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There is recent article from scientific beekeeper that goes into detail about these using their own venom as a cleaning agent.

Fascinating, thanks. What does winterization involve? I looked it up online but there's a whole bunch of different information.

Also how cold does it get?

> We would still sometimes treat for varroa, but making it easier for the bees to handle varroa how they had evolved to was the first line of defence

I thought this was very dependent on the species -- European honeybees did not evolve to deal with varroa mites, because the mites originated in Asia. Asian honeybees, and honeybees bred with them, do have better ways of dealing with the mite; you said regular Italian bees, were they really not hybridized?

I don't have any actual field experience here, just curious!

TIL that the Star Trek Stamets character is based on a real world Paul Stamets working on actual Mycelium. Wow

I suppose honey bees are not native in North America pretty much the same way as the human species?

I don’t quite understand why there seems to be a pretty persistent thread around “honey bees are invasive and harm the ecosystem by stealing all the food from the native bees and doing all their pollination; that’s why they decline” - when at the same time the use of pesticides is so rampant that insects are literally gone entirely.

Honey bees are not great and reliable pollinators btw.

So the solution is: more genetically modified crops? More pesticides?

Unless “we need to stop our use of pesticides and we should also acknowledge that honey bees are an invasive species and consider making changes to the way we do monocultures” are in the same sentence this entire “honey bees are invasive” argument just feels super weird. Pesticides kill native pollinators. It’s not the honey bees.

Edit: and just to be clear - honey bees do not survive in the wild by themselves anymore due to varroa mites. They essentially depend on humans to protect them. That’s what the entire purpose of this article is about. So, if humans stopped keeping honey bees - they’d have a pretty hard time surviving in the wild on their own.

>>Honeybees are not native to North America.

Neither are horses.

I guess the issue is you don't get honey with the native bees.

The catch is that native North American pollinators are adapted to native North American flowers and have a great deal of difficulty pollinating introduced species that are native to Eurasia. Given the vast majority of commercial crops are not native plant species, the only way to mass pollinate them is to use non-native pollinators.

Also, few native North American bee species are eusocial. That's another quality one would need to be able to use them the same way as commercial honeybees are used today.

The there is the issue of honey production.

Did you just ask if we could use AI to create new/better honey bees?

If they are not native, how did plant propagate seeds? Flies? Wasps? Butterflies?

You could pick up a catalog from any of these places and find half a dozen different species of bees to cultivate for pollination. Blue mason bees come to mind. Anything that's even slightly domesticatable is being pursued. Some of these bees are loners too, perfect for the hipster crowd.

To add, varroa quickly gains immunity to the pharmaceutical treatment we have, so the same medication cannot be used 2 years in a row. Most popular treatment from late 90s that used to kill 99% of varroa is now completely ineffective.

It was explained to me this is well planned and solved in Czechia. Varroa treatment is refunded my the government, but only one type of medication every 6 months. It's cheaper for beekeepers to use whatever the government gives them for free, than use something else. And the medication is free only for a few weeks, so everyone will use it at the same time.

I did some light research on the topic.

Wiki page about the specific parasite that affects honey bees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_destructor

On that page there mention of "honey bee genetics" as a form of parasite control. It is called "Varroa sensitive hygiene". Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_sensitive_hygiene

    > Varroa sensitive hygiene (VSH) is a behavioral trait of honey bees (Apis mellifera) in which bees detect and remove bee pupae that are infested by the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. VSH activity results in significant resistance to the mites.

Depending on location acid treatments can only be done after the honey harvest anyway, due to temperatures, so it's a minor issue.

You can also use drone frames, and remove drone brood during the summer, or cage the queen a period of time. These are both mechanical treatments and obviously doesn't hurt the honey.

> Plus all current treatments render the honey inedible

Formic acid is one of the few treatments which is acceptable to use while honey is present.

Last I checked researchers were trying to evolve bees to be mite resistant. Is this something you've come across?

No. The mites are not what is killing the bees.

And, by the way - natural pathogens exist in just about any population. These very, very rarely led to extinction. There is a media trend to claim the mites are at fault. This reminds me of prior fault yielding e. g. "mad cow disease" - and then the media also stopped doing any further investigation at that point. It's as if they have break points where you can not go past those points. Now it is the mites that get blamed.

There currently isn't a effective treatment for varroa that doesn't also kill the hive. It is not a solved problem, and there is certainly room for more research in this space.

The article you linked lists a bunch of downsides to powdered sugar: it doesn’t kill the mites it just encourages the bees to brush them off, it has reduced effectiveness when it’s humid, it doesn’t work on mites that aren’t actively on a bees body, and it has to be applied regularly.

Asian bees are perfectly capable of removing and killing mites as is. So are some breed species of European honey bees. There have been found abandoned apiary in France where the bees have evolved to groom themselves and remove the mites.

The bees does need to evolve, but not to the point of producing venom. Mechanical mite removal works equally well.

I was rather thinking of bees developing the ability to shoot tiny lasers to cook the mites off like popcorn. Or maybe a static discharge from their wings rubbing together, like a natural taser.

This assumes the mites are what kills the bees. What is that asssumption is flawed?

Yes, they remove the mites if they detect them. Asian honey bee colonies usually do not collapse from varroa mites.

But since European honey bees produce much more honey, the are the prefered species and used worldwide

I leave the wolf spiders as they don't make webs.

In my old house we sprayed for spiders and ants, and a few weeks later there were cockroaches everywhere. I guess it was just a coincidence. >.>

As article suggest - it is fully biodegradable. I suppose venom has some short half-life. And since peptide is isolated, not full chain toxin, it should be harmless to humans.

A lot of people might become allergic to honey, and never know why.

Probably, but not at any meaningful concentration.

Too lazy to read an article that takes about one minute? Sheesh.

    > “We screened 50 venoms, mostly from spiders and scorpions, by applying them externally to the mites,” says Herzig.

    > “We found more than 75% killed the mites within 24 hours. We selected 2 of the most potent spider venoms for further analysis.”

The Danish beekeeping association has a list of their top four reasons for declining bee populations (both honeybees and wild bees). None of them are mites. Multiple experiments and analysis of abandoned beehives show time and time again that the bees will develop coping mechanisms against varroa mites if we let them.

All four reasons are linked to a decline habitats suitable for bees.

* Lose of natural habitats.

* Fertilization close to natural habitats causes grass to grow and outcompete bee friendly plants.

* Herbicides are killing flowers.

* Pesticides hurt wild bees (honeybees to a less extend).

What is killing bees more rapidly than anything is modern farming. When you see farmers, especially those in the US, needing to truck around bees it should be abundantly clear that something has gone very wrong. Massive fields and orchards with a single crop is no place for a bee, they simply have no food for the majority of the year. What do we expect bees to do with 50 acres of corn or wheat? To a bee that might as well be a desert.