Simulation of Varroa mite control in honey bee colonies without synthetic acaricides: Demonstration of Good Beekeeping Practice for Germany in the <scp>BEEHAVE</scp> model

Schödl, Isabel; Odemer, Richard; Becher, Melissa; Berg, Stefan; Otten, Christoph; Grimm, Volker; Groeneveld, Jürgen

doi:10.1002/ece3.9456

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 70 publications

(100 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Therefore, it is recommended to prevent high mite levels with biotechnical measures [ 40 , 52 ]. This was recently considered in BEEHAVE and drone brood removal was implemented [ 38 ]. The EFSA report [ 21 ] also highlights the importance of assessing honey and pollen reserves at the end of the year.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We use the term phoretic here to describe mites that are attached to adult bees, as contrasted with mites that are in brood cells. In addition, all mites in brood cells were killed by the application of the acaricide (for a new Varroa control module for BEEHAVE that represents treatment using organic acids only, see [ 38 ]). Furthermore, all drone brood cells were removed several times (days: 100, 140, 180, 220, 240) to eliminate mites.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Brood indicators are an early warning signal of honey bee colony loss—a simulation-based study

Groeneveld,

Odemer,

Requier

2024

PLoS ONE

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are exposed to multiple stressors such as pesticides, lack of forage, and diseases. It is therefore a long-standing aim to develop robust and meaningful indicators of bee vitality to assist beekeepers While established indicators often focus on expected colony winter mortality based on adult bee abundance and honey reserves at the beginning of the winter, it would be useful to have indicators that allow detection of stress effects earlier in the year to allow for adaptive management. We used the established honey bee simulation model BEEHAVE to explore the potential of different indicators such as population size, number of capped brood cells, flight activity, abundance of Varroa mites, honey stores and a brood-bee ratio. We implemented two types of stressors in our simulations: 1) parasite pressure, i.e. sub-optimal Varroa treatment by the beekeeper (hereafter referred as Biotic stress) and 2) temporal forage gaps in spring and autumn (hereafter referred as Environmental stress). Neither stressor type could be detected by bee abundance or honey reserves at the end of the first year. However, all response variables used in this study did reveal early warning signals during the course of the year. The most reliable and useful measures seem to be related to brood and the abundance of Varroa mites at the end of the year. However, while in the model we have full access to time series of variables from stressed and unstressed colonies, knowledge of these variables in the field is challenging. We discuss how our findings can nevertheless be used to develop practical early warning indicators. As a next step in the interactive development of such indicators we suggest empirical studies on the importance of the number of capped brood cells at certain times of the year on bee population vitality.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%