I think geographic isolation would be a tremendous advantage IF we saw it in terms of creating Varroa-free or Varroa-low zones...or to put it another way stopped moving mites and disease organisms all over the place.

Newfoundland and Thunder Bay, Ontario have managed to use their own geographic isolation to advantage as has I think Britain's Isle of Man. They remain, although not without effort, Varroa free. There are a couple of beekeepers in our club who have naturally geographically isolated apiaries, and once their initial Varroa load is dealt with, they remain Varroa free.

I live on an small peninsula with open farm fields as the one non-water boundary: we could aspire to meeting our own bee needs (perhaps importing only promising queens to boost genetic diversity if needed) IF we worked as an area cooperative and IF those farm fields did not host hundreds of pollination hives annually.

Relief from Varroa may come from a program like Randy Oliver's, from using bees bred from the 5% he finds are able to keep Varroa infestations below the 3% mark as reported...or relief may come from genetically altered/benign virus carrying Varroa mites. Either way, the logistics of distribution will probably mean we have to look at establishing delineated disease/mite free areas and then gradually expanding and blending them. Which means we are going to have to come up with some solutions for the resulting challenges to our mobile pollination dependent food supply system.

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