Queen-Breeding v. Importing

Discussions over this matter can become very impassioned. If you are solely interested in strong colonies for gathering honey or pollinating orchards, i.e you have a commercial outlook, you have probably not got time to deal with breeding queens and/or swarm control. You want your bees working in strength from March onwards (remember the years before global warming when it used to be from April onwards?). Hence the bee farmer prefers queens that build up early and stay the course, and he usually replaces them every year. Also, queens tend not to swarm in their first full year - although our first colony, with a new queen bred by Bill Burgess, did - every rule has an exception !! However a risk associated with importing bees is that of introducing exotic diseases or unknown viruses. As an example - we were allowed, not long ago, to import queens from New Zealand. Now NZ has both varroa and Kashmir Bee Virus (KBV); the latter originally thought not to be a problem before the advent of varroa.

However Dr Brenda Ball (originally of Rothamsted) says ‘... KBV is the most virulent virus bees have known. Only about 100 particles of virus are required for infection and its rapid replication rate leads to death within three days. Before the arrival of varroa, the two or three viruses in Britain had never been found responsible for bee mortality in nature.

“The danger is not that KBV will cause disease on its own, but that varroa will activate KBV and spread it through British hives. In the United States, scientists recently reported the first case of KBV killing a colony (Ref 2) which was also infested by varroa.’ (Ref 1)

Importing queens from NZ is no longer allowed. The question is - what diseases or viruses might be brought in from those countries from which imports are still allowed – diseases or viruses which have no effect on the bees there, because they do not have varroa.

Dr Norman Carrick (also originally of Rothamsted) says ‘Varroa alone has no significant effect. It does not affect either the maturation of larvae into workers or the life span of those workers. But varroa can activate viruses that normally lie dormant in the bees and, once awoken, a virus can multiply, kill the entire hive and spread to other colonies .........’ (Ref 1)

2005 BBKA Annual Delegates Meeting

In January 2005 the following proposition was passed—That BBKA carry out a feasibility study of developing a national queen-rearing registration project (Ref 3). The risk of importing disease with Queens was one of the reasons put forward by Devon BKA for the project.

In January 2006 the Executive gave a lengthy report-back which was summarised on page 28 of the Cheshire BKA Year Book for 2006 as follows- There is conflict between needing good-quality home-bred bees, commercial re-queening annually with imported queens, the risk of importing exotic diseases, bad temper resulting from cross-breeding with local bees, poor queen-breeding and fertility from Varroa treatment. Refer to the October 2005 BBKA News (Ref 4) and the BBKA website for further information.

The article by Glyn Davies (P.Pres. BBKA) (Ref 4) is also lengthy but the salient points are in the 1st sentence of the 2nd paragraph:-

1. The official BBKA position opposes the annual re-queening of colonies with imported bees.

2. The long term risks of importing exotic diseases.

3. Unpredictable mating with local bees risks causing a severe decline in our national stocks.

An additional and important point is made in the 5th paragraph which states that attempts are being made in the UK to selectively breed bees that are resistant to varroa. Some success has been noted but obviously cross-breeding with imported stocks will jeopardize the work. Glyn comments that at a local Association microscopy meeting in the SW he found that 2 out of 12 mites in his monitoring tray had been damaged by the bees. He went on to suggest that Area Associations investigate the presence of ‘resistant bees’ in their area.

Cheshire BKA policy

At its meeting on the 14th April 2007 the Cheshire BKA Committee agreed unanimously to support the official BBKA policy which opposes importing queens from abroad.

References

1. House of Commons Library Standard Note SN/SC/446 - Bees & Varroa by Christopher Barclay (Science & Environment)

2. Independent 5 February 1999 - Invasion of Killer Bees.

3. Minutes of 2005 ADM - Executive Actions - Page 1.

4. October 2005 BBKA News - Page 5

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