Check out those sneaky mites!

Connor, Ben & Catherine, did you face any challenges during your work with these ‘SUPER ORGANISMS’?

Connor considers bees to be ‘SUPER ORGANISMS’ and starts by saying, every year there is some challenge or the other. One year it’s seasonal issues, then the next year there is a drought; every year there is a new unique problem. One of the major challenges though is related to queen issues, specifically, queen reproduction issues. Some years colonies can be ‘queenless’. Connor mentions how this year they ran various workshops to teach how to produce queens. Sometimes they must juggle or merge colonies to manage queens for hives. It is also very much dependent on the environment, and sometimes colony collapse can happen. Overall, Connor says, based on his experience, quite often issues just pop up, sometimes randomly, and they must deal with the symptoms.

Ben considers varroa mites as one of the biggest challenges. He mentions how we really need to have bees to be healthy in the fall as that’s when they make winter bees, and those winter bees need to be healthy to survive the harsh winter. A couple of months of forward thinking helps. Further, in the case of integrated pest management hives need to be regularly sampled to control the mites. One must really look for them hard as they hide, attached to the underside of the bees. We must turn bees over to check for varroa mites. In fact, Ben says, when you see the mites on the back of bees that means the undersides are full, and there are loads of mites. These mites on the back are looking for more space and looking for new bees and trying to go to other colonies. So, if mites are noticed on the back of bees, it is way too late for mite control, and that colony probably won’t survive.

Connor reiterates the essential point that we have to control and monitor the mite levels, Treatments need to be administered before mite levels are too high!

Catherine takes us to a different route and points out that one of the challenges in their work is the lack of trust and communication between the different stakeholders in the beekeeping industry. For example, environmental groups might say honeybees are bad for native bees, which beekeepers don’t like, thinking they are sabotaging their business. As a science lab, Catherine mentions they’re trying to interpret the data and make informed and objective decisions. She believes everyone involved cares deeply about the bee-related issues, and it would be great if all stakeholders communicate and listen to each other, so all can work towards a common goal, and understand and care about nature.

That is so true Catherine, hope we can all work together for the better good.

She concludes by saying when she thinks of bees, one word that comes to her mind is SYNERGISM. Beekeeping requires synergy as it is a cumulative sum of all individual actions.