>let attrition take care of the less than acceptable bees.

>This may be a naive approach but I can't see killing an entire hive because 
the queen's genes are not considered acceptable.

Coleene;

Nothing wrong with your approach. It is probably the approach 99.9% of us would do. Backyard beeks especially are motivated to preserve the single hive and hope "it" doesn't spread.(whatever "it" is). But you are assuming it is the bee's fault. And if the bee fails, your problem goes with the bee. Maybe it does, or maybe it doesn't. Sue Colby had "resistant" bees in Ohio, but not in California. The bee genetics didn't change, the mites did.

Randy found 1 hive in 200 that just wasn't performing right. He said he was killing the hive. He got me  thinking it's not always about the bee. He seemed to suggest to me that it could be something else in the hive. So I wanted to know if he was thinking this or just going to pinch the queen. What would he do with the hive after?

Randy's stories about Sue Colby's bee's and his bee's got me thinking more about this. Bob H's comments about the unknown CCD and Dave Hackenberg's experiences draw into this as well. My ramblings about "beekeeping is really local" was a feeble attempt to begin looking at my problems not as a bee management problem but a hive management problem. It is a community of organisms. This is not a new concept, and one I have heard before. What is new for me is that I now realize that what is written in most of the beekeeping books on my shelf do not acknowledge this community except in terms of a "pest" or "disease" of the bee. As if they don't belong to the hive. Today, I think the beek may need to look at more than just his bee stock. Each hive has a certain bee genetic, but also a unique hive community made up of different genetics as well.  It is difficult for a small backyard beek such as Coleen to make the decision that 50% of her beeyard is doomed no matter what bee she puts in it. But Dave Hackenberg's experience may demonstrate to us that this might well be our reality. 

Thank you all for allowing me to explore these thoughts.

Roger Wood - Stupid is as Stupid does (Forrest Gump)
Independence, Mo

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