a Randy Oliver snip..
'Your being at the edge of the Gulf suggests that
your bee would have some a degree of Africanization. I'm curious as to the
sort of stock that you run.'

ET replies...
We keep a lot of Hawaiian stock at the bee lab and the students and sometimes myself and sometime folks out of the Texas Apiary Inspection Service assist in testing these hives and on occasions some of my out yards for varroa.  Based purely on varroa testing there is really no comparison between the two types of stock either in terms of numbers of varroa, the capacity of the stock to tolerate high levels of varroa or the number of years individual hives will survive with significant varroa pressure.  Like a lot of 'old school' beekeeper I use to treat with TM but some 7 or 8 years ago discontinued this practice.  There has been some soft or purely experimental treatments in a very few of my hives by students < I have one yard set up about one mile from the Bee Lab on a friends property so they have some close location to replicate their efforts if they need to do so.  On rare occasion we have use multiple yards so the students could replicate their data.

after that long preface on to your question...

Most of my stock here is BeeWeaver with a good deal of Minnesota Hygienic stock which I added in when I discontinued the use of TM.  I also have added some new world Carni stock in some small quantity a few years ago.  We are on the edge of africanized expansion line and based upon feral removals (which I use to do quite frequently) there is some africanized stock in the area but not nearly as much as some might think < this conclusion is based on lab results... ie I had samples tested prior to removal.  If there was not some integration between the two stocks I would be quite surprised... there are of course thing most beekeepers/queen rearing folk can do which will limit this integration.  Based upon my own commercial beekeeping experience my own stock's disposition is pretty much 'commercial grade' and really reminds me of what we use to call good commercial italian stock.  You definitely do not work my stock without essential protection but as far other africanized traits (say absconding on constantly swarming or producing a constant supply of queen cells) I don't see any of that.  I do employ a fairly severe culling regime for any hive that is excessively hostile.

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