Hi all,

As Bob mentioned, Sharon and I stayed with John Kefuss
and I did inspect his stock, which he claimed to have not treated for
over ten years. The location is in southern France in the Toulouse area. He was an excellent host and very passionate in regards to breeding varroa resistant stock. He has not treated in ten years.

I
did personally participate in his "world varroa challenge" and did
receive 6 cents for the six mites I found. I went through about 6 hives
in an outyard and used my knife to pull out pupa quickly and inspect
for mites. One I found walking on the comb after a shake. I must have
pulled out at least two hundred or more worker pupa(it was fall) to
find the mites. Some hives I inspected had no mites that I could find
pulling brood. 

I would have preferred to do an ether roll, as
that is what i am accustomed to here in our operation.(we have
intensified our rolls in the spring, pre-supering, and fall with our
staff to get a feel on where we stand). 

John's clusters were quite small but healthy looking and in discussion
with a couple of Swedish guys, they also confirmed my observation. The
bees were dark colored and I must say that I did all this mite
searching without a veil with my glasses on to see better and didn't
get much abuse with careful and quick handling. The weather was
marginal. 

I don't think the stock would work well for us if the
bees didn't produce  bigger fall cluster size at our latitude of 45, but then again it is
possible that the cluster size is adapted to the region of southern France and is all they
need in that climate. I wondered if the same stock would have a bigger
cluster size in a colder region?  The cluster size of our bees is quite
big and we do run some Parks stock which we incorporate into our queen
cell operation in addition to some  VSH genetics we have been introducing. I
also get some stock from our field run bees to graft from that have
variations in color(I pick on performance and traits and try to be
color blind). 

Here's a wiki excerpt:

The European dark bee (Apis mellifera mellifera) was domesticated in modern times, and taken to North America in colonial times. These small, dark-colored honey bees are sometimes called the German black bee, although they occurred originally from Britain to eastern Central Europe.
There are three main subspecies, namely
mellifera (brown bee)lehzeni (heathland bee)nigra (black bee),
which have local variants, such as the Pomeranian Brown, the Alps
Black, or the Black Scandinavian. All of the subspecies belong to the
'M' lineage of Apis mellifera [1]
The European dark bee can be distinguished from other subspecies by
their stocky body, abundant thoracal and sparse abdominal hair which is
brown, and overall dark coloration; in nigra, there is also heavy dark pigmentation of the wings. Overall, when viewed from a distance, they should appear blackish, or in mellifera,
rich dark brown. The aggressive feral hybrids with other subspecies can
be distinguished by the lighter, yellowish banding on the sides of the abdomen,
but this is often difficult. For breeding pure dark bees according to
the standard, details of the wing veins are nowadays considered to be
the only reliable distinguishing character.k


Kirk Jones

Sleeping Bear Farms   beekeepers making honey...
Benzie Playboys           cajun and zydeco band........

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