>Do you know if the beeks in the AHB areas provide lots of
drone comb in their EHB hives?

Only in mating yards from what I have seen. You have to keep close watch on
hives with full sheets of drone comb for high levels of varroa. Especially
in late season.

I only run extra drone comb myself in drone mother colonies & hives I am
adding varroa pressure to. Only Dann Purvis and myself are using the  added
varroa pressure philosophy from what I have gleaned off the net and at
meetings. We hope to kill off the hives  which can not handle varroa quicker
and speed up the selection process.

 I only have a small number of hives ( I am now only testing new lines for
varroa tolerance) wintering right now with added varroa pressure. I  started
with three lines
and have already killed off two lines ( I only wished to kill off 50% but
losing all happens and part of the game) but one group is still alive with a
few strong hives. Hopefully I will find a breeder queen in one of those.
We have had some really cold weather for our area so not sure what I will
find when the weather breaks. Winter is tough on varroa experiments.

Bob

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