# Darwinian black box selection for resistance Varroa destructor



## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

Wow, that study makes two false claims in just its abstract. Makes you wonder if the authors even bothered reading the literature before they wrote it...or if they've ever picked up an introductory textbook on evolution.

The very idea that you can somehow divorce breeding from evolutionary pressure is...ascientific to be polite about it. 



Alex Madsen said:


> The only remedy for apiculture, to date, is frequent control measures against the mite throughout the season, which prevents possible adaptations.


Yeah, that's not how evolution works. Unless you are continually treating your hives, or otherwise ensuring that they have no mite load at all times, than they are exposed to selective pressure from the mites. Less than with no treatment, but less does not equal zero. 

There is literally a whole area of evolutionary science, with thousands of trained experts around the world, who address the role of evolution in animal and plant breeding...how is it a study could write about evolution in the breeding of an animal and not cite a single resource from a massive and relevant area of scientific investigation?



Alex Madsen said:


> While targeted breeding efforts have, so far, not achieved the selection of tolerant or resistant bees


Wasn't true even 9 years ago: https://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/full_html/2010/03/m09127/m09127.html

I'm wondering where they think the various VSH, Russian and other resistant strains came from?



Alex Madsen said:


> Here, we call for local groups of beekeepers and scientists to join a novel natural selection program that has started so far on three locations.
> 
> 
> > So a group who doesn't appear to understand evolution, and who had to ignore a lot of published science to write an abstract, wants to recruit you and your apiary to take part in their work...count me out!
> ...


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

Thanks for the link! Deb


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

wellp I have been waiting to see peoples response.

My feeling this is rehashed "death cult" gibberish full of 1/2 truths and research miscartiurstion. The plan of "let them die and split what lives" has failed consistently with only a few notitabul exceptions. By failed I mean failed to create an economically viable genetic line. 

If "nature" was the answer, Tom Seeley would be millionuer queen producer selling Arnot forest queens. You don't see Gotland or Avignon bees on the market either...Much talked about in studys and papers...but they don't work when moved and or are aggressive and or don't make much honey. I am not saying these populations can't be a source of traites for a real breeding program. But nature hasn't given us a bee we want to work 

What HAS worked is human selection based on objective metrics and (most importunately) the grafting tool. VHS, USDA Russian, Purdue Mite Bitters, and John Keffus' bees all come to mind.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

There is an unshakable conviction in some circles that a varroa resistant gene is magically hiding in the honey bee genome just waiting for everyone to stop treating so that it can emerge. 
If humans stopped keeping bees, eventually…..and I’m talking over eons…..a range of possible results might happen. Honey bees might go extinct. Or, if they somehow coped with the parasite, a successful coexistence might emerge. In that case the resulting bee would surely be a considerably different animal than the bees we keep today.
Just my opinion .


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## sjj (Jan 2, 2007)

msl said:


> But nature hasn't given us a bee we want to work


Besides, nature hasn't given the bee a Varroa the bee deslikes very strongly.


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

beemandan said:


> There is an unshakable conviction in some circles that a varroa resistant gene is magically hiding in the honey bee genome just waiting for everyone to stop treating so that it can emerge.


Given the general trends we see in nature, far more likely outcomes than emergence of a resistance gene in bees are:


Adaptation of varroa to bees, leading to the emergence of a less pathogenic form of varroa
Extinction of honey bees
Replacement of European honey bees by either asiatic or hybrid bees


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## Alex Madsen (Aug 26, 2018)

SuiGeneris said:


> Given the general trends we see in nature, far more likely outcomes than emergence of a resistance gene in bees are:
> 
> 
> Adaptation of varroa to bees, leading to the emergence of a less pathogenic form of varroa
> ...


Early data from Randy Oliver would seem to be testing this hypothesis and is putting them in doubut. 

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/selective-breeding-for-mite-resistance-walking-the-walk/


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## Alex Madsen (Aug 26, 2018)

msl said:


> What HAS worked is human selection based on objective metrics and (most importunately) the grafting tool. VHS, USDA Russian, Purdue Mite Bitters, and John Keffus' bees all come to mind.


Perhaps I am mistaken, didn't Russian bees result from a Darwinian selection in the Primorsky Krai region of Russia without objective metrics?


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

The USDA Russian stock went threw years of selective breeding state side to enhance the base stocks natural resistance and extensively used breeder queens and grafting, on top of that I think its foolish to beleave that Primorsky beekeepers didn't selectively breed bees. 

