Objective
Since the entrance of the ectoparasitic Varroa mite (Varroa jacobsoni) into European honey bee colonies in the 1970's, this mite has become the major obstacle to profitable beekeeping. The mite, that originates from the Asian honey bee Apis cerana, is now spread all over the world. Without control of the mite population the honey bee colonies die approximately three to five years after the first mite attack.
To control the mite population, the most common control measures include the use of acaricides, especially pyrethroides, inside the colonies. Until recently these methods have been highly effective but we now have evidence of acaricide resistant mites in parts of Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria and Spain. In Italy there are reports of losses of about 50 % of the honey bee colonies in parts of Lombardia where the mite control has relied heavily on treatments with acaricides.
Besides the fact that Varroa mites are now developing resistance to major groups of acaricides, it has become obvious that there is also a problem with increasing levels of acaricide residues in products from the bee hive. In particular, the most widely used acaricides do accumulate in bee' s wax and has already proved to be a problem also for the honey quality.
It is of great concem that the quality of products from the bee hive are not jeopardized since this may have a negative impact on honey consumption, on beekeeping at large and on local marketing of honey. Although the economic importance of hive products are substantial, the main importance of beekeeping lies outside beekeeping since the value of pollination of agricultural and horticultural crops by honey bees by far exceeds the value of produced bee products.
The severity of the problem of Varroa mites to European beekeeping, the importance to coordinate treatment of varroatosis and the need to improve honey quality, has recently been emphasized in a document from the Commission of the European Union (Dok. KOM(94) 256 endg.) Because of the problems at present with acaricide resistant mites, and the increasing problems of residues in hive products, there is an urgent need to develop a strategy for Varroa mite control that avoids these problems.
In Europe, researchers in many institutes have worked on alternative control methods, and there exists a lot of experience today within this field. It is clear that it is possible to sufficiently control the mite with softer chemicals, such as organic acids and etheric oils, products of which some already occur naturally in the bee hive. However, the efficacy of these methods often depend on details in the application procedure or on environmental factors and it is not always clear that the methods are suitable for different regions or climatic conditions.
By combining information from research in different parts of Europe on integrated Varroa control, the process of developing successful strategies can be greatly enhanced. There is an urgent need to standardize methods of evaluating treatment regims and to merge results on integrated Varroa control from different parts of Europe. By creating a European network with researchers focused on integrated control of the Varroa mite it is possible to coordinate the efforts in this field and to produce comparable results in different regions of Europe. As acaricide resistant mites continue to develop, the economic importance of such a network will continue to grow. With the purpose to develop realistic treatment alternatives to the most commonly used acaricides, it should also be emphasized, that the proposed network will be of a direct value to the practical beekeeping all over Europe.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural scienceschemical sciencesorganic chemistryorganic acids
- natural sciencesbiological scienceszoologyentomologyapidology
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculture
- agricultural sciencesanimal and dairy scienceapiculture
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Topic(s)
Call for proposal
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CON - Coordination of research actionsCoordinator
75007 UPPSALA
Sweden