> ...assuming that all colonies, managed and Feral, would die.
>
> If they all die then that would say that the 10% that is said
> would survive because they are mite tolerant is untrue.
While the opportunity to learn more using this situation as
a "lab" for the experiment is tempting, I don't think that
either "side" of the issue would put up with being guinea
pigs for the rest of us.
Even if some "varroa tolerant" colonies survived, the risk of
infesting the other islands with varroa would then still exist.
This would make the queen producers very nervous. To them,
the money and effort would have been wasted.
Those same (fabled) "varroa tolerant" colonies would be ongoing
sources of varroa to reinfest managed hives, creating an endless
cycle of monitoring and destruction for the beekeepers on the
island infested with varroa. This would get very tedious at
some point, as no one likes to build up colonies only to see
them gassed. (And from where did you pull a number like 10%?)
But the actual draft plan:
http://www.hawaii.gov/hdoa/pi/ppc/varroa-bee-mite-folder/varroa-mite-sit
uation-reports/
(watch that listserv line-wrap!)
Says that they (only) want to eradicate INFESTED hives,
based upon Apistan-driven drop counts. The wording implies
that these would be infested managed hives only.
Nothing is said about feral colonies at all.
It is as if they are not aware that feral colonies exist.
But given issues of drift and robbing alone, combined with
the feral colony population, I don't see the practical
advantage of eradicating managed colonies found to be
"infested" when there is no plan to first eradicate the
nearby feral colonies that would be the most likely local
sources of varroa reinfestation. I would point to Wyatt
Mangum's work as the basis for the whole "varroa reinfestation"
problem, as he did a meticulous job of data collection.
I think he published in ABJ, but he may have only done
presentations on this.
The general pattern here would be varroa crash of a feral colony,
which is robbed out by a managed hive as it weakens, and thereby
infests the managed colony. The same thing could happen in
reverse, with feral colonies robbing managed ones, and
thereby getting infested.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
> If some do survive then the Island would repopulate with
> mite tolerant bees from the Feral.
This assumes several things:
a) That "varroa resistance" exists as a latent trait at all,
which is a highly speculative assumption, given zero
confirmed cases of this in the past 20 years of varroa
on the mainland US, and focused efforts by mutiple
breeders using every trick in the book.
b) That a small population of feral colonies on an ISLAND,
which just screams "limited genetic diversity", would
somehow contain the gotta-be-rare genetics required to
make (a) come true. This assumption seems to be at the
far edge of "Mission Implausible", and slightly into
the realm of "Surely You Must Be Joking".
c) That the process of allowing varroa to kill off "unfit"
colonies would complete before the varroa spread to the
other islands, which is nothing more than wishful thinking.
Given that one group of on-island beekeepers would be
forced to kill off a significant faction of their
hives every year, and that the queen producers on
the other island(s) would not enjoy even a slightly
smaller risk exposure as a result, I think it would
be a race between the two groups to see who could
form a bigger mob quicker to beseige the office of
the state official who approved any such plan.
> I still think it would be best for experimental reasons,
> is to eradicate the beekeeper
I agree. After all, what's one beekeeper, more or less in
the grand scheme of things? But let's start with Keith
Malone, who proposed this approach. :)
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