So, Harvey, How do we get that bee? I believe that it was Steve Taber who, almost 20 years ago said, "Don't do anything to try to treat your bees for mites and in thirty years we will have a bee that can withstand the mites." Or something like that. 
   
  So, now that we haven't taken that route and, it appears to me, we haven't found or produced a bee that can withstand the mites, what do we do next?
   
  All of the chemical treatments that we use and probably the managment techniques that we try are selecting for mites that aren't killed by those methods, thereby producing a stronger mite. 
   
  Maybe we should be trying to find an economic use for mites. That's what we are good at raising these days. 
   
  I'm not really serious about that. I just think that we need to think about our current situation in a different way and make the best of it.
   
  I don't know what that different way is, but maybe someone does. maybe someone from outside of our industry. Who knows. These are desperate times, it seems, and desperate times call for desperate measures.
   
  Back at school, Dr. Tew told us about the foraging bees. He said that there were the bees that found the good source and came back to tell the rest of the foragers where it was and how good it was and then the colony exploited that source. But there were always those renegades or rebel bees who didn't follow the pack. They left the hive and worked something odd or obscure. And when the colony had used up the good source the renegades were the ones that showed the colony where their next meal was to be found.
   
  That's what we need, some renegade beekeepers who are doing something or finding a way that is out of the main steam, but works. We need those people to show us where our next meal is coming from.
   
  Where are you and what are you doing and how are you doing it? Show us the way.
   
  Mark Berninghausen

Harvey Abeille <[log in to unmask]> wrote: 
  
But seriously folks, if we were to stand back and let nature take her
course, it is likely that mites would destroy all but the africans, and the
africans would be the honey bee that prevailed. 

  Herve



		
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