The methods outlined in the paper are poor and ignore bee basics 
They have chosen about the worst way to produce queen.
If you split all your strong hives 5 ways, were are the "good" drones coming from
if you split your strong hives, how do you run full sized hives for honey, and see what works?-Most stocks can be kept split and small, make little honey do to size and live with mites https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/fne16-840/ shows this well side note poor performing queens keeping the population down may help as well... but none of this has a gentnice effect.... sure your not using cems, but you proping up poor stock just the same. 

If the keeper dose happen to get a great resistant queen, they are not going to see it do to the small hives, and they are not going to have the skills to propagate it on a scale that would make a difrance.. her daughters and grand daughters genetics get washed out in a sea of advage drones


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Alex Madsen said:


> Early data from Randy Oliver would seem to be testing this hypothesis and is putting them in doubut.


There isn’t anything in Randy Oliver’s methods that hasn’t been done in countless other professional bee breeding programs over the past few decades. Those programs have teased out every genetic trait to improve varroa tolerance/resistance that currently exists in the EHB genome.
I like much of what Randy Oliver does but I think his queen selection program is mainly a means to promote his brand. 
All…just my opinion.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Alex Madsen said:


> Perhaps I am mistaken, didn't Russian bees result from a *Darwinian selection* in the Primorsky Krai region of Russia without objective metrics?


NO.
Not in 200 years the bees were introduced there.

YES.
Some adaptation phenomenon did occurs and *has been occuring *as we speak.
Which is probably rather a norm, granted many other examples.
Just a not understood norm; not trivialized "Darwinian selection".

No one really knows the stuff.
They just keep talking as if they know something (either *for *or *against*).
Like I have been saying - lots of "smart people say lots of smart words"....... (I better stop here anymore, not to repeat myself).

Meanwhile, the original Far Eastern bees have been doing fine.
.... (the officials and the official science tell to treat them too - last I checked; the bees are doing fine despite the official "party policy").
There is so much of empirical evidence - not sure what else is left to say.
The "experts" should figure it out.

PS: 
I am also getting tired of talking of the Bashkortostan wild bees 
........................(PS: these are largely the original, "old", long-term wild bees - NOT a "new", recently formed hybrid as in "Russian Far Eastern" stock - just to make this clear)..........

the process is happening in front of our own eyes (the "scientists" - get in there and study - it is all right there and right now);
the local bee tree runners there are NOT concerned of the mites anymore after 50 years of the "screaming wolf" by the officials and the official science;
the locals are concerned with the importations of the outside bees that pollute the indigenous stock - that is the true issue on hand at the moment for them.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> I am also getting tired of talking of the Bashkortostan wild bees





> he local bee tree runners there are NOT concerned of the mites anymore after 50 years of the "screaming wolf" by the officials and the official science


A great bedtime story, but I am not so sure why you think they are so shiny 

2014 the preserve had almost 500,000 acres, 300 active bee tree hives, 900 empty ones
Then there were the 4,000 modern frame hives in the same area and stock. that shockingly(lol) , needed treatments 
Ilyasov, Rustem. (2015). Burzyan wild-hive honeybee A. m. mellifera in South Ural. The Beekeepers Quarterly. 119. 25-33. 

I think it shows Darwin beekeeping at its best inch: works great till you want to keep your numbers up, move out of an isolated preserve, or an get an economical harvest..
same story over and over and over.
move the stock, and or put it in a modern hive and you end up needing to treat to prevent colaspace... same story over and over and over.
just like Seeleys work, just like Gotland and Avignon just like Ross conrads SARE work, just like the COMB program.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

SuiGeneris said:


> [*]Adaptation of varroa to bees, leading to the emergence of a less pathogenic form of varroa


I was at one of the talks Apimodia by a fella doing genetic analysis of the difference between one of the so called 'wild varroa tolerant' populations, and comparing it to a managed population. They could find no differences in the bees. At the same time, they had done genetic analysis of the mites, and found a couple dramatic differences between the mites in the wild population vs those in the managed population.

The bees have not adapted in that case, the mites are the ones who adapted. It's more likely that there was little adaptation in the timeframe, just selection for less virulent mites because those are the ones who's host colonies survived.


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

I don't know if the following will help, or just serve to muddy the waters ... but there is a fairly new branch of Biology called 'Epigenetics', And although the term has been in use for a good while in the sense of "the study of changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than alteration of the genetic code itself", which is what I understood the term to mean back in my undergrad days - since around the 1990's it has come to mean: "*the study of heritable phenotype changes that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence*" - which re-definition represents a whole new Biological ball-game.

Beekeepers are of course familiar with the epigenetic development which changes what would otherwise be a Queen Bee into a Worker Bee (or vice-versa) by virtue of the larva being fed a different diet, whilst the DNA genetic code remains unchanged in both organisms. However, that epigenetic development is a 'one-time' event, and is non-reversible.

