a randy oliver snip... 
Odd that no one has yet mentioned that every lost swarm later becomes a
varroa bomb when it collapses.

my comments...
in most all things bee related the use of words like every or all is imho pretty much hyperbole and exaggeration in a fatal attempt to make some point with out any real data to back up the claim.  to refute this assumption of mine then it should be simple enough just to show me your data.  when you speak in terms of probabilities (as most scientist do) then you tend to avoid using words like all or every...  I would suggest some swarms may be varroa bombs and some are not and of course we have made no distinction in this tread between a replicating swarm and an absconding swarm.  my GUESS is that if varroa bombs do exist then the latter is much more likely to represent a POTENTIAL varroa bomb than the first.

and to Jim Fischer point...  I am surprised that it took this long for anyone to point out one of the side benefits of keeping young queens in the box.  beyond swarming Jim I tend to think that a lot of problems can be minimized by maintaining young queens in your apiary.  sadly when you are trying to rear stock that is varroa resistant this limits the full implementation of this strategy.  I do like you idea of raising the bar to 'exceptional'.... which I guess would be the flip side of the strategy to be fairly mercenary in your culling of queens?  This strategy is much easier (or at least much less expensive in terms of out of pocket expense) when you raise your own queens than if you buy queens.

Gene in central Texas

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