On a side-note something else occurred to me a while back that relates to
locally adapted and treatment free.  If someone is selling treatment-free
bees, how much might possibly be attributed to frequent splitting and
associated brood breaks and rapid turnover rather than any actual mite
resistance.  Just thinking back to some past failures of purchased bees
that seems to be a common theme many generally now attribute to location



I think that's a huge portion of what we see.  And a lot of local swarms are
caught split and moved around as TF with nothing more than what you
mentioned as a reality.  In th local survivors I have caught and tried to
follow,  so far they have either swarmed and re-queened to avoid mites,  or
died.   
I am not saying TF doesn't exist... just that it seems at least so far here
that constant swarming and moving is whats keeping ferals going.  We as the
educators have to make sure that there are some standards for survivor
stock,  and hopefully others will follow.  If we keep ahead of them by
splits and think they survived,  we just deluded ourselves.

Charles

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html