Hello All,
I am also back from my month long trek across the U.S. and attendance at the
ABF meeting in Jacksonville, Florida. I
especially  enjoyed meeting Aaron Morris and seeing my friend Allen Dick
again!

Russian bee project by Tom Rinderer:

The important point to remember is that all production queens which were
offered for sale last year and I expect this year are not "pure" Russian but
a cross with each queen breeders best line.
I only found one breeder (now deceased) which was willing to provide pure
Russian production queens last year.
The person in charge this year has declined so far to provide pure Russian
production queens and she says:
"Bob you are the only person which did not complain and had success with
introduction of the pure Russian queens ".
As I wrote in "Bee Culture" the introduction of pure Russian queens is not
easy but devote the time and effort and you will  be successful. Some
introductions took two weeks. Yes two weeks and the hand feeding of caged
queens as the Italians would not feed the queens. The Italians raised queen
cells while caged Russian queens were in the hive and would honor the queen
cells over the caged Russain queens if not cut out on a regular basis.
A big difference exists in varroa tollerance between the pure Russian and
the crosses.
It is a shame that pure production queens of the Russian line are not
available . If a BEE-L person has found pure Russian production queens
available please post. A handful of U.S. commercial beekeepers have got a
large number of pure Russian hives. You can buy the II Russian breeder queen
*but* you need pure Russian drones for open  mating so it will take two
years and two Russian breeder queens of different linage to raise your own
*if* you have got a remote mating area to start your own pure Russian line.

It is my opinion that the Russian bee in its pure form could be hard to find
in ten years in the U.S. unless the Russian project is accepted by queen
breeders. All I have talked to are content to sell crosses of daughters of
II Russian queens open mated to their best lines of Italians or carniolans.

Allen in reference to the work of Dr. Harbo & Dr. Harris:

Allen said:
  As a result, hives with low P-MIB will have much lower mite build-up rates
and possibly be able to manage varroa
without assistance.  Since the trait is highly heritable, breeding for it
may prove worthwhile.

Searching for P-MIB in hives is certainly taking varroa research to a new
level as did SMR research. I was able to talk for around forty five  minutes
privately with Dr. Harbo in regards to my own projects and actually many
beekeeping subjects. Dr. Harbo is very optimistic he will eventually arrive
at a bee which will through breeding be able to tolerate varroa untreated.
Although several queen producers say they have already got such a bee I
would use caution.
Testing for the SMR trait is very labor intensive and I myself are only now
getting the process down for my small scale experiments . Testing for P-MIB
is even of much higher labor intensive and takes a even greater attending to
detail as the number of mites in brood at any given time can vary for many
reasons.
One has to keep in mind that it took 6 years for the bee lab to isolate the
SMR trait and it might take  another 6 years to isolate the P-MIB trait.
The U.S. bee labs have certainly given us bees which can be treated less
often which in my opinion is a degree of success. Not what we had hoped for
but I remain optimistic.

Sincerely,
Bob Harrison

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