Matthew Westall of southern Colorado asks for ideas about what management
strategies for relocated feral hives.  Allen Dick makes a good response.  My
remarks are as follows:

1.  "My guess is that none of us really know the answers," Allen says.
2.  We, I, don't know anything about southern Colorado so we can't second
guess your observations, and can't say your conclusions are wrong or even
off the mark.
3.   In Washington State the feral colonies are just beginning to appear
again.  They are obviously from beekeeper managed colonies.
4.  "Old" feral colonies still exist in isolated areas such as remote
forested areas where they still are reported in the walls of Grange halls.
But when beekeepers collect swarms from these areas they are very
susceptible to mite damage if they aren't treated.
5.  According to work done by Dr. Sheppard when he was at USDA (now at
Washington State University) the genetics of commercial and feral colonies
in the south were not statistically different, nor the commercial and feral
colonies in California.  But there was a slight difference between
California bees and southern bees.
6.  This leads me to suspect that there is only a slight (if any) difference
between the bees from Matthew's purchased queens and the feral colonies he
collected.
7.  There appears to be some measurable difference in mite tolerance between
colonies as revealed by laboratory tests for tracheal mites and surveys for
Varroa.
8.  Verified reports still occur of documented cases of high losses from
tracheal mites in the west even if most beekeepers don't pay them much
attention.
9.  Beekeepers still lose many colonies to Varroa because of treatments
applied at the wrong time, not using enough Apistan strips, and resistance
to fluvalinate.
10.  Matthew's statement that 80-100 percent of the colonies would die if he
didn't use mite treatments proves the susceptibility of the bees to mites.
11.  What should Matthew do in the best interest of our gene pool?  I doubt
if you can do anything significant within your operation.
12.  The Russian bees are only somewhat tolerant (I question resistance) to
Varroa.  In the northern states one treatment is still needed.  Tom Rinderer
is reported to have said that in the southern states one of the two
treatments "might" be skipped.
13.  If the Russian bees are bred into the gene pool of queen breeders
across the country there would be some positive impact on genetic diversity,
though maybe not of commercial value.
14.  I don't see any practical way that Matthew can significantly influence
the genetic pool in his area because he, and presumably others, are using
commercially available queens and treating for mites.
15.  Dr. Marla Spivak has shown that mite tolerance is a recessive gene
which means that the trait must be constantly managed in bee lines to
maintain it.  The trait disappears naturally in several generations.
16.  Significant promotion of genetic diversity and mite tolerance requires
a substantial and concerted national effort to be successful.  Having said
that, if we all were to let susceptible colonies die off, we would get to
mite resistance in the shortest possible time.
17.  And, if we were to introduce strains of bees from other parts of the
world and distribute them to all queen breeders in North America, we would
diversify the gene pool in the shortest possible time.
18.  We can monitor our surviving colonies, the ones that have the least
number of mites in a survey and are the strongest colonies the first of
February, and return these queens to breeders to breed into their strains.
This would be doing the best we can to promote mite tolerance in commercial
stock.

James C. Bach
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