This summer my helper Marcel bought queens from many of the queen
suppliers who are touted as having some form of Varroa-resistant stock.
He bought queens from about 10 sources. He kept most of them in his
hives and gave me some to keep in my hives. We did not do any form of
treating them for anything.
The only colonies that survived from last summer until now are 5 out of
5 of his colonies headed by Bee-Weaver queens.
I looked at one of his Bee Weaver hives today and grafted a batch of
queen cells from it. The hive was on 15 frames of bees, and there was
abundant drone brood with absolutely no Varroa mites visible when I
inspected it. I did not notice defensive behavior and bees were not
running on the frames. He did have them on foundationless frames, so I
don't know how much the smaller cell-size factors into the way these
bees resist Varroa.
He documented his results here: www.primoqueens.com
--
Jeremy Rose
San Luis Obispo, CA
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