I am pretty familiar with the paper by Locke at al. We used their paper as a guide and looked at reproduction succes of varroa in an isolated population and find similar effects (not yet published). Some personal observations on the more or less tolerant bees I have seen: -  they live isolated from the rest for at least 15-20 years (island)-  they live with pretty good floral resources- they live with neglective beekeepers who do not treat or treat poorly (biodynamic beek are perfect for this, or old guys who don't believe in mites)-  they have relatively small colonies-  they are swarmy -  they have a strong reaction of stopping with brooding when there is no pollen/nectar coming in. In a bad summer they have no or little brood for weeks/months.-  they tend to be nervous/liquid in their behaviour, they also sound different. They can be really vicious under bad conditions: cold, no laying queen.- they pull larvae and have quite some chalkbrood compared to control colonies currently we have these bees on the mainland, we'll see how they do coming winter as we are not treating them. I would bet they crash taken away from their specific conditions on the island but who knows.  Lennard
 
  		 	   		  
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