February 2025
by WEBB Member Zeb Campbell
I recently I read a book called “Russian Honey Bees” by Thomas Rinderer. It provides a fascinating description of a project conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to try and save our nation’s honey bees from a devastating parasite, the varroa mite, which has spread here from Asia. The project focused on breeding and replicating a Russian strain of bee, that has developed mite-resistance naturally.
The problem has extensive, damaging impacts to one of our key pollinators. The varroa mite feeds on the fat stores of honey bees, weakening them over time. Once the mite population reaches a critical mass – beyond the bees’ natural coping mechanisms – the colony will perish. To combat this impact, many beekeepers have turned to pesticides to kill off the mite, which in itself has short-term and long-term impacts on bee colonies and a host of other species.
In the 1990s, the USDA realized this mite presented severe challenges to the North American bee population. The agency sent entomologists and apiarists (beekeepers) to far eastern Russia to research a strain of honey bee that was shown to have mite resistance. In a nutshell, the bees appeared to have developed this resistance through colonists who settled in eastern Russia in the 1800s, and who brought their honey bees with them. Settlement patterns meant the bees had a slow introduction to the invasive (non-native) varroa mite spreading from just over the border, and thus time to evolve. Over the next two hundred years, the bees learned – and began to utilize – over 16 different specific traits to cope with the varroa mite.
The USDA saw the possibility of breeding queen bees and a continuing strain of bees here in the U.S., that possessed these naturally evolved traits, using the Russian bees as their source. Specifically, when the mite-resistant bees from eastern Russia were first brought into the US, they were quarantined on a small island off the coast of Mississippi. The “queen breeders” selected the best queens (females) and bred them with the best drones (males) from other colonies, making sure that no excess inbreeding was occurring. After four years, the USDA allowed these queens to be sold on the open market to beekeepers. Currently, in order to sell “pure bred” Russian queen bees, your queens have to be tested once a year to ensure that they don’t have any genes from other bee strains. It is a long and arduous process.
As I was reading this book, my gears began turning about the possibility of creating a local bee strain on North Haven. One that is adapted to our humid, salty offshore environment. Living on an offshore island we have the capability to decrease the varroa mite population to the point where we may never have to use pesticides on our bees again. What a dream that would be!
This would take a bit of effort. All island beekeepers would have to agree not to buy bees from off island ever again. We would need to work together to breed queens and create artificial “splits” (splitting an existing, intact colony) to repopulate our hives after other colonies collapsed, rather than buying bees in packages from southern apiaries. We also would need to agree to all keep a bee (like the Russian) that already has varroa resistance built into its DNA. I think that this could be a very worthwhile process. The varroa mite has already built resistance to many of the chemicals that scientists created to destroy it. And it’s only a matter of time before the species further mutates to resist yet more chemical treatments currently on the market, and under development.
North Haven is an incredible place to keep bees. We have amazing wetlands in which alder and willow produce the first season’s pollen; red and sugar maples that give the bees their first nectar source; raspberries and blackberries which produce a true honey flow; beautiful meadows that flower with dandelion, milkweed, clover, goldenrod and asters. Though buckthorn is a noxious plant that chokes out many of the island native species, it also is a bountiful honey plant.
All of these natural assets make it easy to be a beekeeper on the island. Varroa mites make it very difficult. What if we were able to have bee colonies reminiscent of the early 1990s (I wasn’t born yet so I’ve only just read about) when in the spring, your bees would be bursting at the seams, ready to produce a large honey crop year after year. Instead, as beekeepers all we can wish is that our bees make it through the winter, and most of the time our wish doesn’t come true.
Shall we all as islanders do what we can to ensure that the honey bees, and just as important, all native pollinators, have access to all of the chemical-free food sources they need? And shall we all – as beekeepers – work together to propagate a honey bee population that can withstand the varroa mite? We can do this!
Please reach out to me if you have any insight, questions, or if you want to learn about bees, and how to keep them!
– by Zeb Campbell (WEBB member, beekeeper, & promoter of regenerative landscapes)