In contrast, a Nobel Prize has just been awarded to three scientists(*) who discovered how cells *sense and adapt* to oxygen levels 'on the fly', so to speak, and it's this reversible mechanism which I find particularly exciting, and which might possibly have implications for short-term adaptations in honeybees. Perhaps.

The scientists discovered that a specific cluster of proteins changed the way in which DNA was expressed. In turn, cells which were affected by the changed behaviour produced another protein which reduced the production of the first cluster of proteins, thus forming a regulatory negative-feedback system which was controlled - in the case being studied - by oxygen levels. So that when a low level of oxygen was detected, more red blood cells were created in order to compensate for the low level of ambient O2. The important point here being that the DNA of the individuals concerned remained unaltered. 

So - assuming for a moment that this type of mechanism is more widely used across all species (which I accept can only be speculation for now), then biological adjustments of all kinds could be occurring - without DNA mutations ever taking place. Such adjustments are undoubtedly reversible, but whether they are heritable or not remains anyone's guess (imo).

It was Lamarck who, around 1800, proposed that environmental influences were responsible for altering an organism's heritable phenotype, but his ideas were to be rejected in favour of Darwinism. Who knows, perhaps epigenetic transgenerational inheritance will eventually demonstrate that 'the truth' lies somewhere within both theories ... ?

LJ

(*) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-49959737


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

If anyone else is like me regarding Epigenetics (i.e. floundering around in the dark, unaware of recent developments within this field), there are a couple of useful Wikipedia entries on the subject - or if you have the appetite for a really in-depth read, then there's a very good (imo) and up-to-date (2018) write-up in the 'Frontiers of Molecular Neuroscience': https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnmol.2018.00292/pdf (free download).

LJ


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> A great bedtime story.....


Let me remind you, MSL, the honey harvested from those few bee trees is marketed at about 3-4 times the generic, industrial honey.
They are always sold out.
More is not better.
Bigger is not better.
Applicable to honey also (why lag a ton of honey, if a bucket gets you the same return?). 

The real problem the tree operators face - fake bee tree honey.
Now that really undercuts the bee tree business.

Besides, I am puzzled by the common desire to pursue these mega-crops of honey (which then require you to scale in numbers and in sizes).
Time to rethink the entire marketing idea around the bees - long overdue.
It is much smarter to market little things for a lot of money - not truck around huge volumes for little money.
Who needs more honey in 21st century? 
People do not need more honey. 
Unsure why keep thinking as in 19th century still.

PS: the nearby industrial bee yards will collapse without treatments - who argues; 
the same old generic issues - overcrowding, imported bees, managing for maximum crop (industrial honey is cheap - they have to push volumes)...
nothing new - issues are similar to the US big operators;

All the while the tree bees are never treated and are mite-infested since 1970s.
And btw, I already mentioned this (probably in the primitive beekeeping talks) - there is now opinion of the tree bees improving the surrounding industrial bees (in many beneficial traits). Yep - that the exact same feral bee population talk as in the US.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

little_john said:


> If anyone else is like me regarding Epigenetics (i.e. floundering around in the dark, unaware of recent developments within this field), there are a couple of useful Wikipedia entries on the subject - or if you have the appetite for a really in-depth read, then there's a very good (imo) and up-to-date (2018) write-up in the 'Frontiers of Molecular Neuroscience': https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnmol.2018.00292/pdf (free download).
> 
> LJ


Here is a related read:



> Why the Earth Has Fewer Species Than We Think
> A primer on the epigenome.


http://nautil.us/issue/63/horizons/why-the-earth-has-fewer-species-than-we-think


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> PS: the nearby industrial bee yards will collapse without treatments - who argues;
> the same old generic issues - overcrowding, imported bees, managing for maximum crop (industrial honey is cheap - they have to push volumes)..


kinda was my point.. In this example its the same genetics run in modern hives (in the preserve set aside to keep these bees pure) and they need treatments.. natural slection/darwin/black box has failed 

By the same token you could likely take russtian/VSH/MBB or feral stock and run them Seeley small hive style, OTS, or the suggested black box program and be successful in keeping them alive, but don't confuse that with making genetic headway toward improved resistance.
now if you can get 3-4x more for your treatment free honey, great! Indeed if that market would develop and was willing to pay a preaimun we would see a management shift... Following the shift of hormone/antibiotic free meat/milk, cage free eggs, etc


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> kinda was my point.. In this example its the same genetics run in modern hives (in the preserve set aside to keep these bees pure) and they need treatments.. natural slection/darwin/black box has failed
> 
> By the same token you could likely take russtian/VSH/MBB or feral stock and run them Seeley small hive style, OTS, or the suggested black box program and be successful in keeping them alive, but don't confuse that with making genetic headway toward improved resistance.
> *now if you can get 3-4x more for your treatment free honey, great! Indeed if that market would develop and was willing to pay a preaimun we would see a management shift... Following the shift of hormone/antibiotic free meat/milk, cage free eggs, *etc


And this is kinda my point. 

