We have talked a lot about development of resistance to various varroa treatments.  The big question is how easy is it for varroa to become resistant to various chemicals and how can bee keepers control such a potential problem.  Obviously, the development of resistance is possible in some cases as we already have seen it happen with two chemicals used to control varroa and there are reports of pockets where apivar is no longer effective.

So, let me pose a question for which I have no good answers.  Why are bees not developing resistance to a whole variety of chemical exposures?  For example neonics have gotten a lot of blame for killing bees.  There is no question at all that at high enough concentrations neonics will kill bees.  After all, they are insecticides and insecticides kill bees.  But, lots of data show that a great many bees are subjected to sub lethal doses of neonics.  If sub lethal doses of pesticides speed development of resistance why are our bees not rapidly becoming resistant?  I could just as well have asked the same question about any number of other pesticides bees are routinely exposed to.  Nothing special about my choice to ask it about neonics, not any implied demand that neonics should be banned.  With varroa many argue that sub lethal doses of anti varroa chemicals are the cause of resistance development.  So why should this same mechanism not work with bees?  Are bees inherently less able to evolve than varroa and if so why?

This is simply a food for thought question that it seems to me we should think about when we talk about resistance.

Dick


" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

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