For the past 7 years, I have been selecting annually for the bees in each of my yards for survival (hard to mate a dead queen) and honey production. After taking big losses this year, despite regular mite counts and several treatments, I have identified the common quality among all of my surviving hives in the six yards I keep. And that commonality is that all the survivors are descendants of Perdue Unversity-sourced VSH queens. Some are forth or fifth generation at this point. So are these bees locally-adapted now? It leads me to propose that the biggest selecting factor in each of my yards is varroa and the viruses it vectors. I think I’ll leave the queen breeding efforts to the pros.
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html