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  • From: Lewis Cauble <lewis AT hivebody.com>
  • To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] News report of AHB in Tennessee...
  • Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 08:55:08 -0400 (EDT)

I guess the thing that piques my curiosity most on this news is how they could have been okie dokie last year but now they are 17% Africanized and mean as snot.  It feels like something changed.

 

Armchair quarterback mode "ON"

 

Randall (and others)...Compare these 2 scenarios...

1.  European queen mated with 15 drones.  3 of them were Africanized, yeilding a colony that is 20% Africanized.

 

2.  European queen mated with 15 drones.  1 of them is Africanized, yeilding a colony 6% Africanized.  Colony swarms in 2012 and new queen is from an egg fertilized by Africanized drone.  Assuming she mates with local easy going European drones, how might this affect colony attitude?

 

I guess it would be nice to have some genetic info about the queen(s) to determine how much of the 17% came from her and how much came from the stored sperm.

 

Lewis


On April 10, 2012 at 6:15 PM Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com> wrote:

> The facts of this story do provide a bit of comfort for those who may be
> worried about African Honey Bees. First my disclaimer: I'm not an expert
> by any means but I have studied AHBs a bit, have read many good books
> about them, and have worked with them while doing development work in
> the Dominican Republic.
>
> First, random AHB finds have occurred many times over the years,
> including way up north. A single find doesn't really mean anything,
> although it is interesting.
>
> Second, this find was by a beekeeper in a managed hive, not "loose".
> Despite what you would logically think, buying packages from
> AHB-infested areas is NOT the way that AHB spread. One reason for this
> is that even if you buy free-mated queens from an AHB-infested area, it
> is likely the production queen which produced the off-the-rack queen in
> your package was a "known quantity" (European), not AHB. If so, the AHB
> genes come in through the drones that mated with her, not the queen. The
> subsequent workers are hybrids, and hybrid AHB are inferior to either
> pure AHB or pure European (they have features which create competitive
> disadvantage). The spread of AHB from Brazil has been marked by
> "hybridization zones" at the leading edge of the incursion, but those
> are back-filled by some-what pure AHB (queens and drones). True
> embedding has occurred when the maternal genes are AHB, not just the
> paternal genes. So a few hot hives in a beekeeper's yard, when the
> source is known, don't necessarily signify anything of importance.
>
> Third, there have been AHB in Arkansas and Florida for several years,
> but this find was between Knoxville and Chattanooga. It is impossible
> for me to believe that they got there, previously unobserved, via
> migration from Arkansas or north Florida, and as I mentioned it is
> migration that is the problem, not scattered finds.
>
> Fourth, the article talks about the bees being "17% Africanized". I
> assume this means that 17 percent of the sample of bees showed AHB
> traits. So that supports the assumption that the queen was European and
> she just got mixed up with a bad crowd.
>
> Fifth, David Tarpy at NCSU is a genuine expert --- he has published on
> the topic. He has posted a fact sheets about AHB on the NCSU apiculture
> department website. So if AHB ever gets here, we have excellent support.
>
> If you want to read a great book on the topic, try Dewey Caron's
> "Africanized Bees in the Americas". He'll calm any hysteria you may have
> while also explaining how AHB are NOT "just like our bees but meaner."
> They have many, many traits in addition to aggression that are totally
> undesirable for Piedmont NC beekeeping.
>
> Randall Austin
>
>
> On 4/10/2012 5:11 PM, Blair Christian wrote:
> > To clarify what I was getting at, it looks like there may be one to
> > four genes related to tendency to sting.  But I still don't know what
> > the "definition" of "Africanized" means....
> > http://www.genetics.org/content/148/3/1203.short
> >
> > FYI: A "QTL" is basically the location of a gene which can have more
> > than type.  They interbred EHB and AFB many times, examined each of
> > the colonies for tendency to sting, then looked at the type of each
> > gene for the thousands of genes and tested whether there was a
> > relationship between a gene (loci) and a trait (tendency to sting).
> > The LOD is a statistical measure related to p-values or false
> > positives...  Here are papers that cite that one above
> > http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=4247904885524219267&as_sdt=5,34&sciodt=0,34&hl=en
> >
> > I don't know if that research has been reproduced, but it looks like it was...
> >
> > Here's an attempt to repeat that research
> > http://www.springerlink.com/content/6r5hqmrdht3rxvk1/
> >
> > It looks like there is a relationship between a gene they named
> > "sting1" and defensive/guarding behavior..  I didn't have time to
> > fully parse it.
> >
> > Here's another one looking at population genetics of Africanized/not bees:
> > http://www.culturaapicola.com.ar/apuntes/revistaselectronicas/Oldroyd/22.pdf
> > The gist seems to be that there are different gene variants floating
> > around in Africa.  Do all of them display "Africanized" behavior of
> > stinging?
> >
> > Here's an interesting article about guarding:
> > http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347287801720
> >
> > So more specifically, my question is: Suppose you are a state
> > inspector.  What "definition" do you use before making a press release
> > saying you have AHB?  Do you find a hive that displays "aggressive"
> > behavior, then test?  Or do you test randomly?  FYI: I called the
> > Tennessee state apiary inspector Mike Studor to see what criteria he
> > was using...
> >
> > The thing I don't like is using scientific names with abandon- in
> > reality, there are usually genes underlying these behaviors, so it's
> > much better to talk about "bees with version XYZ of the sting-1 gene"
> > being in an area, or saying that the percentage of colonies with at
> > least one copy of the XYZ variant of gene sting-1 is above some
> > value....
> >
> > Some of this is discussed in:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africanized_bee#Morphology_and_genetics
> >
> >
> > So what is the upshot?  My guess is that genes from Africanized bees
> > will become more common over the years and we probably won't notice
> > any big changes- there could be more swarming, smaller colony/swarm
> > sizes, more absconding, more stinging- but only a little every year...
> >   My guess is that as we order more packages from Georgia or farther
> > south where some Africanized bee drones are intermingling with virgin
> > bees going into package bees, we'll see this behavior, but we'll
> > consider it "normal" because it won't change much from year to year.
> > We'll consider it normal unless we were to say, do some beekeeping
> > overseas or farther north..
> >
> > I studied some genetics, and I rambled a bit, but if anybody has any
> > questions or clarifications, let me know and I can try to answer
> > them...
> >
> > Best,
> > Blair
> >
> > On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 3:56 PM, Blair Christian
> > <blair.christian AT gmail.com>  wrote:
> >> So it looks like there are AHB (Africanized Honey Bees) in TN.  Are
> >> they really all around and we just don't notice because we're not
> >> looking for them?  Are they so hybridized now that they aren't as
> >> aggressive?  Does anybody know how you officially classify a bee as
> >> AHB?  Is it through genes, phenotype or both?
> >>
> >> http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-04/D9U24OP80.htm
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