7.8.22
Varroa is on our shores. As of today, there have been 79 infected premises. The current target is to euthanise hives and feral colonies within a 19,000 acre zone from each infected premise with hopes of containing this mite. If eradication isn’t successful, at least we’ve tried and at least we’ve slowed down the spread.
We, as an industry, developed an emergency response plan in December 2012 to manage the initial incursion and prevent the spread of the mite and its impact on our honey and pollination reliant industries, the loss estimated at $50-70 million per year. This estimate was based on the experience of other countries who were not prepared, did not have a comprehensive eradication plan in place and did not properly support a targeted and timely transition to management. Consequently, beekeepers were left to defend their livelihoods and fired back with chemistry. This treatment treadmill has propped up unfit colonies and selected for more virulent mites with greater and more pathogenic virus assemblages.
It’s been over 20 years since the last major territory expansion of the Varroa mite in New Zealand and over 40 years since the expansion into the United States. The chemical treadmill was a direct result of not supporting bees and beekeepers to find a pathway toward living with less virulent Varroa and fewer harmful viruses. During this time however, in untreated colonies and in focused breeding programs around the world, natural and human assisted selection has favored honey bee traits that help defend against Varroa. Some populations are not suited for commercial beekeeping, however some populations where selective pressure for commercially important traits has remained, people are managing productive, healthy, robust hives with fewer chemicals and living with Varroa.
So much of our fear around Varroa is about the threat of loss to our economy, bees, and businesses. But the assumptions about the of magnitude of loss were based on a time and climate completely different from ours. We have tools, information, experiences, and insights that were not known 20 or 40 years ago. Further, the loss assumptions were based on the worst case scenario of a version of Varroa landing on our shores laden with virulent viruses, and this is not the situation we are dealing with.
Regardless of when we will be living with Varroa, the questions remain the same. What happens if we learn from all of the gains of the last twenty or fourty years? What if we proactively set in motion plans and support systems as eventually developed in other apicultural industries to ameliorate our losses? What if we closely monitor the health of our colonies and any spread of viruses? What do the cost-benefit analyses and modeling projections look like if instead of rolling over and accepting the devastating losses, we are proactive and prepared and forge our own outcomes, creating our own reality?
To do this, we must figure out:
What will it take to offset impacts from Varroa?
Whose responsibility is it?
Where and when do we start?
The challenging part about answering these questions is that there is no “one size fits all” approach. Although there may be similar strategies for creating a balanced relationship with Varroa such as tech transfer teams, breeding programs, and potentially treatment subsidies, how these ideas are transferred to action will vary from state to state, region to region, and operation to operation. Therefore, it is imperative that independent yet connected groups be formed and united to develop state and regionally based solutions specific to different beekeeping climates (environmentally and politically) and conditions. It is imperative that each beekeeping operation make the best informed management decisions.
Let us take this as our final warning. Let us plan past the incursion stage and put into place a comprehensive transition to management strategy taking on board all of the advances from the last 40 years and build relisiance into our honey and pollination industries.
This is not only about Varroa resistance: it is about resisting changes to our methods of beekeeping, to the quality of our honey, to the health of our bees, to our way of life. And we need to do it together. It is time for movement, it is time for action, it is time for our RESISTANCE.
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