Darwinian black box selection for resistance to settled invasive Varroa destructor parasites in honey bees

Abstract

Established invasive species can pose a continuous threat to biodiversity and food security, thereby calling for sustainable mitigation. There is a consensus that the ubiquitous ecto-parasitic mite Varroa destructor, an invasive species from Asia, is the main biological threat to global apiculture with Apis mellifera. V. destructor has almost completely wiped out wild European honey bee (Apis mellifera) populations. The only remedy for apiculture, to date, is frequent control measures against the mite throughout the season, which prevents possible adaptations. While targeted breeding efforts have, so far, not achieved the selection of tolerant or resistant bees, natural selection approaches have succeeded at least seven times. Here, we propose to take advantage of natural selection for honey bee resistance by stopping mite treatment in managed colonies. The main principles are within population mating of the colonies' own virgin queens and drones and selection based on survival and proliferous development of colonies. Being used for 10 years, it has shown to result in grosso modo 'normal' colonies with a high level of resistance to V. destructor. Here, we call for local groups of beekeepers and scientists to join a novel natural selection program that has started so far on three locations. This will eventually lead to several locally adapted V. destructor resistant honey bee populations around the world, and help global apiculture becoming more sustainable.

Evaluation of Suppressed Mite Reproduction (SMR) Reveals Potential for Varroa Resistance in European Honey Bees (Apis mellifera L.)

“…Letting nature do the selection in order to breed from the surviving colonies, sometimes referred to as the Bond method [ 18 ] or Darwinian beekeeping [ 67 ], has gained attention and some attractiveness due to the repeated finding of populations able to survive without treatments [ 17 , 19 , 68 ]. As discussed above, however, so far attempts to bring such honey bees bred from “natural selection” into beekeeping on a wider scale have failed.…”

Advances and perspectives in selecting resistance traits against the parasitic mite Varroa destructor in honey bees

“…Once relevant resistance traits are known, markerassisted selection could also help rapid evaluation of the genetic values of large numbers of colonies [64]. Relying on natural selection to obtain resistance to V. destructor [66] could also be a way to reduce the workload associated with phenotyping since the traits leading to survival do not need to be known when only survival and ability to reproduce are the objectives [275]. However, natural selection does not consistently favour high productivity, low defensive behaviour, behaviour on comb and a low propensity to swarm [60,66,215,[276][277][278][279], which are often desired by beekeepers.…”

Geographical Distribution and Selection of European Honey Bees Resistant to Varroa destructor

“…The next year and the next generations, the selection is made on the best surviving colonies. This approach was called the "Bond test" (“Live and let die!”), and has been used successfully in France [ 74 ], Sweden [ 75 ] and in The Netherlands [ 76 ].…”

“…Comparable to the population in Gotland, Blacquière et al [ 76 ] started selecting for surviving colonies in 2007 and 2008, in two isolated locations in The Netherlands. The population of Tiengemeten partly descends maternally from the Gotland (Sweden) population [ 75 ].…”