From: Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]>

>Wherever there is admixture of stock, you have muddy water.

I will add to that that it will take a much longer time when we have a situation where mated queens (generally from a small number of stocks) are introduced into hives year after year.  This is exactly a prescription for _not_ allowing the bees to adapt.  This is (from the perspective of allowing bees to adapt), far worse than "muddy waters", IMHO.

>By the way, the difference between hygienic bees and virulent mites is that we are trying to breed bees whereas we are trying to kill mites.

I think that fluvalinate resistant mites demonstrate that unless we can kill ALL mites, killing mites is not any different from breeding them.  The same could be said about bees (that if we are breeding them, we have to kill off the unsuitable lines).

>Even if mites are not "virulent" they are unsanitary, and undesirable. Would it comfort you to know that the ticks on your legs are not carrying any serious viruses? Surely, you wouldn't ignore blood-sucking arachnids thriving on your own body ...

I would never ignore them, but when I was a kid running around the woods and swamps, ticks and leeches came with the territory....and were creepy, but not scary (this was before Lyme and the other tick borne diseases were of concern here).  Even today with the bedbug problem, as of yet, there is no spread of disease associated with them...they creep me out, and I'd like to avoid being exposed to them, but they don't scare me.  When they start carrying Lyme disease I'll be concerned.

deknow

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