Hi all
Two seemingly opposing threads: multiple mating in bees vs line breeding for varroa sensitive hygiene. You'd think that you could have one or the other but not both. I give this person credit for thinking they could be combined somehow. Bravo!

Honey bee queens are naturally polyandrous, mating with an average of 12
males. Hyper-polyandrous queens, created via artificial insemination, have shown
increased resistance to Varroa mites. This project combined a hyper-polyandry
treatment with a genetic treatment of bees selected for Varroa Sensitive Hygienic
(VSH) trait, an additive rare resistance trait. The combination of these two intrinsic
forms of resistance resulted in colonies with lower Varroa mite levels and these
findings offer support to the rare-allele hypothesis for the evolution of extreme
polyandry in honey bees. Additionally, an applied field method was evaluated to
simulate the benefits of hyper-polyandry via brood mixing: the manual sharing of
immature bees between a set of colonies to increase genetic diversity without artificial
insemination. Brood mixing did not have a significant effect on any measure of colony strength

Menz, J. F. (2020). Evaluating Polyandry Manipulation and Intercolony Genetic Mixing on Honey Bee Colony Strength and Resistance to Varroa destructor (Doctoral dissertation, University of Delaware).

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