In wild bee populations one would expect to find colony size and swarm rate optimized for successful reproduction at the colony level.  It serves no adaptive purpose for wild colonies to grow to sizes and put up the surpluses that benefit other species like us humans.  So no surprises there.

Comparing these wild colonies to managed colonies in terms of size and production wasn't really the point of the review.  It was more to acknowledge and document examples of populations of a. mellifera that have achieved equilibrium with the varroa mite over a very short time frame in evolutionary terms.

The authors do briefly touch on the obvious implications of small colony size and increased swarming as it relates to the goals of beekeepers attempting to exploit bee colonies for productive purposes.  The question as to whether the cost of resistance negates the economic benefits to beekeepers is obviously important and points to where further investigation is needed.

I’ll offer up my experience with mite-surviving bees if I may:

I started an apiary and have been keeping bees off treatments since 2010.  My stock is derived from feral cutouts and receives drone contribution from feral colonies living the the heavily wooded areas surrounding my location.  I keep about 20 colonies, have less than 20% winter losses, and my honey production is at or above average for my area.

From the beginning most of my colonies not only survived winter but were able to reach swarming strength in the spring.  This suggests to me that the local population here may have already turned the corner on adapting to the mites similar to how some of the populations described in the paper have done.

Swarming in those first seasons was indeed an issue with virtually 100% of the colonies doing so.  I believe this was in part because of not having enough drawn comb to practice swarm prevention techniques.  However even after building up some inventory of drawn comb and having the benefit of the late Walt Wright's personal input and oversight with respect to swarm prevention management, we determined that this population of bees had an above average tendency for swarming.

After a little tinkering with Walt's methods, and after a few years of selecting breeder queens from colonies that responded favorably to swarm prevention, I can report at least preliminary success with working around the swarming tendency and getting decent honey production from these wild bee derivatives.

I haven't crunched the 2016 numbers yet, but I now have two seasons in a row with swarming at 15% or less.  Colonies that don't swarm grow in size to occupy the equivalent of 4 to 5 deep 10 frame Langstroth hives.  Honey yields last year averaged about 70 lbs. per production hive, and this year's numbers will probably average closer to 100 lbs. per production hive.  Only surplus honey is harvested and enough honey is left for the colonies to overwinter on without feeding.  This production is at or above average for my area and compares favorably to apiaries employing more conventional management.

My guess is that any of the strains we beekeepers are working with would revert back to smaller colony sizes and increased swarming if they found themselves back out in the wild and able to survive varroa.  Unless it's just dumb luck, it appears from the experiences of myself and others that at least some resistant strains of bees can be managed for swarm prevention and decent honey production.

I was disappointed to see that the least was known about the Arnot Forest bees as compared to the other populations in terms of their traits. In my opinion we have a good opportunity for looking carefully at mite resistant bees here in certain regions of the U.S., especially those in managed settings having a track record of good survival and decent production. One of my goals for the off season is to reach out to the research community and find out who is looking at what in that regard.

Should anyone on the list be aware of investigators interested in studying mite resistant populations being utilized in managed settings there are a fairly high number of beekeepers in my area achieving respectable outcomes, and we would be happy to cooperate with scientists in order advance all of our understanding into the how's and why's this is happening.
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