Saskatraz: Attempting To Build a Better Bee

Source: Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food

As a joke, they call it Saskatraz, after Alcatraz, the infamous California prison. It's a project to weed out bees vulnerable to two of the greatest dangers to Saskatchewan bee colonies: tracheal and varroa mites.

The project is funded through Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food. It was initiated by members of the Saskatchewan Beekeepers Association (SBA) through donations of money and colonies, in an attempt to find the most productive, most resistant stock, says SBA president Tim Wendall.

The selected colonies have been put in an isolated beeyard in an attempt to determine or develop mite resistant stock that will also perform well in honey production. Tracheal and varroa mites cause great trouble for beekeepers. Several treatments have been developed in the past. The first treatment controlled mites in the U.S. for 10 to 12 years, until the mites developed resistance.

“Then another chemical came along," explains Wendall. "It was initially developed for small hive beetles, which somehow came into the southern U.S. and decimated colonies. This chemical was wax-soluble, so residues were found in the bees’ wax, and mites develop resistance to it after four or five years of use. American mites are now resistant to both these chemicals, so they have major problems down there.”

Because of Saskatchewan’s closed border policy, there are only a few pockets of infestation in the province, but the mites are showing resistance to the chemicals.

“We thought the best direction to go would be to find a genetic solution, if possible," says Wendall. “That is what we are trying to do with Saskatraz. Albert Robertson, who has been an SBA director for the past four years, has worked quite extensively with genetic markers, and he has isolated certain gene combinations in other species. He was put in charge of this program because of his scientific background. It takes a lot of his time, so he has decided not to run as director for this next term so he can concentrate his efforts to the project at hand.”

The Saskatraz beeyard is at an isolated location in the Quill Lakes area, north of Wynyard.

“It is just a normal beeyard, except that there are no other beeyards around. We don’t want to re-infect any non-project colonies, and we especially don’t want any outside drones mating with stock that we want to develop out of this beeyard.”

Any bee that is showing susceptibility to mites will be removed from the beeyard, says Wendall.

“There is no chemical treatment going on here. The entire colony has been infected and the whole colony has been equalized. Now they are on their own. The initial beehives that were put in there were provided by producers in the province who selected a few of their best colonies out of maybe 30,000 or 40,000 beehives in Saskatchewan."

This is an exciting project for the association, explains Wendell.

“Some bees show some susceptibility, and there are some that show encouraging signs, although it is still pretty early in the project.

“I would think that there are beekeepers around who are trying to do the same thing within their own breeding programs, but with not nearly the continuous monitoring that we are implementing. You have to have a non-invasive way to monitor mite levels within the beehives. That takes people. We just got another grant that will enable us to hire a couple of people to monitor this project. You need someone to pull slides every week, to count mites, to see if the bees have been chewed.”

The adult mite lives off the adult bees' “blood” or lymphatic system, thereby shortening the bees’ lives. The female mite goes into the cell of a developing larvae and lays eggs which hatch and feed off the larvae. Wendall says that Saskatraz has attracted the attention of some noted international bee scientists. The mites are simply that nasty.

“They just suck the blood of the bees. Once the numbers go up, they just collapse the hive. The bees can’t deal with it. With Saskatraz, the colonies that are going in are lifers.”

For more information, contact:

Tim Wendell
President
Saskatchewan Beekeepers Association
(306) 564-2315
http://www.saskatchewanbeekeepers.ca/