Case in point: Tom Seeley. 
>But he was also one of the first to document that queens raised from so-called feral hives did not convey resistance to their colonies.

Having been involved with beekeeping a couple decades before mites arrived and around when the first varroa was found in a friends hives and watching the a new era a beekeeping history unfold the above both in commercial and feral hives was a puzzle. 

At meetings both the old timers , researchers and queen breeders were in complete agreement breeding from survivors was the answer. 

The Baton Rouge Bee lab (Harbo & Harris) asked beekeepers which had lost almost all their hives to send survivor queens to speed up the process of finding a varroa tolerant line of bees.

I collect bee magazines and go back at times to reread the articles. Basically the bee lab said progress was being made. privately researchers said not so. A meeting was arranged with a member of the Baton Rouge team and one of the largest beekeepers in the world. Through the meeting commercial beekeepers learned the baton Rouge Bee lab had failed after around five years in attempting to convey resistance to their colonies from those survivor queens.

So convinced the lab would be successful the industry had not pushed for another strip (other than apistan). The second big crash took place. The first being the discovery of varroa in the U.S..

Reality became to creep into the research community. They needed to figure out why certain hives could tolerate varroa . SMR, VSH and hygienic bees became words used at bee meetings. Many beekeepers never understood these were traits to be introduced into colonies or found in your own bees.

The deep thinkers at the USDA-ARS in private discussions realized a plan B was needed. Hence the Russian Bee program was started. 

If you are still reading and have not deleted the post yet I will make my point.

The passing on of whatever making bees tolerant to varroa has changed *in my opinion* only a small amount since the start. The exact mechanism remains a bit of a mystery still. The worry at the start by commercial beekeepers was the need to keep buying queens from a certain source (bee lab or Russian queen breeder) to keep the varroa tolerance up. 

Although we have made steps in the right direction the Russian bee line needs kept as pure as possible and introducing varroa tolerant genetics ( as Allen did) does not guarantee results.

The puzzle as to *exactly* why survivor queens do *not always* convey varroa tolerance to their daughters remains a mystery. I have been involved with a few closed system breeding programs involving instrumental insemination and you can observe varroa tolerance drop as these lines are mixed with non varroa tolerant lines.

Feral bees should simply be a label to describe bees of unknown origin. Plenty of varroa tolerant genetics have been introduced in U.S. bees. Those purchasing those genetics should have bees capable of going longer untreated. AHB have been reported since the release in Brazil to have moved around 300 miles each year. 
Commercial migratory U.S. beekeepers travel and stop in most areas. Queens are shipped to all states and one can not say into your area for sure. one swarm dies and another takes over the cavity.

back to genetics:

The problem of taking those queens and saying their daughters will be as varroa tolerant as their mothers is still a gray area of queen rearing. For now you either need to keep introducing queens from breeders or constant cull which is hard work .

I agree with Randy bees will eventually become tolerant of varroa as the Russian import bees were but the Russian bees had over a hundred years to adjust. 

*Still Tom Rinderer & Shiminuki (personal conversation) passed on many queens while testing in Russia which were not varroa tolerant which gives credit to my opinion the *exact* reason some queens bees tolerate varroa and the mystery as to way the varroa tolerance is not always passed to offspring still haunts beekeepers and researchers.

The reason I test and treat if needed. I find Internet discussion interesting but plenty or research exists about the above and available at USDA-ARS sites.

Sincerely,

Bob Harrison
Midwest semi retired beekeeper

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