Some comments:

I have not treated any of my bees except clearing up foulbrood already 
present using terra...for at least 5 years for half my hives and 3 years for 
all. I have around 300 hives and controll most of the genetics in my 
breeding area

The bees have shown good honey production in this area(roughly 100 mile 
radius)..... . Based on the numbers the bee inspector gave the bees produced 
some 30% higher than average crop for this area(compared to other local 
beeks). The bee inspector commented that my hives were comparable in 
strength to untreated hives in this area.

I have gotten essentially uniformly good reports on these bees wrt honey 
production,gentleness, and mite resistance in this area...say 400 queens 
sold..

I have not used gloves in about 2 years. I go without a veil probably 30% of 
the time.

The foundation of my stock was heavily saturated with earlier BWeaver 
stock-people I consider to bee pioneers. I laud them openly.

The only other fairly  large beek in this area(500 hives) commented that my 
queens were comparable to others he had bought.

I am not alone in breeding resistant bees.

The breeding of this stock was characterized by an unbroken string of 
successes until I sent a beek in the midwest 10 queens to test. He reported 
they all had chalkbrood and didnt build up well. What was really bothersome 
about it was that the guy is a top notch beek and was very very kind in his 
dealings with me-knowing the bad results would cause me pain.
This made it hard to blame him and simultaneously keep a good concience.
This made me believe that the fault lay in the queens. Of course as he 
mentioned-10 queens is not something one can build a solid case on. I could 
hope it was just a bad batch,And perhaps it was. Or maybe they wont hold up 
in his area.

A little parting shot:

My friend David Langley of Jamaica came home to his 300 hives that he had in 
Jamaica at the time of the arrival of varroa. He lost 300 hives.

This only confirms that you must have the potential traits already present 
in the genetic material to work on if you hope to have resistant bees. As 
far as I know the 2nd law of thermodynamics is still standing 
relentless-ready to pounce  on all natural chemical processes-including 
those that take place in the genes.  Entropy has yet to defer to 
metaphysics -
no matter how convincingly  packaged or widely believed.

John Horton 

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