For 24 years the honeybees in Thunder Bay area have been mitefree because of the efforts of the beekeeping community to avoid importing infested bees into the Thunder Bay District. We now have the mite, because at least one person has selfishly chosen to cultivate varroa destructor.
Bees forage and swarm for miles. Any diseases or parasites they carry can easily spread to neighboring colonies. As a result, the honeybees in over 200 colonies in the Slate River area are infested with the virulent varroa mite, which sucks the blood of the bee, weakening it and shortening its life. The varroa mite is thought to be the primary cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, where bees simply abandon their hives and disappear.
The result of this parasite will be decreased honey production and increased winter hive mortality as the mite population grows.
The only way to rid a colony of mites is to kill the bees and brood in the hive. Any other treatment always leaves a few mites behind, to re-infest again and again. If we had been alerted to the problem early in the season, we might have been able to prevent the spread of the parasite, as we have done many times before. We would have eliminated the infested colony and replaced it free of charge with a clean healthy nuc (starter colony).
Most of the area beekeepers had chosen to eliminate the mites by killing or removing their colonies from the area, in spite of huge financial loss. That was one mandate of the Thunder Bay Beekeepers Association. However at the beekeepers meeting to consider what should be done, one person voted “No.” There might be others who did not attend the meeting who also would vote “No.”
Consequently, no matter what the majority of beekeepers do, the infested colonies will just re-infest any clean colonies one might try to establish. If we are lucky many of the infested colonies will die over winter, and we can try eliminating the remainder in the spring before they spread even farther.
It is unfortunate that one of the last remaining populations of healthy honeybees has to be sacrificed because a few uninformed people do not understand what it will mean to have mite-infested bees.
Fortunately, there is still a mitefree population on the North Shore of Lake Superior, near Grand Marais, and hopefully they will be able to maintain their valuable resource for years to come. Maybe studying those bees will shed light on the real cause of Colony Collapse Disorder.
Jeanette Momot
M.S. Biology
(Bee Genetics and Apiculture)
Slate River, Ontario
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