> Seeley is not telling anyone how to do things. His book describes what he has learned from the wild bees etc... For example, I'm in bear country which makes it impractical to space colonies at distances other than to fence up to 10 or 20 colonies per yard inside electric fencing. All he is doing is giving suggestions of changes beekeepers can make to allow the bees to realize their evolutionary adaptations that have evolved over millions of years. Location would be important as well as the type of beekeeping in any given area.
 

So, in the context of practicing Darwinian beekeeping, is it fair to say that in your situation you are not actually able to adhere to the basic Darwinian tenet of colony spacing. And does it follow that, because of that, you and many others cannot really participate?  

That leads me back to question of what Darwinian beekeeping actually is when practiced.  If I read Tom right, he's listed some hands-off practices that, in theory, will allow natural selection to function in a given ecological niche - no dought he's correct. But since Darwinian beekeeping is intensely environment-dependent, I see it as limited to developing an ecotype, now and then, for the fortunate few that live in a favorable environment. The larger question, that we all struggle with, is are those ecotypes useful outside their environment or will they collapse in failure as most relocated ecotypes do. I suspect the latter given our experience with previous VSH lines and other locally adapted treatment free queens we have tried. 

What I'm hoping for is someone to fix a varroa resistant trait on the subspecies level,  and that's how I interpret the incremental steps Randy is trying to take with a large breeding program, and the genetic material, to possibly make some progress. Darwinian beekeeping, on the other hand, is a pleasant distraction but not so useful for the rest of us.  Also a danger, in that a false idolatry of Darwinian beekeeping (which Tom does not endorse or promote in any way) is developing to the detriment of those of us around the devotees.  

  

Bill Hesbach
Cheshire CT

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