Ep161 Making sense of the assays—with Ang Roell of They Keep Bees
About this episode
Ang Roell discusses various assays for testing bees' hygienic traits and resistance to varroa mites.
UBO, PKB, FKB, mite washes, Harbo assays... It's an alphabet soup out there of ways to test your bees for hygienic traits and resistance to varroa. You may be testing to find out when to apply mite treatments or a brood break to a colony and in that case a simple mite wash is usually enough. But you may be testing to find out your very best genetics you have to raise next years queens for your yards and in that case, you probably need need more information than a mite wash provides. Or do you? Do these assays work, how reliably do they work and which one is the most reliable, if any? Ang Roell and Bi Kline of They Keep Bees are working to find out with a new NE SARE grant comparison study. Today Ang and I talk about the cornucopia of testing methods that each have their complications and limitations. We'll also find out what Ang and Bi will explore in this ongoing study. Plus, we chat bees, of course. :-) Hope you enjoy this weeks episode! kind regards, Leigh The Study (read the full grant proposal and study design here) In 2025 national honey bee losses exceeded 60% in commercial beekeeping operations. Miticide resistance was discovered in 100% of tested samples, highlighting an…
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