> Breeding varroa resistant bees is the most promising avenue as opposed to let-alone come-what-may wishful thinking. 

I doubt there are many on the forum who dispute this sentiment - but I am not certain that the discussion of late has been comparing and contrasting 'doing nothing' with targeted artificial selection.

As best I can summarize, this discussion began with an argument against the legitimacy of 'Darwinian Beekeeping', which morphed into an argument against honey bee subspecies which morphed into an argument against local adaptation, epigenetics (with a brief foray into intercolony genetic diversity) and now we're coming back around more generally to a statement on the inability of Natural Selection to provide beneficial traits, particularly along the lines of varroa resistance.

To-date, quite a bit of research has been provided to help unpack several of the tangential questions noted above, but I am not aware of any research or field studies that have been shared that help support the position that Natural Selection is ill-equipped to address the varroa menace.

I am certainly open to review any apicultural scholarship in this area so please feel welcome to post them.

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