Brian, there is a difference between what you expect your queens to do, and
what a migratory pollinator queen must do.  The migratory bees are
essentially laying full tilt from Jan through the end of summer.  The bees
are on near continuous flows, but often under great competition, so may not
make any honey.  Very little rest for the queen.

Dr.Graham Kleinschmidt years ago found that it was the rare queen in
Australia who lived past two major buildups.  Other data support.
Commercial pollinators are on nearly continuous buildup.  So your queens
would be expected to survive much longer.

But the commercial guys have noticed a change.  Used to be that very few
colonies would go queenless or fail for any reason during the summer.
Nowadays, a fair percentage do every season.

That said, I requeen virtually all my colonies with my own stock, raised on
synthetic miticide-free combs, and my bees get little ag chem exposure.
I've been going to the same locations for decades.  And I still see far
greater colony failure than I did back in the day.

Fragile bees: Used to be that it would take 10,000 mites to take down a
colony.  Nowadays, I wouldn't dream of letting mites get that high!  It
appears that the endemic viral load (and perhaps other parastites) are
making the bees more fragile.

Allen said:   "Have we been breeding mostly from bees "kept on life
support"?  I don't think so."

Allen, the overwhelming majority of queens produced in the continental U.S.
come from colonies kept alive by the use of synthetic miticides, fumagillin,
and antibiotic (mostly Tylosin these days), so I can't imagine how you can
support that statement!  You are right that there are a few produced without
such treatments, but they constitute only a tiny fraction of queens sold.

> In short,. we have no assurance that a new host/parasite balance would
have evolved any more quickly if we had just stood back and done without
managed bees for however long it took.   Let's stop pretending that it
would.

Actually, there is a fair amount of data word wide that does not support
your contention.  If most areas, unmanaged colonies have rebounded about 6-8
years after varroa introduction.  Dr Jose Villa's records from Louisiana are
a great example, in which he tracked the number of swarms captured in bait
hives over a long term as varroa moved in, decimated the population, and
then the population recovered.

> Think Santa Cruz.  That little experiment should have smartened people up,
but somehow it did not and we still hear this kind of talk repeated even by
smart people who should be able to envision exactly what would have happened
if we had not intervened.

Thanks for excluding me from that group!  Santa Cruz Island is the
exception, likely due to a small, inbred population.  Ditto for my
operation, in which I lost all but 6 colonies out of 250 when varroa first
hit me.  I for one don't need to envision--I lived it!

Allen, it helps to understand the "domino effect" when varroa first
decimates a population.  The first wave will eliminate most colonies until
the host is widely dispersed, at which point the death of colonies no longer
favors the parasite.  Only then can resistant stock rebound.

Now let me be clear that I have no illusion that we could have let nature
fight it out in our yards, since we would mostly have gone out of business.
(Although I've spoken to quite a few beeks who have indeed gone cold turkey,
and after a few tough years, have their numbers back up).

But the data from all over the world support Dr Mike Allsopp's contention
that we inadvertently prolong the development of natural host/parasite
relationships by our continual promotion of stocks requiring chemical
intervention to survive.

I myself have struggled with breeding resistant stock for some years, and
was on the cusp of going treatment free when CCD-like symptoms hit my
operation, and complicated things.  Out of necessity of needing to pay the
mortgage, I started using some "natural treatments" again.  Luckily, my
colonies are looking strong again (just got my grading report from almonds),
so I am back to trying to wean completely off miticides.

> Of course they then immediately get criticized for not using locally
adapted stock

It helps if folk don't take extreme positions.  There is no need to
continually reinvent the wheel.  Bringing in genetics (or epigenetics) for
mite resistance can initially accelerate the development of a
locally-adapted stock.

Randy Oliver

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Access BEE-L directly at:
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A0=BEE-L