must start off by admitting we don't have the "correct" answers to any of
these questions...the only "right" answers are the ones the bees give us,
and they may or may not be appropriate to our own particular
situations/conditions/locations/realities...
my conjectures are based on circumstantial evidence at best, gleaned from
observations made over nearly two decades of semi-professional beekeeping,
but believe they are valid within certain sets parameters though by no means
all possibilities...
so much for the disclaimers, now for some replies to your
questions...took the liberty of forwarding the lusbys' response to the
original posting back to the list as well as wenner's since they had not
appeared online and felt their experiences were representative of the
alternative approaches we need to consider even if we don't agree with all
of their assertions...
1. get all our bees on 4.9mm foundation?
did not at any time imply that this was my recommendation or the "missing
link", although do believe that appropriate (to the bee strain) combcell
size may have an effect as reported by ericson et al.'s research at the
tucson usda lab, and would suggest that replacement of contaminated comb
likewise could be beneficial (ask h.bell about his culled-comb mound in
deland) albeit something not all beekeepers could afford to do...the
question is how long can they afford not to?
2. quit medicating for varroa and raise queens from survivors?
that's the only way for natural selection to work, and even then the nature
of the population as a whole is important...ideally there is enough
biodiversity available for artificial selection to speed up the process, as
is the case wherever africanization and/or european remnants of earlier
introductions exist (like the southwest and parts of the
southeast)...perhaps the minimal mainstream commercial beekeeping in some of
these places has left refuges for those hardier strains to survive on their
own?
3. perfect the line by breeding from the best of the best survivior
queens...am not sure if our breeding strategies aren't a part of the
problem, certainly what is advertised "resistant" is often suspect even with
the best intentions of being the real
"solution"...believe that the bees themselves will solve the
"problem", especially as we come to accept africanization as part of the
solution, including the inevitable impact of the cape bee thanks to the
unavoidable effects of globalization...