Great post from Allen.

But both of us missed the mark on this. I had the germ of it in my post 
and should have listened to myself.

It is not the mite. We have said this often on this forum, but we tend 
to point to the mite as the problem when it is the virus. Varroa and 
Tracheal mite resistance focus on the mite, generally with bee grooming.

You want to limit the virus. Mites are a secondary problem when you are 
buying bees to bring into an area that is, or recently was, mite free.

If you bring in bees that have been stressed by the virus to an area 
that does not have the virus, you may be bringing in good bees but the 
bad virus. So where you had no virus problem before, now you do. Hence, 
bees from Hawaii, Australia and NZ, even if those countries have mites, 
would be better than stressed stock which might harbor virus. This is 
born out by the fact that there are mites in Canada, but many places do 
not have the viruses that are the problem in the US. They can postpone 
the problem by bringing in virus free (or reasonable so) bees.

Where my original conclusion comes in is when the mites and virus are 
present in an area. Then you probably will be worse off bring in 
non-stressed stock. Probably is operative since they may have great 
grooming behavior, so can reasonably handle the mites. Same with bees 
bought from any supplier, as Allen noted.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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