"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt." Abe said it best but as those on the list already know that I am a fool I'll finally put in a couple of cents more. 

From the beginning of this circuitous albeit entertaining and educational discussion I have muttered to myself (and the cat) my opinions. Much of it went quickly way over my head and then time and time again it came back to some version of my thoughts and experience. "I don't understand" followed by "that's what I said". 

We are focused almost exclusively on varroa resistance in all these efforts to "improve" the stock. I speculate that were varroa never able to have made the transition to our bees we would be focused on much smaller problems with a vastly smaller research community and budget. "Pigs will not fly" "We have made some measurable progress". Many statements for and against but the simple truth is that as regards varroa we have not come up with a commercially viable self sustaining  resistant stock, Not for lack of effort or expense. It is simply a testament to the difficulty of the problem. 

I think that we would be miles ahead with a greater emphasis and resources spent on effective control measures. In most other human and veterinary medicine we first try to put out the fire. We are not spending much time trying to breed cancer resistant infants, or tick resistant cattle or waiting for natural immunity to eliminate covid. I know and agree with the arguments against the "chemical bandwagon". The reality of bringing an EPA labeled control agent to market is daunting. Think where we would be if you first had to get a permit to conduct a breeding experiment and could not market it until it had been approved. Maybe we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Spend a little less on repetitive breeding strategies in academic labs and a lot more on getting mites out of my colonys.

Paul  

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