Jackie Elliott’s Guest Blog: Science Matters.

Introduction.

I want to welcome Jackie to the Beelistener this week and thank her for contributing. Jackie lives in Ayrshire on the south west coast of Scotland and not too far from where our national poet Robert Burns (born January 25th, 1759) farmed. Jackie’s been keeping bees for a few years now and has gained her Scottish Expert Beemaster Certificate. Interested in the science behind beekeeping, Jackie has set up a website to enable beekeepers to more easily access science- based information, management strategies and best practice in beekeeping,

http://www.scientificbeekeeping.co.uk/

Jackie likes to dig and delve into scientific papers to glean information, and this blog is a result of some of her work following our trip to Northern Ireland in February for the Ulster Beekeepers’ convention.

Over to Jackie.

Thank you, Ann, for inviting me to be a guest on your blog.  We very much enjoyed our visit to the Ulster Beekeepers’ Convention back in the middle of February and were both impressed by Flemming Vejsnæs whom I had intended to write about but as usual I became sidetracked.

Flemming Vejsnæs is an employee of the Danish Beekeepers Association and was well liked by his audience with his quick wit and tongue which may have been a bit risqué for some of the conservative beekeepers of Northern Ireland. He believes that the Scandinavian countries can expect to be one of the few winners with the effects of global warning.  He clearly leans towards using technology in beekeeping and is involved with the application myhivelog which, as the name suggests, is a tool for recording hive activity / status.

Nosema.

His most outstanding accomplishment must be his work towards eradicating nosema from Danish honey Bees. I quote from a paper, link provided at the end:

“Nosema decimated hives in the not too distant past, creating serious economic woes for beekeepers. Ten years ago, queen breeders started fighting back against the disease. In early spring, breeders collected 60 bees from successfully overwintered potential breeder colonies. Research scientists analyzed these samples at a central laboratory, permitting the detection of very slight nosema infections without clinical symptoms. If the lab discovers nosema symptoms in any of the bees, the beekeeper drops that colony from his breeding program.  This system of only breeding from tested nosema-free colonies has proved very beneficial. “ *

I then happened onto the abstracts for the from the Nordic-Baltic Bee Apicultural Research Symposium meeting at Riga in 2018; so many interesting snippets of information that need further exploration. Here are four abridged abstracts from the Symposium that caught my eye.

Surveillance.

1. The Danish network of surveillance apiaries

Ole Kilpinen and Flemming Vejsnæs

Danish Beekeepers Association

“Under the EU honey program, we have initiated a network of surveillance apiaries. The aim of the project is to motivate Danish beekeepers to be more attentive to their bees with respect to diseases and the general health status. We also want to take on the responsibility of monitoring for invasive species in Denmark. At the moment, this involves the small hive beetle Aethina thumida (sic), and the Asian hornet, Vespa velutina.

The aim was to establish 50 surveillance apiaries evenly distributed in Denmark, but there has been lots of interest in the project and at the moment we have 62 apiaries involved. All of them are equipped with small hive beetle traps, wasp traps, forceps, magnifiers etc. During the first year of the project, the participants were asked to put up traps at monthly intervals. Besides trap catches they were asked to look for diseases like chalk brood, sack (sic) brood, deformed wing virus and dysentery. They were also asked to monitor the Varroa prevalence as well as the general health status of the bee colonies. Due to a late start only two observation periods were carried through. Luckily, there were no observations of invasive pests and only very few signs of diseases.

For the coming two seasons we will hopefully have many more observations so that we can obtain a better understanding of how the different diseases and pests changes over the season.”

Bee Health.

2. Bee health, pathogens and neonicotinoids: What is real and what is not?

Julia Goss, Dimitry Wintermantel, Barbara Locke, Ove Jonsson, Emilia Semberg, Eva Forsgren, Peter Rosenkranz, Thorsten Rahbek Pedersen, Riccardo Bommarco, Henrik G. Smith, Maj Rundlöf, Joachim R. de Miranda

“Synergistic interactions between multiple stressors have been suspected to cause elevated honeybee colony losses, particularly in the Northern hemisphere. Under laboratory conditions neonicotinoid insecticides reduce immune responses and increase pathogen and parasite levels and virulence in honeybees, but the field-level impact of such interactions on honeybee colonies is unclear. We examined the prevalence and amounts of the parasite Varroa destructor, two microsporidian parasites Nosema ceranae and Nosema apis, 13 viruses and two symbiotic gut bacteria, Gilliamella apicola and Snodgrassella alvi in honeybee colonies placed in fields of spring sown oilseed rape sown either with or without clothianidin coated seeds. Although seed treatment was shown to expose honeybees to clothianidin both directly and through foraged pollen and nectar, this exposure had no major effect on honeybee colony development, nor on the prevalence/amounts of pathogens and symbiotic microbes or the expression of several genes related to the honeybee innate immune response during the first season of exposure. However, in the second season, Black queen cell virus titres and Varroa destructor infestation rates increased faster at control fields than at clothianidin-treated fields while the reverse was true for the levels of the symbiotic gut microbe Gilliamella apicola. The results suggest that at colony-level, honeybees are relatively robust to the effects of clothianidin on colony development, immune health and pathogen susceptibility when under low disease pressure in field.”

