| Abstrakt: |
Following the adoption of clean-sawn hives and movable frames beginning about 130years ago, European beekeeping appears to have inadvertently lost what could be an extremely important component of honey bee colonies which probably protected them from many insect and mite enemies—pseudoscorpions. In fact pseudoscorpions were lost from Europe before much information at all was obtained about them. They have been so forgotten and overlooked that they are not mentioned in a 1982 review of associates of social insects,19a 2001 review of the prospective biocontrol agents of varroa,12or a 2004 review of the small hive beetle and the possibilities of biological control.16Now with hives reeling from the onslaught of varroa in particular, but also other enemies such as tracheal mite disease and Tropilaelaps, and the small hive beetle, we speculate that restoring appropriate species of pseudoscorpions to our bee colonies could possibly help save our bees. |
