Читать книгу Honey Bee Medicine for the Veterinary Practitioner - Группа авторов - Страница 42

Bee doctors should work closely with beekeepers to avoid bringing honey bee colonies from an outside location into an established apiary. The most important drivers of honey bee die‐offs in North America have all been caused by emerging pests and pathogens that came from other parts of the world – Varroa mites from Asia, small hive beetles from Africa, and both chalkbrood fungus and acarine mites from Europe (Seeley 2017b). Returning to the SIR model, it follows that beekeepers should reduce as much as possible the introduction of new colonies that represent the “Susceptibles” into an apiary. If these introduced colonies are exposed to or are carrying a novel pathogen, then they can produce outbreaks. Specifically, Delaplane (2017) warns against bringing in outside bees to replace dead outs and recommends instead that these apiary losses should be replaced by splits made within the same apiary. Loftus et al. (2016) found in their study of the effects of colony size and frequent swarming on resistance to Varroa that 60 m was not a sufficient distance between apiaries to avoid spread of Varroa between apiaries during a nectar dearth. Three of the 12 small‐hive colonies in this experiment suddenly acquired high mite loads when one of the large‐hive colonies collapsed in the adjacent apiary. Evidently, robbers from these three small colonies brought home Varroa from the large colony that was collapsing, resulting in their own collapses several weeks later. It is therefore recommended that introducing new colonies to an apiary be done only after an appropriate period of quarantine in a separate location at least 1 km away.