Part 3: Herd Health for the Honey Bee
The bee doctor now understands that the complex interactions of honey bees are only achieved through a highly coordinated system of communication and feedback regulation within an environment that essentially offers an “incubator” for pathogens. Yet, we also know that honey bees have developed remarkable adaptations that promote colony health in the form of biosecurity, immunity at the colony level, thermoregulation and social fever, and even self‐medication. The role then, for the bee doctor, is to become a proactive partner with the beekeeper, rather than a reactive harbinger of disease or colony failure. To do so, the bee doctor can use the tools of herd health that have been developed to manage populations of animals, principally those of dairy herds.
Health inspection of honey bee colonies is focused on colony factors (bee caste populations, brood size and pattern, eggs, honey and pollen stores, etc.) with less importance given to examination of individual bees (important exceptions include obvious organism level defects such as deformed wings, parasitic mites, seizure activity, etc.).
Herd health as it relates to dairy practice has been defined as “a method to optimize health, welfare, and production in a population of dairy cows through the systematic analysis of relevant data and through regular objective observations of the cows and their environment, such that informed, timely decisions are made to adjust and improve herd management over time” (Down et al. 2012). While the end goal for the bee doctor may differ from that of the herd health practitioner (not all beekeepers will be focused on production and profit margins), the lessons of a herd health approach can be applied across taxa. Perhaps most importantly, a thorough data‐driven strategy to assess and manage bee health sets up a proactive dialog between beekeeper and bee doctor and serves to eliminate the reactive response to pathogens, disease, and colony loss. In short, a herd health approach re‐orientates interactions with the beekeeper from one of disease and die‐off investigations to one of health maintenance and preventative medicine.
Herd health is a continual process where the veterinarian and farmer (or beekeeper in our case) meet regularly to review colony‐level data that informs decision‐making in the apiary. The regular contact between bee doctor and beekeeper are essential in order to closely follow the success or failure of management interventions. These interactions also serve to develop a close Veterinary‐Client‐Patient‐Relationship that will guide all aspects of the bee veterinarian's work with the beekeeper. As in the dairy farmer, beekeepers likely have wide variation in what motivates their actions. Kirstensen and Jakobsen (2011) observe:
The practising cattle veterinarian's ability to translate knowledge into on‐farm application requires a profound understanding of the dairy farm as an integrated system. Consequently, educating and motivating farmers are key issues. To achieve such insight the veterinarian needs to work with several scientific disciplines, especially epidemiology and (behavioural) economics. This trans‐disciplinary approach offers new methodological possibilities and challenges to students of dairy herd health management.
Likewise, as we have already recognized in the beginnings of this chapter, the bee veterinarian must possess a deep understanding of honey bee biology and communication, collective intelligence of the superorganism, as well as appropriate measures of health and fitness at the level of the individual and the colony.
For example, a small backyard beekeeper may be perfectly happy with a management style that mimics natural colony biology (see Chapter 1) with moderate honey, pollen or propolis crops focused on value‐added local markets. Such markets may include specialty varietal honeys, hive products such as propolis and royal jelly that offer health benefits to humans, or even small single farm pollination services for orchards, specialty crops, or hobby farms. Alternatively, a large apiary with thousands of hives may be focused on honey production for larger distribution or may travel with their colonies to fulfill lucrative pollination contracts. In the middle are producers that may share some of both motivations. In each case, the veterinarian must forge a working relationship that provides measurable benefits to the producer – the bee doctor must therefore understand honey bee terminology, demonstrate an in‐depth knowledge of colony biology, be versed in the beekeeping industry, and be knowledgeable of the stages of the “factory” where honey is produced so timely interventions can be made.
In order to realize these shared goals, the veterinarian should establish several key components of a colony health program. These include developing a working relationship with the beekeeper and offer preventative medicine and care through regular site visits for the evaluation of bee health (i.e. review control measures, results of regular mite checks, progress of integrated pest management, colony nutrition and long‐term data collection and record keeping). These services may not require regular visits to the apiary once a Veterinary–Client–Patient–Relationship is formed, but establishing a regular routine to check‐in with the beekeeper will complement visits and may include the opportunity to prepare periodic reports or written summaries of data collected.
A good example of the valuable information to be gained from a herd health approach to beekeeping is the data‐driven strategy to apiary health management that guides Randy Oliver's Scientific Beekeeping program. Randy devotes significant time and resources to examining problems using the scientific method to evaluate critical areas of bee health such as mite survival, queen longevity and genetics, colony loss, emerging pathogens, and the like. While not every beekeeper can take such a comprehensive data‐intensive approach as Randy, the lesson is that colony health mandates that beekeepers collect information through careful observation and diligent record keeping. And, in the case of managing health, incorporating the skills of a competent bee doctor with knowledge of honey bee biology, medicine, and disease combined with an interest in epidemiology and bee science, will help improve management of bees in an apiary environment.
References
1 Abbott, J. (2014). Self‐medication in insects: current evidence and future perspectives. Ecological Entomology 39: 273–280.
2 Annoscia, D., Zanni, V., Galbraith, D. et al. (2017). Elucidating the mechanisms underlying the beneficial health effects of dietary pollen on honey bees (Apis mellifera) infested by Varroa mite ectoparasites. Scientific Reports 7: 6258. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598‐017‐06488‐2.
3 Avitabile, A. (1978). Brood rearing in honeybee colonies from late autumn to early spring. Journal of Apicultural Research 17 (2): 69–73.
4 Baracchi, D. and Cini, A. (2014). A socio‐spatial combined approach confirms a highly compartmentalized structure in honey bees. Ethology 120: 1167–1176.
5 Baracchi, D., Francese, S., and Turillazzi, S. (2011). Beyond the antipredator defence: honey bee venom function as a component of social immunity. Toxicon 58: 550–557.
6 Bíliková, K., Wu, G., and Šimúth, J. (2001). Isolation of a peptide fraction from honeybee royal jelly as a potential antifoulbrood factor. Apidologie 32: 275–283.
7 Borba, R.S., Klyczek, K.K., Mogen, K.L., and Spivak, M. (2015). Seasonal benefits of a natural propolis envelope to honey bee immunity and colony health. Journal of Experimental Biology 218: 3689–3699.
8 Cremer, S., Armitage, S.A., and Schmid‐Hempel, P. (2007). Social immunity. Current Biology 17 (16): R693–R702. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2007.06.008.
Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; or the Preservation of Favoured Races in