Hello all, I am new here and am following with great interest the discussion on winter losses. I live in upstate NY and have kept bees for 8 years. I have primarily used Buckfast and Italian. I have also collected some feral swarms which I did not requeen because I was interested in their performance. I also figured that they must have some level of tolerance/resistance to TM to have survived. I have never lost a Buckfast colony to TM whereas my Italian colonies have never failed to succumb to the mite. My fellow beekeepers who all kept Italians also experienced 80-90% losses. They have now switched to trying buckfast at my urging and have been very pleased. The only Italians that I have had good results with against TM are the Survivor Italians form York and the All americans from Weaver. However they have never performed up to the standards of the Buckfast. The one point on which I have been sorely dissapointed with the Buckfast is their Spring buildup. Based on all of this experience (which is really not much), and all of the literary research that I have done concerning resisitance/tolerance to mites, I am a firm believer that the answer to TM is not medication but Resitant Stock. I also believe that while it is necesarry to treat for Vj now, the answer to the Varroa problem will also be resistant stock. In reply to George's comment "resistant queen Ha ha" I find it difficult to believe that someone with so much beekeeping experience could put aside the importance and sheer reality that this sort of things exist. Even before large scale modern commercial beekeeping operations have cropped up, honeybees have lived with pest as have all living organisms. The only way that they have survived to this day is by being naturally selected for by the harsh laws of nature. In many ways I believe that modern beekeeping with its severe emphasis on production and capital has done Apis a bad turn. We have bred the honeybee for specific traits and left them vulnerable to diseases. This is a phenomenon that is commonly seen with agriculture and livestock breeding. Sincerely, Yuuki --HAA06725.957355258/earlham.edu--