a Etienne Tardif snip followed by my comments..
>unreasonable expectations of their bees? I would rank environmental factors (man made and just plain natural limitations) as number 2.

1)anyone that want to pursue success in keeping no treatment bees had better approach the problem with reasonable expectation.  2) as anyone following along with Randy Oliver experiment* it takes a lot of hives to find a few that have resistance to varroa and then longer** to breed bees with resistance. patience and persistence is essential skill to achieve any goal.

as to the above comments on #2 limitation....at some point dilution of no treatment stock with treated stock does seem to represent problems.

a lot of queen breeder and package producers are traditional located in the southern US which may partially explain why non treatment stock seem to be more prevalent in the Southern US than the norther US.  I suspect this is more about the basic skill set in breeding bees in larger numbers and of course the longer time window in any particular year (season).

*just off the cuff it seems Randy Oliver (correct me if I am wrong with these numbers) has gone from less than 1% to 7% which is actually a pretty incredible success rate. seems to me like Randy time line for improvement pretty much matches my neighbors down in Navasota.

**some years back when I first considered the possibilities of rearing no treatment bees for varroa I though of it much in the same context as the time line to development bees rsistant to AFB.  this speculative thinking is why I did have problems with some internet 'gurus' that preached about rearing no threment bees but seemed unable to even keep bees alive in any significant numbers.

Gene in Central Texas but not for long..



             ***********************************************
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