>Are your mite tolerant, or mite resistant?

I’m not sure Charles, perhaps both, and I suspect there may be other factors (nutrition?, healthy biome?) bolstering natural immunity to viruses.  I’m planning to send samples in to Randy’s project to see if the less virulent DWV strain is present.

I’ve done a alcohol washes in late summer and they come in at 8 - 14% infestation.  On the other hand in the spring and early summer I can uncap dozens of drone brood and not find a single mite.  Again, I would welcome someone with research interest to undertake qualitative and quantitative analyses with these colonies that these type questions might be properly answered.

>I read it as bees that were survivors because they were small and swarmy were your base stock? If so what has happened with the mites since they are now less swarmy?

My base stock were nucs purchased from a supplier who managed his apiary primarily for nuc and queen sales.  His main selection criterion was queen fecundity.  (I used the past tense because he has not been able to do much with his bees these past couple of seasons due to other commitments).  

So in a sense my management of these bees involved a shift from the making of bees from bees to swarm prevention and honey production.  As mentioned, respectable swarm control and honey production has been achieved.  The colonies that have been prevented from swarming do not appear to suffer any ill effects in terms of their ability to overwinter or come back strong the following spring.

>And have later generations been as successful with mites or do you see it changing??

Later generations are becoming less swarm prone and more productive, although it’s hard to know how much of a factor having all of that drawn comb contributes to both of those measures.   The supplier and I live in adjacent counties and are most likely receiving drone contribution from the same feral metapopulation, so I am not expecting to see a waning of mite success with later generations as might happen were we to ship queens to a different region altogether.
             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html