Really, the mentality of the highly productive congested feed lot is the more basic and general problem (very high parasite susceptibility is only one episode of this general issue).
We have overproduction as is and nearly half the produce goes into the trash.
We don't need overproduction anymore - being the agrarians (as beekeepers are agrarians) - we ought to be striving to work LESS and get MORE in return.
At least to me - this makes sense.
Need to develop new markets, not get caught up in the "bigger hive/more honey is better" mentality.


The entire idea of indefinitely "improving" the bees is unsustainable and a subject to the laws of diminishing returns.
As of me, bees should be largely self-managing.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> kinda was my point.. In this example its the same genetics run in modern hives (in the preserve set aside to keep these bees pure) and they need treatments.. *natural slection/darwin/black box has failed *


Now that - who are we to *definitely *state if something has failed? 
OR succeeded?
I am of the opinion that "black box" methods do work.
No need to get hang over the internal mechanics and labels and definitions (which will be debated for as long as I am alive - so not gonna worry anymore).

I think it is becoming more clear now, we should go back to the classroom and redo the entire "Darwinian evolution" demo.
It was a fine demo and made a lot of sales.
It just did not represent the real-life situation very well.


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

They have failed in the sense that we have not yet used them to generate a new strain of European bee with meaningful resistance to varroa, especially when compared with the degree of success reached by more conventional breeding techniques. Unfortunately, most of the "black box" approaches that have been used are like the one that started this article - poorly conceived, and conceived without an apparent full understanding of evolution. Its almost like evolution itself is a black box to half the people who propose these approaches...hint: drift, founder effects and gene flow are a thing, and often more power things than selection. If you "black box" doesn't use or control those factors, than your black box will not work.

The fact that this approach has been almost entirely rejected by the rest of the microorganism/plant/animal breeding world should be taken as a hint by beekeepers that there are better ways...and yet, the idea persists amongst us for some reason.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

SuiGeneris said:


> .... than your black box will not work....


Then provide a reliable "white box" every agrees upon, with no more doubts and questions left.
The last, the final, and no more research left to do.
And do it fast.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

GregV said:


> Here is a related read:
> 
> 
> http://nautil.us/issue/63/horizons/why-the-earth-has-fewer-species-than-we-think


Even more related (about "phenotypic plasticity"):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4979717/


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

GregV said:


> Then provide a reliable "white box" every agrees upon, with no more doubts and questions left.
> The last, the final, and no more research left to do.
> And do it fast.


That doesn't exist, as evolution is a thing, and varroa will inevitable evolve to counter anything we breed or build-in. But relying on outmoded, scientifically improbable methods is not the solution, and merely acts to waste resources and time. If black box solutions were going to work, they'd have worked already. They've been in-use with varroa resistance breeding programs for well over a decade...without meaningful success.

At some point you have to accept that the idea has failed and move onto other options. And there are a lot out there that have shown success. VSH/russian breeding as two examples of moderate success via conventional animal husbandry. RNAi; either as a varroacidal treatment or as a GMO as another.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> Then provide a reliable "white box" every agrees upon, with no more doubts and questions left.


welp.... I would say settle for what has proven to work repeatably. 
IE

[/U]


> "Selecting “blindly” for resistance, i.e., by using an approach that simply targets low mite infestations. This has already, however, been documented to be a viable breeding approach that has led to honey bees that now are used by both small-scale and commercial beekeepers with no or minimal acaricide input: Russian honey bees in the USA (Rinderer et al. 2010; de Guzman et al., 2007) and bees bred by John Kefuss in France (Büchler et al., 2010; Kefuss et al., 2004). Resistance in other untreated bees selected for survival may be functional but has not been documented with rigorous testing"





> Further research to determine the best IPM procedures to support the full expression of resistant phenotypes would move us more quickly toward ending reliance on acaricides.


Robert G Danka, Thomas E Rinderer, Marla Spivak, and John Kefuss-2013 Comments on: “Varroa destructor: research avenues
towards sustainable control”
The Mother of Minnesota Hygienic, The Father of Bond, The man who bought us the USDA "Russian" bees, and The Champion of VSH...
when these people talk, perhaps we should pay attention. 

