BCBBA PROPOSAL FOR THE FUTURE
Producing a Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH) Honey Bee for a Comprehensive Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Program

“The other thing to keep in mind is that there is no special bee that can be plugged into our current unhealthy system of beekeeping and solve all these problems (honey bee health, weather, and economics). Only by working on breeding and management together in a constantly evolving system will these problems be solved.” Kirk Webster, American Beekeeping Journal, November 2007, Vol 147, No 11.

Since it’s arrival to British Columbia over a decade ago, the parasitic Varroa mite has proven itself to be our apiarists’ greatest challenge. This project will bring together superior bee breeding stock to trial in BC’s climate in conjunction with developing a practical Integrated Pest Management IPM program. Mite resistant bees without the support of proven management techniques to keep Varroa mites at bay will not be successful. Additionally, these bees must prove hardy to survive in our unique provincial environment. Mite resistant bees are not a magic bullet, but a step towards sustainability. The future of successful beekeeping is managing regionally suitable bees without an over-reliance on chemical miticides.

Kettle Valley Queens is looking at two more years to further develop the 2006 – 2008 Queen Testing Project. To make this happen, the BC Honey Producers’ Association BCHPA and the BC Bee Breeders’ Association BCBBA have been asked to partner in the continuation of this project. We will apply to BIDI for the balance of the funding. In-kind donations will come from Kettle Valley Queens, the BCBBA, and Beaverlodge Research Station.

Mite resistant bees have been observed to carry various traits that help them keep Varroa levels down. These include producing brood only when stimulated by honey and pollen flows (resource sensitivity), shorter brood capping period, hygienic behavior, longer phoretic period, grooming, low attractiveness of the honey bee larvae to Varroa mites and Varroa sensitive hygiene (VSH).

This project will focus on the VSH trait. “In VSH colonies, a large percentage of the Varroa population is not reproductive, and so mite infestations either decrease or increase only slowly.” (Ward, Danka, Ward. Ecol. Ent. 101,(3):654-659 (2008). The VSH trait suppresses mite reproduction. The response is delayed. The reduction of mite reproduction takes time to occur and to verify. Results typically are observed two months after the new VSH queen has been introduced. The test for it is made by observing the proportion of mites that fail to reproduce. 

We propose acquiring inseminated 100% VSH bee breeding stock from Alberta’s Beaverlodge Research Station (imported from the USDA lab) to test alongside bees from the BC QTP and pure Russian colonies. We will look at Varroa resistance and economically important traits such as overwintering, spring build-up and honey production.

“VSH bees showed strong Varroa resistance in short-term tests during development of the trait. Selection and breeding have been focused mainly on Varroa resistance, however the general performance of VSH bees remains unclear.” (Ward et al., 2008)  While this strain of VSH bees developed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana shows promise, clearly there’s further selection required. We would like to find how the USDA VSH strain performs under BC winter conditions. We also want to trial a percentage of the colonies in the project to go untreated to see which colonies exhibit PMS and varroatosis susceptibility.

We intend to initiate a test for measuring honey bee grooming ability. We realize it’s important to develop a stock that is not a ‘one trait wonder’. Therefore we will continue to look for colonies with other desirable traits such as grooming.

Our project will endeavour to educate bee breeders throughout BC on how the test for VSH and grooming.  In turn, they can test their stock for these varroa resistant traits. We will conduct a Field Day and write two articles in the provincial beekeeping journal, BeesCene, describing the tests and our results.

In conclusion this project proposes to test the overwintered BC QTP bee stock for VSH and grooming traits. For comparison, 100 hives will be set-up to be assayed over a two-year period. These baseline colonies will be comprised of Beaverlodge’s imported USDA VSH strain, and the well-regarded Russian bee stock. At the end of the day, we will have empirical proof supporting which bee strain is the best choice for sustainable beekeeping in our province.

May 2009 Update: Please note that this proposal is under consideration, but due to time restraints, may be delayed until the 2010 season.