> But I think the evidence says Africanized bees that survive mites do
> it for many of the same reasons the Arnot forest ferals survive.  Or am I
> wrong on that?


Tom also looked at the forest's colony density between his census work in 1978 and a census he took in 2002. He theorized that the consistent colony numbers per acre over those decades, even though varroa had arrived in the meantime, was due to the possibility that Arnot bees emerged on the other side of a population bottleneck with some mite resistant/tolerance traits. But, my recollection is that when compared to commercial "Carniolan" stock the Arnot bees didn't show signs of either. My guess would be that if you took Arnot queens out into other areas and managed them in dense apiary settings they would die as soon as any other stock.  

At some point, we might find the genes needed to combat mites but it seems that the examples of our time inform us that honey bee ecotypes that survive mites can develop in isolated or even semi-isolated environments - nothing new about that. It may be that shifting to a less virulent host preditor relationship occurs with some regularity, in some environments, and are then mistakenly held up as examples of TF success while the underlying environmental agents of adaptation go unnoticed and unacknowledged. 



Bill Hesbach
Cheshire CT

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