Publications by authors named "Adrien von Virag"
Article Synopsis
- The invasion of the Varroa destructor mite poses significant challenges for breeding mite-resistant honey bee colonies and has not significantly reduced colony mortality thus far.
- Low heritability estimates for mite infestation levels may explain the lack of genetic progress in developing resistant bee colonies.
- Research conducted in Bern, Switzerland showed that mite immigration between apiaries affects infestation levels, indicating that management practices in beekeeping significantly impact mite population dynamics.
Several resistance traits have been proposed to select honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) that can survive in the presence of parasitic mite Varroa destructor (Anderson and Trueman) and enable a more sustainable apiculture. The interest for uncapping-recapping has recently increased following its identification in several naturally surviving honey bee populations, yet the utility of this trait for human-mediated selection is poorly known.
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- The parasitic mite Varroa destructor poses a significant threat to European honey bees (Apis mellifera), making the selection of resistant bee lineages a key strategy for colony survival.
- Current research on selecting traits like mite fertility and fecundity shows low reliability and weak correlation with infestation rates, indicating challenges in breeding resistant bees.
- The study suggests improved nomenclature for describing reproduction traits and emphasizes the need for accurate phenotyping for effective long-term selection programs.
For the development of novel selection traits in honey bees, applicability under field conditions is crucial. We thus evaluated two novel traits intended to provide resistance against the ectoparasitic mite and to allow for their straightforward implementation in honey bee selection. These traits are new field estimates of already-described colony traits: brood recapping rate ('') and solidness ('').
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