>>...he concluded that the queens he raised from "wild stock" didn't perform any better than the commercial bees... <...> his suggestion that the answer might lie with the mites rather than the bees raised more questions than it answered.

This can be shown to be one way or the other by:

- placing a few managed colonies, with marked queens, that are collapsing (presumably from virulent mites) in the middle of the Arnot forest
- placing several artificial, frameless top-bar type bee hives with swarm lure around the same location 
- feeding the collapsing colonies like crazy to get swarming due to crowding conditions
- observing the artificial hive colonies started with marked queens for survival for several years

If you don't see collapse in the top bar hives with marked queens, you'll know it's not the mites or viruses.  I expect, you will not see a collapse.

By the way, you don't have to do this in the Arnot forest.  Just set up a few top bars.  Dennis Murrell's untreated top bar hives do just fine. 

I live an area where managed hives with mites will collapse.  And yet, feral colonies seem to do all right.

Waldemar

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