a Mr Charles Linder followed by > my comments and questions.. 

No I don't have your article of 4 years back,  most of us don’t keep magazines that long. Is that available online somewhere??

> could you provide a publishing date on this?  I must have missed this article but I would certainly like to take a peak at this myself.

In this case  I thought your advocating, and am quite sure Randy is, that  treating our bees is counterproductivewould solve the issue

>in the real world this approach would likely have also put most commercial beekeeper in the US out of business.  this might be a strategy some of us choose to follow but as an decision alternative for most beekeeper this is a poor choice.  people still have to pay their bills and most if not all bee keeping businesses would have failed without some intervention.  imho it would have been a better choice if certain 'long term' contaminating chemicals had not been use (and in chatting with some commercial folks is still used) which is now making keeping bees in a box even more difficult.  


Jose is right,  it is complex and we are all coming from different angles,  but one thing seems obvious is that the "restiance" genes  be they viral or otherwise, are defiantly recessive, and getting to where we want to be is no easy task.

In the mean time  IMO when anyone claims "if we stop treating it will fix itself"  your now in a world of your own,  and everything you say after that is just completely lost,  why?  Because not only is it unrealistic, evidence so far shows its not true.  For me that’s the point I, and many others stop listening, good bad or indifferent  not my point.  Just observation.

>We need to quite using words like dominant and recessive.  This simple genetic model works in a small number of cases but Jared Diamond explained pretty well in his book (Guns, Germs and Steel) any genetic model more complex than this is almost impossible for a human to understand and take advantage of.  imho quite likely resistance is a cumulative multi genetic trait for a distinct set of behaviors.  If you do go down the road to developing bees with resistance any product used to reduce varroa will make the path even more confusing.  Along the route you are also likely to encounter issues with disposition and some virus's but these can quickly be overcome by paying more attention to selection.  A couple of well known no treatment folks seem to have experience the same speed bump along the way to developing a varroa resistant honeybee.   

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