> I'd put bees in an isolated non-stressed environment and see what really
> healthy colonies look like.

I started keeping bees in the 50's. Those bees were very different than
today. Keeping the bees out of the trees was the big issue.  Your rarely see
the beards of bees today on the fronts of hives which were common back then.

Today's bees need help to work for commercial beekeeping. Back in the 
fifties
the bees needed little help.

Problems of keeping bees alive and strong began with the entrance of both
mites.



>Problem is, nobody seems to have a couple hundred colonies that they want
>to just leave the hell alone.

The largest "leave alone' experiment is was involved with involved over 2000
hives in Texas. When all were dead but less than a 100 the beekeeper started
trying to save the rest.

The queens he raised displayed no varroa tolerance. The same for the
survivor queens he sent to the bee lab.

Most of today's issues can be traced to problems related to varroa and the
vector of bee virus. I said so in the first posts I ever did on BEE-L and
the situation has not changed.

Trying to find a healthy relationship between varroa and bees (no 
treatments)
has cost tens of thousands of hives. I think Shiminuki in his wisdom
understood the time it would take to breed a varroa tolerant bee from our
U.S. bees. The main reason he felt the Russian import was the best solution.

I imagine in another 20 years varroa might not be a big issue in the U.S.
(due to Russian influence, AHB influence and those breeding for varroa
tolerance. Dr. Shiminuki felt a varroa tolerant bee from U.S. stock would be
found in 20 years but the time came and went with no varroa tolerant bee.
 my guess is will take another 20 years until varroa is only a minor issue
in U.S. bees.

bob

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