One of the attendees at the training I did, mentioned using chickens to
kill Asian Hornets, too. Apparently they will peck them out of the air as
they hawk (hover) in front of hives. However, it needs to be the right
breed of chicken.
Paul
On Thu, 28 Feb 2019, 13:47 Will H, <whanrott@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I was struck by the comment about chickens keeping SHB larvae under
control.
It's an elegant and sustainable pairing:
- Chickens don't bother bees (in my experience); Bees don't bother
Chickens.
- The chickens are usually enclosed by fencing so there is already a
space to site hives and a way to exclude people and livestock.
- Chickens are voracious omnivores and scratch at soil to get at
insects near the surface. I saw a Free Range Chicken run a couple of years
ago. There was not a living thing in there that didn't have feathers.
The only consideration is that the chickens need to be able to get under
the hives.
Will
On 28/02/2019 13:23, Paul Honigmann (Redacted sender paul.honigmann for
DMARC) wrote:
Thanks for this Jon. I have no doubt Small Hive Beetle is going to be a
significant pest in some parts of England, and the migratory commercial
beekeepers will spread it rapidly (varroa took 2 years to cover the whole
of Britain because serious honey producers take their hives down to
southern orchards in Spring, north to the heather in August).
Initially my main fear of SHB was government policy. DEFRA is notorious
for its "kill and burn everything" policies whenever there is an outbreak
of a disease. In 2001, there were 2,000 cases of Foot & Mouth and DEFRA
ended up burning 6 million sheep, cattle and pigs to stop it, and some
farms never recovered (compensation was slow in coming). As I understand
it, it proved almost impossible to stop the spread at first as some people
lied about where they were shipping their livestock, as they were gaming
the system to get extra subsidies.
The scorched earth policy undeniably works, and lessons were learned; the
2007 Foot & Mouth outbreak was contained with much less impact. But at a
talk by Giles Budge of the National Bee Unit a few years ago, he let slip
that the DEFRA policy if SHB arrives in the UK is to kill all hives within
8km (or whatever the flying range of SHB is) of the initial outbreak.
This is overkill for several reasons. Firstly, let's say SHB is detected
in a physically small county like London. They could end up killing every
colony owned by an entire county beekeeping association. You could wipe out
an entire local strain. Secondly, about a third of hives are not registered
on beebase, so you aren't going to find them all. Thirdly, there are loads
of feral colonies around (especially in old houses' roofs) and you
definitely aren't going to get them all. In other words, *unlike cattle,
there are lots of wild and otherwise hidden colonies.*
A few months ago I had a trawl through DEFRA's published policies to see
if this had changed. It proved impossible to determine though. I did find a
40+ page document that covered invasive bee pests, but it never said in
plain language what they would do for SHB, instead referring to other
policy documents I could not locate.
Should we be worried about SHB in Britain? Well, probably a bit. But I
suspect that apart from (as Jon points out) our cool, damp environmental
advantages, SHB will not fare well in our hives, precisely because our bees
have low tolerance of varroa. They actively harass varroa mites implying
"watchman behaviour" genes have been turned on. Perhaps I am
unrealistically hopeful there, but Jon says his hives run on natural
beekeeping principles have only minor problems. Hopefully, once varroa
arrives in his area (Australia), he will find varroa are similarly harassed
by his bees now they have been trained to be on the look-out for SHB!
I think conventional beekeepers may have significant problems though,
ironically because they have varroa screens at the bottom of their hives.
If you look at the holes in these meshes, they are large enough for SHB to
crawl through. So if you have a varroa mesh, with a solid floor just below
that you have basically made a safe haven for SHB to hide in your hive.
Which is why I've removed the meshes from some of my hive floors, as I
assume SHB will arrive eventually. (Bit tricky while the others are
occupied!) In other words, *solid floors seem best for low intervention
hives. *An interesting correlation: bees exhibiting ani-varroa behaviour
("hygienic" bees) seem to keep their floors clean.
One last thought. Have varroa done us a favour? And will SHB too? I speak
of selecting for survivor genes. When varroa arrived in the UK in 1992,
conventional beekeepers were obsessed with Italians and other foreign bees.
If SHB wipe out another huge chunk of commercial stocks, but natural
beekeepers and feral colonies seem to survive, it may promote the use of
naturally resilient local stocks. My impression is that at least 10% of UK
beekeepers are now no-treatment.
Paul
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Sunday, 24 February 2019 00:25, Jon Darvill
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
First there was the big heat and then came the big rain, not of biblical
proportions thank goodness although the residents of Townsville in tropical
Queensland would be forgiven for thinking so after they had a years rain in
a little over a week. This in a place where it does rain. Further south we
were recipients of rain from these weather systems as they move across to
the south east, typically thunderstorms in the afternoon. It was as though
the Australian landmass had been moved several degrees of latitude
northwards towards the equator such was our weather. Hot and humid turning
our normally dry brown landscape green and almost lush for a few weeks.
Ideal breeding conditions for the small hive beetle (SHB).
I noted Paul’s trepidation regarding a future UK invasion of the SHB so
have attached a couple of links for your perusal. One with everything you
could possibly want to know about the insect and a second which includes
similar information but goes on to talk about management options. Not all
their options are in accordance with natural beekeeping but that will be
obvious.
Salient points for natural beekeepers are that the SHB’s preferred
breeding conditions are hot and humid, typically 30+ C and 70% humidity.
Looking at the UK Met service's web site it seems to me that Oxfordshire
will be too cold for most of the year for the SHB to thrive. This is also
our experience in Canberra although here it is usually too dry. So in my
hives I sometimes see a few beetles but the consequence of their presence
is negligible. I find good natural beekeeping methods plus or minus the
traps installed in the hive floors (mentioned in the second link article)
are are sufficient in Canberra. I have not used the traps for several years
now with no ill effect. Some people site their hive(s) in a chicken run.
The foraging chickens will make short work of the larval SHB as they leave
the hives for their pupation phase in the soil around the hive.
http://beeaware.org.au/archive-pest/small-hive-beetle/#ad-image-0
https://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/220240/small-hive-beetle-management-options.pdf
