>
> >I can tell everyone is cooped up at home!
>

Certainly not us California bee breeders!  Our daily outside work is
unaffected by covid.
We're making several hundred nucs a week, and in full production of queen
cells.
I'm madly managing and splitting our breeder queen hives to keep them from
swarming.

The good news is that it appears that our selective breeding for mite
resistance may be gaining traction.
We began in 2017 with one resistant mother to breed from (along with a few
other hives with low mite counts).
In 2018, some 20 colonies made the grade (holding at less than a 1% mite
infestation rate at 5 alcohol wash samplings over the course of an entire
year; I allow a spike to 3% at the November wash as they cease
broodrearing, but they must bring it back down to 1% or less by March).
In 2019, 30 made the grade.
This spring, 56 have made the grade so far (after excluding any resistant
colonies that were not up to par for other reasons),  with 25 more to
alcohol wash as they return from almond pollination.  Seven of the above
have now thrived without any mite treatment for two full years.

Every year, we requeen all our colonies solely with daughters of resistant
mothers.  Progress is expectly slow, but it's pretty exciting to see
beautiful, strong colonies with mite counts of zero after an entire year
without treatment.

This season I'll be breeding off of a greater number of queens to avoid
excessive bottlenecking of genetic diversity.
I'm eager to see whether our percentages of resistant colonies continue to
increase.


-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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