>
> All evidence
> shows that the honey bee has the capacity, if we don't hold it back, to
> evolve resistance to varroa by some combination of heritable traits.


What ability does the average beekeeper have to contribute to this?

At Vermont's EAS I got a chance to speak with Marla Spivak about small
scale, local breeding efforts. It was her belief at the time that it was
not possible to adequately breed queens with an operation of less than 100
colonies. Even at that, it wasn't recommended. The genetic bottlenecking
would be severe. Better left to operations with a few thousand hives to get
a better genetic selection pool.

And what are they selecting for? Each "resistant" stock has focused on
different areas (mite chewing, mite grooming, hygienic behavior, russians,
to name a few). It's taken thousands of hives to narrow down decent mite
resistant genetics on any one of these traits. Even then, even after all
that selection, is the end result a mite resistant line? Not even close.
I've tried MH, Russian, VSH, and "naturally resistant" queens. After a few
generations, those traits are gone. Even before that, I still end up
treating, as my mite counts are still too high.

If, after 12 years on my part (many more for others) of incorporating mite
resistant stocks and selecting for my most productive colonies of the group
and I'm still not close, how long will it take? Assuming I get some
progress, how long before someone else, with several thousand hives, finds
a trait of the bees that works better than those currently identified,
nullifying all of the selection progress I've made?

To the average beekeeper, selecting for mite resistant bees is like trying
to dig a tunnel to China with a spoon. I think we're better off letting
someone with a tunnel boring machine take a go at it first.

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