Hello Dennis & All,
Thanks for your sharing Dennis!

>I've had bees on small cell for 4 years.

I remember when you started.

>I wouldn't mind putting a drone comb in a small cell hive and leaving it
there.

Would tell me quite a bit but from your natural varroa drops I would say
your bees will take the pressure so maybe a moog point.

Bob asked:
>What type of varroa load do you see in late fall before brood rearing shuts
>down in natural fall or eyther roll?

Dennis said:
My small cell hives have consistently dropped about 1 to 2 mites/week.

My Russian drops are 0 to 1 in spring and go to 0-6 or 7 in Sept. The
absolute high amount has been 11 varroa when a Russian hive was in a yard of
varroa infested Italians ( I love my italians and old habits are hard to
break but at least I now have got a line of yellow Russian queens). I figure
this will be my last year with the Italian bee.
I have had  SMR drops of 0 in Sept. with a few colonies but I did not care
for the SMR/SMR colonies I have had for a number of reasons.

Dennis said:
And I think this is great news as beekeepers can take the best bee they have
and get great results without having to start the selection process from
scratch. No need to loose all those characteristics by passing the selection
process through the mite tolerant genetic bottleneck.

Interesting! I don't believe I have heard you say the above before.



Selecting for hygienic behavior is no longer a criteria for me.

Interesting!

My Bee Culture magazine came in the mail about an hour ago with an excellent
article by Dr. Sanford talking about the issue at hand on page 23 of the
October issue called "Mite tolerance in Honey Bees"!

I used to say as Marla is quoted in the article but now believe we may have
such a bee bred through a complicated 6 way closed breeding program.

Marla says:
"There are no beekeepers or researchers who have successfully bred a line of
bees that is varroa tolerant such as they can survive without treatment"

I do wish I had learned of the success of many lines of bees on small cell
by Dennis earlier. I miss my best honey producing line of Italians!

Very interesting information provided by the research of Dennis!

Will you try and evaluate a couple of our varroa tolerant bees for us Dennis
if we send to you next spring?

Use on large cell foundation or small but do not treat for varroa. Be honest
in your evaluation and post on BEE-L if you like about what you are seeing.

If so  email me directly your shipping information and the date you would
like to take delivery in April and I will see you get a couple  queens. I
will contact you by email a week before shipping and also when they are
shipped! Not a bad trade for sticking in a drone comb for awhile in a small
cell hive and reporting !

Sincerely,
Bob Harrison

"Beekeepers working with other beekeepers is a recipe for success!"

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