James Kilty asked, as did several others, if cell size is the contributing
factor to control Varroa, then why do feral colonies die off?
We have an excellent experiment which has already been conducted. Bees were
introduced to the US many hundreds of years ago, well before the artificial
increase in cell size. So the bees have had hundreds of years to
accommodate to so called natural cell size, yet the feral bees were the
first to succumb to varroa. Nature has run the experiment and we have the
results.

Another small point which also has been beaten to death, but keeps coming
up, when the term Varroa resistance is used, it means Varroa tolerant. You
might develop fully resistant bees, but what we really want is varroa
tolerance so we have a hive of bees that live comfortably with varroa,
tracheal and the like without massive die-off.

And to say that the trait cannot be passed down flies in the face of nature
and the Varroa tolerant Apis Cerrana, who seem not to have found out that
they are not allowed to pass on the trait. Probably because they do not
have the internet yet.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, ME