Sure the DBBB "could" work, you can't prove it wont, but it has many strikes against it..
Beekeeping is a numbers game.. You can count cards... or bet it all on black.. and yes people win both ways every week, but who wins next week, or the week after?

My issue is we don't have any DBBB success stories. Dr Blacquiere has been kicking this idea around in papers for years... lots of opion papers , no field trials. Now he is calling for small scale beekeepers to fund and try it.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

msl said:


> My issue is we don't have any DBBB success stories. Dr Blacquiere has been kicking this idea around in papers for years... lots of opion papers , no field trials. Now he is calling for small scale beekeepers to fund and try it.


Treatment free/black box/hard Bond beekeeping has been sustainable, fun, low effort, and productive for me. I do seem to do quite a few things differently than other folks, and maybe I’ve just adjusted both my methods and expectations in order to make it work because I enjoy keeping bees, I don’t want to treat, and I believe that I am making a difference, albeit admittedly minuscule.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> .... Now he is calling for small scale beekeepers to fund and try it.


Trying as we speak.


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## Alex Madsen (Aug 26, 2018)

GregV I am also toying with setting up a black box program. The cost is low. The hard part is finding a sufficiently remote location in my area.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Alex Madsen said:


> GregV I am also toying with setting up a black box program. *The cost is low*. The hard part is finding a sufficiently remote location in my area.


The cost is stupid low, indeed.
Once I finally have enough equipment built-up to manage 20 unit program - it will be much less busy too (hopefully for the next season).
All equipment is from the free, dumpster-grade materials.
The bees are next to free.
Some tools and hardware are needed - not too bad.
It is just the time.

I could not afford to buy me a farmstead.
But I can handily afford to run some bees on a shoe string.

I am in the suburb to country transitional area with lots of forests/parks/preserves embedded.
Not truly remote, but not congested either (no commercial yards).
So be it.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Riverderwent said:


> Treatment free/black box/hard Bond beekeeping has been


Bond as outlined by Kefuss is incompatibly with DBBB as outlined by Blacquiere. 

Bond is selective breeding by mite counts using breeder queens and re queening the bottom 80% or so. The hope is they turn around and perform better and throw better drones

DBBB is allowing every queen that will live to live. 

Most of the time when people say they are going bond, they forget all the selection, grafting, requeening etc and realm mean something closer to DBBB, and I woud argue spliting what lives has been the down fall of many atempts



> GregV I am also toying with setting up a black box program. The cost is low


its not.... thats a lot of bees to by
rember the protocol is 


> The DBBB program can be started in spring with a population of 25–30 genetically diverse local colonies (from different beekeepers) from one region. This enables ample variation and conserves local/regional adaptation in the population


You don't DBBB a bunch of your muts you have split out from a swarm or 2 you have caught, you seek out a viraiaty of locally adapted stocks, insuring you have a good starting place


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> Bond as outlined by Kefuss is incompatibly with DBBB as outlined by Blacquiere.
> 
> Bond is selective breeding by mite counts using breeder queens and re queening the bottom 80% or so. The hope is they turn around and perform better and throw better drones
> 
> ...


I mean, I don't care to be an "official participant" in anything (gotta kids to feed, not to play popular science games).
I got promising feral stocks from outside, do the hard Bond/Darwinian/Mad Splitter "whatever", and call it done.

It is no secret - I let them die and this is how I prefer to get my harvest (been discussed).
People get hung up in endless arguments over semantics, "who-is-right", mite counting, and definitions - I just keep bees chem-free and move one. 
Don't really care.
Bees are food and chems don't belong in food - simple enough and all it is to it.


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## Trin (May 6, 2020)

But isn't food essentially chemical? Oh I know what you mean. I just wonder how many of us would be dead without antibiotics. I certainly would be, and am glad to use them when necessary. "natural selection" can take a hike in this regard. 

I think reality means we go down many paths for the important need of pollination in general.

I think some universities are looking at designer chemical solutions. It would be nice to find a fungi or insect that is predatory on varroa. Sort of how "cleaner fish" operate. 

Meanwhile, keeping the numbers of bees up seems the most important aspect. When we get to the point where we understand how a bee brain works maybe there might be yet another option to speed up the generational breeding outcomes. So the question here is; Is hygienic behavior a function of genes or is it a passed on learned behavior? Believe it or not I have seen an article about a researcher studying how a bee brain works. I really wonder how different bee "jobs" are passed out in a hive. How is the number of guard bees determined? etc. 

If anyone figures out how to install abdominal body armor on bees let me know. (superglue?)


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