Synergy in Beekeeping

We all know that 1+1=2, but… what if it didn't? What if a pair of ones could work together to be even more than 2?  

Does that sound crazy?  

It's not. It's synergy.  

What is synergy?

Synergy is when two (or more) things interact in a way that produces a bigger effect than each thing individually. If hearing "synergy" just makes you think "corporate buzzword," you may not understand the powerful idea that it represents. When companies talk about "synergizing" they're talking about merging companies together to make them more productive than the two independent companies were on their own. But synergy can happen whenever two (or more) things interact to produce an outsized effect.  

Our favorite explanation of synergy starts with two people at the foot of an apple tree: Imagine that both people want apples, but they're each too short to pick any off of the tall apple tree. No matter how hard they each try, they'll never harvest any apples.  However, if one person climbs onto the other's shoulders and they work together, they can pick plenty of apples for the two of them. That's synergy - the two people working together produce more apples than each of them could when working alone.

Where is there synergy in beekeeping?

Beekeeping is full of synergy. A bee colony needs flowering plants to grow and make honey. Flowering plants need bees to pollinate them and help them set fruit and produce fertile seeds. Planting a garden, orchard, or field of berries next to your apiary provides food to your bees. Putting an apiary next to your garden produces more fruit and vegetables. Both your bees and your crops will be more productive because they are working together synergistically.

The bee colony itself is also an example of synergy. If each bee tried to collect pollen, collect nectar, lay eggs, build comb, and defend the nest (as females of many solitary bee species have to do) they would make much less honey and be much less successful. In honey bees, synergy describes how a colony of 60,000 cooperating bees is much more productive than 60,000 individual bees working alone could ever be. 

The downside of synergy

Unfortunately, synergy doesn't always help us or our bees. If we visited a large commercial orchard (to watch some apple pickers on each other's shoulders), we might see apple farmers spraying various pesticides and chemicals on their trees to fight against fruit pests. In the U.S., the makers of each pesticide product have to prove to the E.P.A. that their product won't kill honey bees when used according to the instructions. This is good for our bees, as long as farmers follow the labels on the pesticides. However, there's a gap in this system that can cause serious trouble. 

If I prove that my pesticide doesn't kill bees, and you prove that your pesticide doesn't kill bees, we still haven't figured out if our two pesticides can synergize together to kill honey bees. The E.P.A. has been investigating ways to address this, but there are no easy solutions since thorough testing could require hundreds or thousands of chemical combinations to see which harmless chemicals become harmful when mixed together. 

An example of the negative effect of synergy on honey bees

Just one scary example of this was published by scientists at The Ohio State University. Their paper's title gives an idea of their research question: Combined Toxicity of Insecticides and Fungicides Applied to California Almond Orchards to Honey Bee Larvae and Adults.

As part of the study, the scientists fed bee larvae small doses of different insecticides and fungicides and tracked how many of the larvae lived to adulthood. In one striking synergistic interaction, feeding one of the insecticides plus one of the fungicides caused much higher bee mortality than either of the two compounds did on their own.

When young bees were fed each of these pesticides, only a moderate number of them died, but when they were fed both compounds together the combination synergistically killed 90% of the larvae!

You can read the original scientific publication for free here: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/10/1/20. 

Using synergy to kill mites

There are also ways beekeepers can use synergy to help our bees. Keeping varroa mite populations under control is one of the best things you can do to improve the health of your bees. Many successful beekeepers rely on a rotation of miticidal chemicals to kill varroa. Other beekeepers incorporate non-chemical methods like drone-comb trapping or queen caging to remove mites or interrupt mite reproduction throughout the year. Finding mite control methods that synergize together can supercharge your mite control. 

How can you use synergy to kill mites? Consider that most miticides (except Formic Pro) can't penetrate the caps of sealed brood to kill the reproducing mites inside. That means that many mites are protected when you treat while the colony is rearing lots of brood. However, if you manage the colonies to reduce the amount of capped brood and then hit the exposed mites with a miticide, you'll be thinking with synergy.  

Examples of synergy in mite control: 

• Split some of your colonies and put little to no capped brood into a split, then treat with ApiLife Var, Apivar, HopGuard 3, or Api-Bioxal (oxalic acid) when the mites are exposed.
• Cage your queen for a while to create a brood gap, wait until all capped brood from before the break have emerged, then treat with miticide while all the mites are out on the bees. (Click here to learn more about doing this with a Frame Isolation Cage!) 
• Insert a frame of drone comb to attract and trap varroa in the capped drone brood, but treat with a miticide when you remove the drone frame, killing a wave of phoretic mites and removing a wave of reproducing mites

(Have another suggestion? Send an email to newsletter@betterbee.com and we may add your idea to this list!) 

Building a mite control strategy that takes advantage of natural synergies between the control mechanisms can give you substantially more bang for your buck when it comes to keeping varroa levels low year-round.