P-O Gustafsson wrote:
>
> There is a number of very large queen producers in the US, I believe
> this has affected the gene pool negatively over the years.

Absolutely!  The queen producers rely upon a very small number of queen
breeders.  Screening for mite tolerant bees takes effort--you've got to
sample every productive colony to see if any of them have low mite levels.
Few are willing to do the work.    The few who do, can only supply a limited
genetic pool.  Promising mutations are very likely to be overlooked in the
US bee population.  My hat's off to the ARS researchers, and Marla Spivak,
Sue Cobey, Tom Glenn, etc.  But they can only sample a relatively small
portion of the bee population.  If we had thousands of small-scale queen
breeder/producers, we'd progress toward mite tolerant bees much faster.
Randy Oliver

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