>>> To do what we can on the drone topic, we have asked all local beekeepers and club members to stop using drone sacrifice as an IPM method (heck, it just selects for Varroa that preferentially infest worker brood anyway...is a huge drain on colony resources and depopulates the local DCA's) 

Since someone else called attention to this, I would submit that none of this makes any sense at all. It's assumptions layered upon assumptions, based on thin air.

PLB>>

My apologies all...I should have phrased this as a question:

Given what we all know about the effects of selective pressures on populations, is it not a concern that by widely using drone sacrifice to control Varroa, we are inadvertently applying a selective pressure on Varroa to push their genome toward one which infests worker brood at higher than present rates (since they are overwhelmingly the ones left to reproduce)?


However to get back to the drone contribution discussion, my main objection to drone sacrifice is that it represents a huge drain on colony resources. In our short season here, that is one more obstacle to success. And, widely practiced, it means fewer drones in the local DCA's, which is important to me when I go to make my own wild mated queens. Note that when I push my drone production in the best of my colonies, it is after ensuring there are low Varroa levels.

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