Pesticides and Poisoning.

3. Residues of pesticides and Pyrrolizidine alkaloids in Danish honey

Asger Søgaard Jørgensen

Danish Beekeepers Association asj@biavl.dk

“In the projects “Production of monofloral honey in Denmark” we got funding to have some samples analysed for residues of pesticides and Pyrrolizidine alkaloids during the seasons 2016 and 2017.

The climatic conditions in 2016 and 2017 did not favour the production of monofloral honeys.

In 2016 we collected a total of 64 honey samples that the beekeepers claimed were collected to be monofloral honey. Only 10 were approved as monofloral by the Laboratory at the Bee Institute in Celle, Germany. 2017 only 24 samples were analysed, 10 were approved.

The reduction in number of honeys collected reflects the change in the focus of the project. In 2016 we realised that there were problems with residues of pesticides and Pyrrolizidine alkaloids in some honeys. So, we changed the project focus and had all the honeys collected in 2017 analysed, not only for quality and if they were monofloral, but also a full programme of analyses for residues of pesticides and Pyrrolizidine alkaloids.

Still we found some problems and even quite big residues in some rapeseed honey of Clopyralid.

Together with the agricultural organisation, Ministry of environment, and even the company marketing the project, an action plan has been developed to mitigate the problem.

During the meeting I will present some of the results and the action plan.”

How ironic that when I looked up Clopyralid it was described as ideal for

killing dandelions, clover and thistle, three wonderful bee food sources.

Beeswax.

4. Beeswax contamination and adulteration

Preben Kristiansen

Swedish Beekeepers Association preben.kristiansen@apinordica.se preben.kristiansen@jordbruksverket.se

“Within the framework of the National Apicultural Program a number of Swedish wax samples has been analysed since 1998. Until a few years ago the samples were mainly analysed for chemical substances used for varroa control. Most of the samples have been analysed by the Bee Institute in Hohenheim, but some have been analysed by Intertek in Bremen. Tau-fluvalinate (the active substance in Apistan) and thymol are the substances that most commonly have been detected in Swedish wax.

Between 2011 and 2014, the Swedish National Food Agency found low levels of the antibiotic substance chloramphenicol in honey from four different Swedish beekeepers. A possible reason for the findings could be contamination from beeswax containing chloramphenicol. Therefore, we collected 18 wax samples and sent them to Intertek in Germany to get them analysed for that. None of the samples contained chloramphenicol.

In recent years we have had problems with scarcity of wax in Swedish beekeeping. This has led to an increasing import of wax. Some of the Swedish manufactures of comb foundation have made sure that samples have been sent for analyses before importing the wax, that they have been offered to buy. The analyses have been done by Intertek in Bremen (contamination) and Ceralyse in Celle (adulteration). A number of the samples has contained very high levels of foreign chemical substances and some have contained paraffin. Such wax has not been imported.

However, we know that at least one batch of adulterated wax foundation has been imported by a Swedish wholesaler of beekeeping equipment and sold in Sweden. We also know that some Swedish beekeepers have bought fake comb foundation from the internet shopping site Wish. Information about this situation and how to handle adulterated wax has been given in the beekeeper magazines and on the websites of the organisations. We thus hope to avoid such wax to be used for future production of comb foundation, but we cannot exclude that problems with adulterated wax are going to increase.

In order to ensure that comb foundation sold in Sweden is as pure as possible, it has been discussed to establish a quality assurance standard and system in cooperation between the beekeeper organisations and wax foundation manufactures.”

Native Dark Bees: Apis mellifera mellifera.

My final destination on this internet journey was a paper produced in 2014 entitled:  Status and Conservation of the Nordic Brown Bee: Final Report.***   Researchers from  Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Latvia, Finland and Iceland came together to  put together this report and some of its conclusions were very interesting. It stated that Amm (Apis mellifera mellifera) bees need to be managed / handled in a different manner, see the illustration below.

A few thoughts in conclusion: What is wrong with the funding approach in Scotland for honey bee research, and how can the Danish Beekeeper’s association afford to employ someone of Fleming’s calibre? Should we align ourselves more with the Nordic countries who experience an environment and climate more similar to ours? Can we learn anything from the Nordic Amm breeding programme? Finally, why do they call their Amm the native brown bee, is there a genetic difference, are all Amm equal?

* https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kirsten_Traynor/publication/296768434_Bee_breeding_around_the_world/links/5c51678992851c22a39a5e11/Bee-breeding-around-the-world.pdf?origin=publication_detail

** https://beescanning.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Program_NBBC_NBARS_2018_RIGA.pdf

*** https://www.nordgen.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/BrownBeeReport2014NordGen.pdf