> The treatment free advocate in our bee club 
> is convinced all our queens are, and I quote, 
> "polluting the gene pool" because they cannot 
> deal with Varroa without beekeeper assistance.

Two things - First, neither can his queens.  
He and his ilk are not going to change the course of evolution two dead
hives at a time.

Second, having a wide genetic variety (ESPECIALLY if some of the lines are
less "curated") is perhaps the best strategy for  preserving the species, be
it Bison (hunted to extinction, and then restocked with 14 from a small herd
in 1913 at the Bronx Zoo in New York) or the Yellow-Eyed Penguin, where a
stubborn refusal to allow any of these penguins to be kept in human care
outside NZ has left them with only around 1,700 to 1,800 breeding pairs,
half the number surveyed in 2000.  The NZ authorities claim that they will
not reproduce in human care, but this is a weak argument, given that they
have not tried for long, and AI is working perfectly for Magellanics and
Rockhoppers, and every (other) species will soon be bred using AI to keep
their gene pools varied without all the constant shuffling of the birds
between facilities.  There is an actual "stud book" tracking every bird in
human care on the planet, and a responsible "keeper" of the book, with
responsibility for matchmaking under "Species Survival Plans".  Everyone
participates.

So, you are doing everyone a service, even if you are not all that happy
with your queens.  You are undeniably creating more variations that would
not otherwise exist in this era of mass-produced queens.

Here's a recent decent paper you can wave at your self-appointed critics,
even if they won't read it.
"Genetic diversity affects colony survivorship in commercial honey bee
colonies." 
(Tarpy, lead vocals, Pettis on sax, vanEngelsdorp on bass)
Naturwissenschaften, 2013; 

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00114-013-1065-y

The full text is paywalled, but ain't the lock that ain't been picked, so
here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PaPcbjaHjWRF5q2m3Niym1fg7zCMeE_H/view?usp=s
haring
https://tinyurl.com/y77v65x8

             ***********************************************
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