Hello Dennis and All,
Thanks for the update. I would like to thank you for the list and myself for
sharing your information.

Dennis said:
My Russian bees were among the rare exceptions. They would drop very few
mites initially. Survive into the third year and then perish by years end.
They could carry a tremendous mite load and not show any external symptoms
such as DWV, MWV, PMS, crawlers, etc.

You will have to treat hybrid Russians with a certain amount of varroa
control. Many queen producers in the U.S. continue to call the bees they
sell as Russians when they are really a Russian crossed with their best
strain of bee. The hybrid is perhaps a better bee  in productivity and in
other areas but you certainly lose a certain amount of varroa tolerance with
a hybrid.

Most queen breeders simply have not got an open mating area they can open
mate  the Russians. Grafting from a II Russian queen is easy. Controlling
mating when the main queen you sell is an Italian or a carniolan and your
home base is flooded with those drones and your mating yards are in an area
of other queen breeders make a Russian/Russian open mating rare.

An experiment  is being done in the south this year with all instrumental
inseminated ( II) Russian/Russian , Russian/Sm. and many other combinations.
Hopefully we will within a couple years determine if the Russian is what we
had hoped for. We know the Russian can go farther without help in handling
varroa.

To properly evaluate the Russian and get past the open mating problem
setting up a large population of instrumentally inseminated Russian/Russian
will work. A friend of mine is working on the project with little reward but
finding out what works and what doesn't. His group plans on installing
around a thousand II queens to evaluate this season. Quite a feat! He should
be telling the list himself but he is like many others is a "lurker".

I believe we are realizing now that if you have to treat the Russian hybrids
for varroa why not use your high honey producing strains you used to use
from your regular queen breeder?

 I also wish queen producers would offer honest advertising. We are close to
a bee which never needs treatment for varroa but unlike a few queen breeders
claim now we are simply not there yet.

 A queen breeder in Florida claims to sell Russian production queens when he
is within 30 miles of one of the largest beekeepers in the world and hives
of other beekeepers are close by. Hives travel the main road without nets at
times within sight of his mating yards I have been told.

Bob

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