Dave Cushman writes:
>Whatever the process was...Varroa is "out of the bag" now and we humans do
>not have the millions of years to spare for a new balance to be struck.


>There have been a lot of comments that the whole varroa problem is
>man created. This is obviously quite true, but one must remember that
>beekeeping, too, is man created. Up until 150 years ago, honeybees
>were still essentially wild creatures. Beekeepers gathered them into
>apiaries, which probably produced some unnatural overcrowding, which
>encourages disease.

There is a good deal of thought today that the greatest threat to a species
is mobility. Man did not create the mite problem by changing the cell size
of the European honey bee. Man created the problem when either the European
bee was moved into Varroa territory or Varroa was moved out of its native
land.

But this does not mean that we will have to wait millions of years for
answers. Honeybees are loaded with thousands of genes that represent the
traits needed for survival. Unlike humans who are able to add behaviors by
learning, honeybees have their entire "program" included in their DNA. As
the pressure of Varroa increases the breeding populations of honeybees will
change and recessive genes will have a greater chance of coming together as
the population declines. The chances of finding these genes is also improved
as breeding programs reduce the amount of chance involved.

The argument that larger cell sizes have helped Varroa would be based on the
pressure placed on the breeding population of honeybees by beekeepers.  As
beekeepers desired "bigger bees" they encouraged the continued breeding of
bees that did well on the larger celled foundation. The problem with that is
that until the Varroa problems some areas had healthy feral populations that
were outside of the breeding pressure. In areas like Florida and Texas the
T-mite problem did not eliminate the feral colonies.

I would suggest that the best we can hope for in smaller cell sizes is some
pressure against the Varroa. Of course right now we are just hoping for
another two generations of beekeepers.