> If we want Varroa to be the minor irritant that acarine, chalkbrood
 > and a long list of bee pathogens have become, then we need to breed
 > better resistant bees.

Agreed, and in that particular avenue of attack on the varroa problem, I 
can see that people are still focused on the mite as well as its side 
effects and have their eye on the ball.

The problem is in spite of a lot of local apparent successes, that there 
don't seem to be any clear breakthroughs.  No bee has been produced that 
seems to be able to handle varroa in all situations and also demonstrate 
the qualities that commercial beekeeping demands.

I recall the work Danka and crew have been doing with Merrimac Apiaries 
following commercial hives around the country and that all the bees were 
seemingly surviving better than one would expect, so I really don't know.

Then there is the Primorsky line.  It has been around a decade or more 
apparently can withstand varroa with little or no intervention by the 
beekeeper, but has not been widely accepted.  Why?

That brings us back the question of whether we have been able to achieve 
anything lasting in honey bee breeding thus far, or if our only 
achievement has been finding and propagating better bees for our current 
purposes.

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