Nothing against B. Weaver, R. Weaver, or even X. Weaver,
where "X" is an member of the set "A" to "Z".
(Danny Weaver is a Ramones fan, so he is certainly
my kind of beekeeper!), but...

> I was impressed with a brochure from Weaver in Texas
> that said they have not treated for varroa for some 3
> years now. Perhaps they have found varroa resistance?

Hold on there, walk slowly through what you just said.
While you made a true and accurate statement, your use
of the term "impressed" means that you have not thought
slowly enough about what you said:

a) They were talking about what THEY can do with THEIR hives.

b) They carefully avoided making any statement at all about
   the open-mated progeny of those hives that you would be sent.

c) If they made no firm statements about the specific bees that
   they would send you, but instead spoke only about their hives,
   this is an attempt to get you to draw a conclusion that they
   themselves are apparently unwilling to draw.

It should be crystal clear why they would be unwilling to
draw a conclusion that would be a major selling point, if true.

If the above does not make you first laugh and then slowly
pound your head against the nearest wall, then you still
don't understand it fully, and need to read it over again
until you do.



And if you mean the B. Weaver brochure with the "blue work
shirt" cover and the really good photography, that came
in the mail months ago, you may have not read the following,
and realized that the art and the production values were so
good because they had to be good to draw attention away from
the free prizes one might find inside every box:

  "Small Hive Beetle is now in Texas, and we have found
  them in  some of our colonies.  We will do our best
  to avoid shipping hive beetles with package bees or
  queens, but there is no effective method of assuring
  that package bees do not harbor adult hive beetles,
  Aethina tumida.  It is somewhat easier to be reasonably
  certainly that queen shipments do not contain hive
  beetles and we will take precautions to keep them out
  of you queen shipments.  Unfortunately, since small hive
  beetles are now here in the US, and are seemingly prone
  to spread like wildfire - as Varroa did, there may
  ultimately be little any of us can do to stop its advance
  through honey bee populations in many parts of North America."

My question is how would this be any different from playing
Russian Roulette with multiple bullets in the gun in regard
to SHB?

As for the statements about "spreading like wildfire", it
seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes from
a firm that ships thousands of packages and queens each
spring all over the country, many to beekeepers who would
not know a small hive beetle if it landed on the bridge
of their nose. It would not really spread "like wildfire",
but at the slightly faster speed of the UPS and US Mail
delivery trucks!


         jim (The furthest fringes of the culture can
              be found on the internet, providing a
              glimpse of where you will find yourself
              in the future.  The good news is that
              beekeeping is so "fringe" we may all
              someday become "cool".)

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