I've been breeding queens for 20+ years. In my experience, you can breed bees that can do nearly anything. Color, temperament, honey gathering, hygienic behavior, tracheal mite resistance were relatively easy. Varroa resistance has been really tough, since the availability of resistance genes was initially very low in the U.S. bee population, and due to the wholesale use of chemicals that perpetuates susceptible bees and virulent mites. I've selected from survivors for years, and resistance gets better each year. I'm using the Bond method to some extent, but it is tough when you make your living taking strong colonies to almonds in February. Therefore, we can't count on California breeders to practice much survivability trials. SMR is the most promising trait I've found, but is very tough to get into a good bee. Virtually all my SMR crosses have performed poorly. However, last year I got a Minn Hygienic x SMR II queen from Glenn. This cross was golden! A great bee, and virtually no mites one year later with absolutely no treatments in a survivor yard with collapsing colonies all around. You can see them tearing out any infested worker cell. My hat's off to Marla Spivak and John Harbo! Unfortunately, her daughters aren't performing as well. IMO, it seems that we will likely need to go back to a program like the Starline queen. The families of supersisters in the MH xSMR cross compliment each other perfectly. I'm not sure that it will be easy to have one line of purebred bee that can handle the mites. Perhaps it would be better to maintain several inbred lines (as for Starline) and determine the best "hybrid." I suggest we find funding for Sue Cobey to maintain a genetic repository of resistant and productive queen lines in California. Lines for short development time, grooming behavior, superhygienic (SMR), coccoon trapping, etc. Then we could work on determining the best combinations by trial and error, or let Nature work the odds in survival yards. Randy Oliver California -- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and other info ---