On Mon, 4 Mar 1996, Franklin Humphrey wrote:
 
> I thought that the yugo strain of carnolins was supposed to exibit the mite
> biteing behavior.  I have read several articals stating this as fact.  I am
> in the process of converting over to yugos and plan to keep them exclusively
> here in the south.
>
 Franklin , I have tried 15 yugo queens in 1994. They were average in
honey production and I had to put apistan strips on them anyway. Fall of
1995 I treated too late for Varroa and lost 30 out of 60 that were up in
the mountains. Varroa took down the yugo  bees and my carniolans at the
same rate. The yugo is not bullet proof. That is why we should help out
our researchers to get the funds that they need to stop Varroa.Varroa is
not the only problem. We need to divide up the pie , so we don't have too
many working on one part of the problem.
 We should all be asking some questions about the bees that we are
working.Are there any changes in behavior in our bees today as opposed to
5 to 10 years ago.Like Brood patterns, workers not paying attention to
the queen and supersedure.The yugo queens helped. They are not the answer
but one step in a long road.We need good breeding programs with the help
of our researchers every step of the way.You can't breed for 3 or 4
traits for a very long time without loosing some of the natural traits
that has been protecting the honeybee for a very long time.We have been
speeding up change, without knowing where we would be when we finished.We
need more research on the genetic side of the bee.I have Dr. Rinderers
book on Bee Genetics and see how complex the problem of breeding that
little bee is.We need to know more about what genes do what. The
multiples and probabilities may need a cray computer to work them out.
 
  Dr Rinderer asked for some help in getting some feral stock that may be
resistant to Varroa. We all should help , because this is not one step
and your home.We will need a lot of one steps. Yugo is one step.
Thank You
Roy