Hello All,

>So much talk about developing varroa resistant bees from exotic breeds.

I don't think exotic breeds fits the search for varroa tolerant bees.

Beekeeping history:
After varroa knocked the commercial beekeeping industry to its knees wiping
out over half the commercial hives and according to most researchers 95% of
feral colonies Dr. Harbo at the Baton Rouge Bee lab asked for beekeepers to
send survivor queens. Some of these queens were all that survived from say a
2000 hive commercial operation. Queens from all over the U.S. were shipped
to the bee lab.

Efforts by Harbo to produce a varroa tolerant queen by selection from the
queens was a failure ( I think from memory a four year effort)and was
documented for years at the web site but not sure if the old information is
still available. Harbo was puzzled by the lack of success (personal
communication).

Then Harbo & Harris began to look closely at why some hives were able to
survive varroa and SMR was named. Then the SMR genetics were isolated (
later found to be a hygienic behavior but still Harbo & Harris had found a
key to locating a varroa tolerant bee).

The first SMR queens were *in my opinion* too inbred which made first cross
problematic. Poor brood patterns and bees which were varroa tolerant but not
prolific. A problem which has been resolved I have been told and the new VSH
and Minnesota Hygienic lines are varroa tolerant AND prolific.

The above lines are not exotic and came from our U.S. bees and will help any
U.S. lines be varroa tolerant when used. However (as predicted by many
beekeepers) you still need to keep adding the varroa tolerant genetics to
keep a true varroa tolerant line. I have heard others say this is not so but
those friends of mine using varroa tolerant queens say you need to buy the
newest releases from the above people (usually instrumental inseminated
breeder queens or Russian/Russian from the USDA-ARS queen breeders) to keep
your outfit truly varroa tolerant. Once you move away from pure Russian or
the varroa tolerant line open mates for a couple years then varroa tolerance
slips away.

Maybe exotic:
In my opinion most did not give the Yugo bee a chance. Several of my friends
had success similar to the Russian bee but the Yugo bee was said to be a
failure but I have a friend which has descendents from the first Yugo import
untreated ( by raising queens from the same original bunch of Yugo queens
after 13 years).

Somewhat inbred but varroa tolerant and untreated.

We had excellent strips during the Yugo import and many bought Yugo genetics
only to use strips so in my opinion they were not treated like the Russian
import was.

The Russian import was not really embraced by beekeepers until the chemical
strips started failing and many did not see formic and thymol as a serious
solution to varroa. In my opinion if another strip made been available then
many beekeepers might have not have taken a serious look at the Russian bee
but we had three options.

1. increase the use of not approved chemicals or increased use of strips or
use of two approved strips at the same time. I doubt any member of BEE-L
doubts these things were done after Apistan & Checkmite started to fail as a
varroa control.

2. Move away from hard chemicals, replace contaminated comb and use varroa
tolerant queens or Russian queens.

3. monitor varroa closer and use soft controls such as api life var, formic
acid and apiguard.

The beekeepers using 1. bought time in the varroa fight but at what cost as
many are fighting contaminated comb , super mites and are running bees which
have got zero varroa tolerance. Possibly some CCD is coming from beekeepers
which chose the no.1 path.

Beekeepers using the no. 2 path (myself) have not seen serious problems
since making the change ( took me four years to replace all apistan &
checkmite brood comb) but the road has not been easy but although laughed at
by many in the No. 1 qroup we are in a better position than group one in my
opinion.

Many beekeepers in group three simply have switched to monitoring varroa and
using the light treatments but still are not using the varroa tolerant
genetics and are running bees on chemical strip contaminated comb. Some CCD
problems might be traced back to this group. Reports to myself from this
group is that although their bees are surviving varroa but the bees are not
thriving nor building like they did  before varroa. Even seeing PMS while
varroa loads are low.

The above is a *simple version* ( complicated would take days) of my
industry observations. Another commercial beekeeper called Friday night to
say he was selling out. He fits in one of the above categories but not
willing to make the effort to solve his problems. I post the above not to
condemn but possibly help those still in beekeeping choose a future path.
Hope the above helps!

bob



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