Hello Humdinger & All,
Holiday weekends are typically slow times on BEE-L so I will try and answer
your comments as may be the only response you get. I will be gone for a week
next week looking out for my interests in California so need to get enough
BEE-L to last a week let alone my wife's home cooking!

 > Treating bees, I understand, is necessary for  those commercial
>beekeepers since they need a solution here and right > now.  This >practice
appears to be myopic, however.

The beekeeping industry has been on *life support* for quite a few years
now. Ironic that four bee farms went bankrupt in Missouri last year when if
they could have survived one more year they could have enjoyed the high
honey prices and got a needed lift.

To sum things up other than chemicals there has been no PROVEN alternative!


> However, if we truly love the bees for a longer  term, we should stop
>treating them, thus quickening the eventuality so  that they will learn to
>survive without human intervention.

I bought into the above thinking back in the eighties and early nineties.
*Grandpa beekeeper * said let the weak die off and breed from the survivors.
After all my leave alones had died (and i do mean all) I was glad  the leave
alone hives were only a small percent. Several close friends lost close to
two thousand hives before going to chemicals when they refused to treat for
tracheal mites or varroa at all.

> bringing in whichever bee species that had learned to live with such
> pathogens--a reason I had, in the first place, asked to hear from for
> those who have not treated the bees for a while.

I have always left a percent untreated for many years. I have got a survivor
hive going into this winter two and a half years untreated. I did have to
add frames of sealed honey for the bees to survive the first  winter. I took
the colony out of a building in which they were said to have been for five
years. They swarmed this year and I cought the swarm with old queen. They
raised a new queen and I believe she mated with my SMR drone colony (but she
only knows).

> AHB seems promising,  especially since by the time they spread into >most
of the southern states,  their super-aggressiveness will have thinned out.

Keeping AHB hybreds might be something a hobby beekeeper might consider but
loading/unloading around 500 hives of those on a summer night is not
something I might find enjoyable. Stir up one hive and the whole yard
reacts. Next week we will be working in yards with around a thousand hives
to a yard. I loaded a couple very aggressive hives on the load as we were
running short on hives to send. They are marked for spring requeening .
Smoke does not mellow those gals and seems to only make the situation worse.
Lift the lid and they fly right at your face. Work the hive next to theirs
and they react. Maybe they are of AHb decent?

We have already  tinkered with SMR and Russian queens, to name just a few,
to broaden the  gene pool.

True.
How SMR queens came about:
When trying to breed from hives with low mite counts (a poor method but all
the average breeder has to work with) the USDA at Baton Rouge found that
certain colonies were handling varroa because of suppressed mite
reproduction. They switched their selection process to only breed from those
colonies with SMR. We have got quite a few SMR queens of both the red and
yellow line. They range greatly in honey production and temperment. All SMR
hives have the lowest varroa counts of our hives. I test each hive. My
partner tests random as he has a greater number of hives. The SMR queens are
only going into their second winter untreated. Mite counts remain below
threshold . In fact lower than any hives tested.

Why not AHB from Brazil?

There are still plenty of nasty tempered AHb in Brazil. I do not see the AHB
as the answer to any of our beekeeping problems. The gene for bad temper
seems dominate in the AHB I have been told by those doing research on AHb.
Plus bees with *capensis like traits* have been observed in the feral bees
of Arizona by Dr. Eric Erickson, Dr. Hoffman and others. I certainly do not
want any *pseudo queen* activity in my yards.

 Beekeepers requeening on a regular basis with queens from a reliable
breeder would have little problem with AHB (myself). Hobby beekeepers
letting their bees requeen on their own in an area of africanized drones
could be in for a big surprise when they stroll out to work their backyard
hives.

"What happened to my gentle bees!" they might ask.

Bob