2/12/2024 0 Comments Drone bee framesShe lays singular eggs in 30 hour increments under capped brood cells where the mites feed off of the blood of the growing bee pupae. The small, blind female mite uses odor to invade a cell 0-18 hours prior to it being capped. Looking at the life cycle and reproductive cycle of a mite, helps to further understand why mites are such a threat and problem to our honey bees. So when they say the mite is a vector for disease, it all starts to make sense. This type of comparison, although rather disgusting to think about makes it easy to see how the bee’s social lifestyle spreads disease quickly within a hive. Can you imagine having a sore on the back of your hand, going into a restaurant where the waitress that serves you food has a similar lesion and has been in contact for the past month with others that have the same type of sores? We would demand health officials to take action and terminate this unsafe practice. When a mite bites a bee, they make a wound that is relatively speaking the size of an open sore on the back of a beekeepers hand. So, let’s look at mites as they relate to this project. For a long term solution, humans might be able to help the bees speed up the process of dealing with them and that is where we start. The spread of mites could be attributed to humans but we are probably not going to be able to eradicate them. Most of these factors are not only inter-related but human created, controlled, and fixable if we choose to find a balance point to do so except mites. It is my belief that there is not just one but several stress factors impacting bees: nutrition, pesticides, genetics, mites, and disease. Why in the world would you want to do this? Through a serious of small articles, you can follow my logic as we look at the importance of drones and why I think they are often overlooked and forgotten in the grand scheme of the bee world. Recently, I was selected and funded for a small research grant project to look at using drone frame trapping to control mites while raising those drones to maturity for mating purposes.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |