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  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Lewis Cauble <lewis AT hivebody.com>
  • Cc: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] News report of AHB in Tennessee...
  • Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:10:17 -0400

Lewis,

My understanding is that sperm stratifies in the spermatheca, so for example if a queen mated with both a Cordovan and a Carniolan, it would be possible for you to get a whole batch of yellow workers followed later by a whole batch of dark ones. That is one possible explanation for the hive being fine at one point and then being hot later.

Or it could be that the colony was workable while it was new & small but this spring it is going gangbusters and all those hot workers are too much to handle.

Or it could be that Tennessee may not have as terrific an inspection program as we have in NC and the TN inspector just now got around to it?

One of the characteristics of AHB is sending liberal & quick alarm signals. So if your hive has any AHB, they'll have a bad effect on the EHB bees as well, since they will naturally respond to alarms too. The take-away message is that we don't want ANY of these nasty bees in our hives and we should exercise reasonable precautions to avoid them. Basically that means don't buy bees or queens from AHB infested areas of the country and if you suspect trouble, call for help.

Randall



On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 8:55 AM, Lewis Cauble <lewis AT hivebody.com> wrote:

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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