I expect the SMR daughter queens to have a normal life expectancy. The problem is with the breeder queens.Being inbred and II to concentrate the SMR trait causes the bees to tend to supercede them.One of mine laid a few hundred scattered eggs and was immediately superceded.Her daughter is laying a beautiful solid brood pattern.Outcrossing with your own stock removes the inbreeding problem.By the way,I think I remember reading that the SMR trait doesnt apply to drone brood,that varroa would still be able to reproduce there.No problem there.Its when varroa jumps to the worker brood that we see all the stress problems(viruses and dead hives)I guess if you had 5lbs ticks crawling on your back you would feel kind of stressed out too.So I assume the presence of mites in drone brood does not mean that your survivor stock isnt SMR.I also think we should put in treatments for a while to protect the drone brood until we get this trait established(next springs drones will carry the ball) My thinking on this SMR trait is that its going to be good to have as much of it out there as possible when our chemical control no longer works.I dont think there will be a 'big crash'but lots of small die offs like we have been having since the mites first arrived.Theoretically survivors are out there and adding there genes to the pool.Harbos work gives us a chance to speed up this process. Mike --------------------------------------------- This message was sent using InterStar WebMail