Joe said:
  >Anybody seeing allogrooming in their bees or have comment in this
behavour?

My opinion:
I believe allogrooming to be one of the most important traits to select for
when searching for the varroa tolerant bee. My experience has been the bees
which are the most hygienic are the bees most likely to display
allogrooming.

I also believe that bees which can tolerate varroa without treatment need a
couple other traits as well as allogrooming & hygienic behavior to survive
varroa untreated *long term*.

Myself and a couple others have got another hypothesis I have never seen
voiced before which we are finding in our *bees which tolerate varroa* but
will keep to myself until we are sure is a factor.

Many researchers lump allogrooming under the heading of Hygienic behavior
which I suppose is correct in a crude way. In my opinion the behavior
allogrooming could be broken down even farther (and will be in the next
decade).

The search for the varroa tolerant bee is divided into two main   areas and
a minor area in my opinion.

main areas:

1. selecting the right bee genetics to start the search.

2. applying pressure on the above genetics to improve the line and shorten
the search.

Minor area ( but of some interest to me) but perhaps the most important to
the grant pursuers.

3. the search for the reason certain bees which tolerate varroa (which is
the most complicated and difficult area to prove to your peers and perhaps
will never be found out for sure) are tolerating varroa and thriving while
other lines simply crash after two years untreated.

In other words when you have a got a colony (or feral colony) which is
tolerating varroa untreated past the two year normal crash time one can not
argue with the result. Explaining the result is a bigger problem especially
if the result is from a combination of factors *which  need in my opinion to
be in place for the result to occur*.

The varroa tolerant bee is a complex creature which we are only starting to
learn about but such a bee exists!

Bob

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