Hi Barry and Everyone,
Considerable debate on the cell size issue again.  Interesting discussion but we must not forget that the real issue is what Barry wrote:
"Now the more important issue is
getting on with finding out why bees of this size are able to coexist with
varroa and do it all over the country."
We have stocks in the USA that have been documented to be resistant ( at least partly ) to varroa.  Both the Russian stocks and now the Harbo SMR stock.  The Russian stock was released and is being bred for increased varroa resistance without understanding the mechanism involved in varroa resistance but both the researchers and beekeepers who have tested the stock report much increased varroa resistance in these bees.  The Harbo stock has also been released to the beekeeping industry and has well documented varroa resistance.  In this case the mechanism of resistance is very well documented and we are even given detailed information on how to look for this trait in our own honey bees.  Both these stocks have varroa resistance on normal sized combs built from commercial foundation.
Other breeders also report increased varroa resistance after as few as four or five years of selection.  The most recent one documented in ABJ is the Szabo article in the June 2001 issue regarding their selection program showing evidence of possible ( they don't at this point claim varroa resistance ) varroa resistance last summer after four years of selection.  Again, they don't know the mechanism involved in this resistance but do document that it is there.  They are using normal commercial foundation as far as I can tell from the article.
If we have both the stocks available commercially that researchers have shown to be resistant to varroa and the reports from several other selection programs that report bees that are resistant to varroa on normal sized commercial foundation why are we getting hung up on cell size?  It appears that we have stocks available and methods of selection that have been shown to result in varroa resistant honey bees when used for four or five years without going to the time and expense to change over the combs we are using.
Apis cerana is considerable smaller than Apis mellifera and varroa continues to infest cerana and is able to reproduce in cerana combs so why do we think it will not be able to reproduce in combs with cells that are still somewhat larger than cerana cells?
I also find it a considerable stretch to assume that all feral bees have been changed by beekeepers use of commercial foundation.  The number of feral colonies in Europe and in North America far exceeds the number of kept colonies even now after varroa.  With the considerable numbers advantage the wild colonies should be exerting more influence on our kept colonies that the kept colonies are on the feral ones.  Just a matter of dilution.  All the reports indicate that there is not really a major shortage of feral colonies anymore.  The return of the feral colonies in fact gives hope that varroa resistance is close at hand and increasing in the drone pool near all of us.
Lets get on to the real work as Barry points out of selecting bees that are resistant to varroa so we all get on with beekeeping instead of varroa population management.

FWIW

blane



******************************************
Blane White
MN Dept of Agriculture
[log in to unmask]