>>They don't have varroa mites in Australia, so there's no selection process that looks for resistance to this vicious pest...

Is this accurate tough?  I thought the Australians were importing semen from resistant bees in Italy to incorporate into their stock as varroa arrival in Australia is just a matter of time.  I believe Bob Harrison wrote about that.

I am not a big defender of Australian imports (I am neutral), but we in the US, like the Australians, should be identifying varroa-resistant EHB stocks elsewhere and bringing either semen or quarantined queens into our breeding programs especially if those bees are productive as well.

It seemed that the Primorsky bees had the right attributes.  If the industry went the Russian way, would the varroa issue be past us?  Or perhaps we already have the genetics to turn varroa into a benign parasite and only need more time to make these genetics predominant?

Waldemar

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