I expect the SMR daughter queens to have a normal life expectancy.
The problem is with the breeder queens.Being inbred and II to concentrate
the SMR trait causes the bees to tend to supercede them.One of mine laid a
few hundred scattered eggs and was immediately superceded.Her daughter is
laying a beautiful solid brood pattern.Outcrossing with your own stock
removes the inbreeding problem.By the way,I think I remember reading that
the SMR trait doesnt apply to drone brood,that varroa would still be able to
reproduce there.No problem there.Its when varroa jumps to the worker brood that
we see all the stress problems(viruses and dead hives)I guess if you had 5lbs
ticks crawling on your back you would feel kind of stressed out too.So I assume
the presence of mites in drone brood does not mean that your survivor stock
isnt SMR.I also think we should put in treatments for a while to protect the
drone brood until we get this trait established(next springs drones will carry
the ball)
   My thinking on this SMR trait is that its going to be good to have as much
of it out there as possible when our chemical control no longer works.I dont
think there will be a 'big crash'but lots of small die offs like we have been
having since the mites first arrived.Theoretically survivors are out there and
adding there genes to the pool.Harbos work gives us a chance to speed up this
process.
     Mike



---------------------------------------------
This message was sent using InterStar WebMail