beeman wrote: > i have a hive that seems to never have any varroa... > is there anyway of testing the bees to see if they are varroa resistant?? check out the HIP (honeybee improvement program)... From: [log in to unmask] Newsgroups: sci.agriculture.beekeeping Subject: Re: isolated hives and mites Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 11:14:19 GMT Suggestion: use resistant stock when it is available. Caveat: unfortunately stock resistant to Varroa is still in developmental stages here at HIP and elsewhere. The genetic puzzle on that one has not really been figured out so we are essentially looking for invisible needles in large haystacks. You can see colonies that are doing what needs doing - namely not just surviving but actually thriving for 2 years completely untreated for either mite IN ANY WAY - however it must be multiple gene because getting it to pass on reliably has yet to be fully accomplished. Since 1993 when HIP was started we have made progress however - our test then only required a one year untreated phase to clearly point out breeders - now it requires a two year untreated phase. Increasing to a two year untreated test does not just double the difficulty - it exponentially increases it for several reasons not the least of which is queen longevity (use marked queens). In 1993 and 1994 we saw one completely untreated commercial operation lose 80% each year. Now in 1999 one of our HIP Cooperators is reporting 30% loss in his yard of first year untreated stock (with zero loss in the acual HIP stock in his 1st year test yard) and 70% loss in his 2 year Untreated Thriving Survival test yard. This is against a backdrop of only 3% operation wide loss of treated colonies (bulk of each operation is treated in HIP program - only test colonies are risked) at this time - but it should be noted that it is still early and MUCH winter loss actually occurs in March and even April hereabouts though not generally for that particular HIP Cooperator. To the point - the hand selected test stock has survived for two years untreated better than originally was happening with stock left untreated just one year. But we are as yet a good long ways off our HIP goal - which is 80+% untreated survival of naturally mated daughters of HIP Breeder Queens. We could use more help in getting there. If any of you mainland USA folks would like to help - let me know. Most of our Cooperators are in MI but we count Kirk Webster of VT as well as Steve Cantu of FL among our HIP Cooperators so difficulties revolving around distance can be overcome with proper determination and patience. We recently picked up another 5 HIP Cooperators here in MI putting us up to 14 Cooperators now and I think we now break the 10,000 colony mark by a goodly margin - so we have more hay to sort through and that means we will find more needles to make use of cooperatively. We use both NM and AI and requeen mainly with cells. Last years daughter queens that do well provid this years drones out in the field. The more Cooperators in a given area the better the odds of getting your stock mated nearly pure with HIP drones - a community effort definitely helps and it does make a difference what drones are used. Also HIP cells can be purchased even by non-Cooperators and that helps Cooperators fund the effort too. If you live in MI or FL let me know and I can get you the phone number of our main HIP cell producers. Jack Griffes Country Jack's Honeybee Farm http://members.tripod.com/~Griffes/ -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]