>>The reason being that once you move away from the Russian as imported  and move into hybrids the varroa tolerance seems to drop.(my own experience).

This is likely why the beekeepers around here who tried Russian queens were disappointed.

>>When a Russian hybrid queen was grafted from and her daughters open mated then those bees became less varroa tolerant. So my question is:
What happens when there are no pure Russian/Russian to use to get back to the start again?

I'd think, given a sufficient quantity of Russian hybrids, a selection process could lead the population back to resistance.

>>My objection to the Russian has been with their other traits which would be fine for a hobby beekeeper.

I've read that Russians tend to keep a supercedure cells or several cells going at all times.  In the swarm season, it's hard to tell if the cells are swarm or back-up supercedure.  A great survival trait but would drive even a hobby beekeeper a little crazy.

>>Dann Purvis asked for the Baton Rouge Bee lab to send the reject program queens to Dann so he could keep those lines pure and still around through II. His offer was rejected and those queens got the hive tool.

Sad.  The dept spent millions of tax payor dollars and refused to give what they considered junk to be disposed of to a citizen.  What would be the harm?  I don't like this sort of arrogance.

If they did not want to give the rejected queens to Dann, they should have left them alone in the colonies and allowed them to swarm into a local area some place and let nature subject them to selective pressures.

Waldemar

******************************************************
* Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at:          *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm  *
******************************************************