associated viruses back home. In addition, bees that drift be- tween colonies within an apiary can further aid the migration. Many beekeepers who treat, as well as some breeders and queen producers, decry collapsing colonies as no better than - wards others. On the other hand, those who champion treat- ment-free methods are convinced that unless we stop treat- ing, we will never solve the varroa problem. They believe that unless we force the bees to confront the mites with genetic resistance, they will never evolve the means to control them.
Culling the Weak The middle ground is simple in principle but hard to implement: destroy the colonies that show no sign of mite resistance before they begin to drift and spread disease else- where. The problem, of course, is deciding when to call it. How many bees are allowed to drift and infect others before you make the ultimate decision? None of it is easy. I met Chuck over lunch at a treatment-free seminar. He
had been trying to establish treatment-free stock for six years, but his apiary died back to nothing every fall. He admitted that culling colonies was his donnybrook. “I just can’t do it,” he said quietly. “I give them one more week to overcome the mites, and then another. In the end, they all abscond and everybody dies.”
Protecting Other Pollinators One of the greatest fears of those concerned with biodi-
versity is the potential damage that virus-laden varroa mites can do to other species. Due to the unique brood cycle of honey bees, it is virtually impossible that any non-Apis bee could harbor varroa mites themselves, but viruses are a dif- ferent story. In fact, collateral damage from varroa has al- ready been found in some species of bumble bees. Recent work by Alger et al. (2019)2
showed that two spe-
cies of bumble bees foraging near apiaries where honey bees had high viral loads were often infected with both deformed wing virus (DWV) and black queen cell virus (BQCV). Bum- ble bees foraging away from apiaries were virus-free. In ad- - aries were found to contain the viruses as well, making the Bear in mind that this study looked at just two of the more than 3,500 species of bees found in North America. It is certainly possible that other species of bees, and perhaps
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