>‘Selection and possibilities within honey bees – be careful what you are
>selecting for‘.
http://www.beeculture.com/storycms/index.cfm?cat=Story&recordID=480

Hello Joe and all,

Thanks a lot for the link, Joe.  I hadn't seen that before.  And it deals 
precisely with the questions I was asking.

I don't doubt at all that strictly selecting for low mite levels would lead 
to reduced vigor and productivity.  I definitely see that strong colonies 
have a strong tendency to have more mites at the end of the year than weak 
ones.  However, there are differences between hives of the same strength 
that I suspect are worth selecting for.  I'll readily grant that the 
correlation between mite resistance and mite levels is more tenuous than 
the correlation between colony strength and mite levels, but I think it's 
nonetheless something I can work with.

What this means for me is that I do mite drop tests on all my hives about 
August.  Based on those numbers I make an assessment as to which hives are 
doomed, and I make an attempt to intervene with those.  Hives that require 
intervention (so far never more than ~45%) get disqualified from the 
selection pool, and the queens are slated for replacement.  Any other hives 
that die over the winter are obviously "disqualified," too.  The next year 
I choose my breeders based on vigor and productivity, disqualifying queens 
along the way for aggression, excessive swarminess, disease, etc.  Then, I 
test everything again for mites, intervene where I think necessary, 
disqualifying (again) any hive that received intervention, and round about 
the following April I have a breeder that I then use.  (I raise almost all 
my queens in April/May.)

Joe, you said you don't select for the ability to survive bad varroa 
levels, but you're not intervening to "save" hives either, are you?  In 
other words, if you're letting hives die from varroa mites, I would say 
you're selecting for some combination of abilities to keep mite levels low 
and/or survive with higher numbers of mites.  What else is there (besides 
intervention and dying)?

If I were primarily a queen breeder, I'd probably rely very heavily on the 
Bond method in order to select for mite resistance, but as it is, my main 
objective is honey production, so if I can find a good way to avoid it, I 
don't want to sacrifice too many hives for the sake of my marginal queen 
breeding efforts.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm sure selecting for overall performance 
works, especially in the absence of intervention, but I wonder if you might 
not be able to make a lot more honey by making some very marginal 
sacrifices with your breeding program (if you wanted to).

Eric

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