On Fri, Nov 25, 2016 at 1:56 PM, randy oliver  wrote:

> > I've been reviewing pretty much everything ever published on varroa and
> the
> breeding for resistance, and have suggestions for what our industry can do
> to finally get serious about breeding for mite-resistant bees (nothing
> original--just my assessment of what has actually worked).



> > I will detail everything in my current series in ABJ.
>
>
Ready to follow and re test from southern Chile.

I have the mess with our genetics right now. I´ve spend nearly 10 years
developing our mongrels well suited for our needs: "Las Perras del
Pantano/Bitches of the Swamp". Some of you might remember that name.

We were asked to grow from 2500 colonies to 5000 colonies in winter 2013
and the only way to acomplish that first year was to purchase 1000 mated
queens. Good queens but not well suited for our route (more italians than
carnic). We rented from colleague another 800 colonies and the rest was
done on the run (without much selection of the mothers for grafting or for
producing drones). It took us all 2014 and 2015 to grow up to the 4500
colonies we have now, but I do not like the end result and I am already
culling some 700 to 1000 queens.

Right now I am training  a new team of queen breeders and starting to
design a protocol to re select, re build our new generation of Perras del
Pantano. Iif they can become varroa resistant,  much better.

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