I've been trying to find time to write a bit about EAS 2001. After a week away time is hard to find, especially when I'm heading for a week+ on PEI this Saturday. So I'll have to keep it short. First I must exclaim that the Eastern Apicultural Society on North America, Inc. conference 2001 was great! There were may concurrent sessions and threads. For every session one attended there were sessions one was forced to miss. I tried to bounce around between the Pollination and Queen Breeding sessions and wished I could have attended all of both! Again, trying to keep this short, I'm compelled to comment a bit on SMR queens and the general thread (of which I have not caught up on and frankly I doubt I'll ever read all of the posts to BEE-L while I was away) regarding Quick-n-dirty varroa resistence/SMR/4.9,etc.,etc. Bob Danka (Baton Rouge Bee Lab) was at EAS and spoke very carefully about the SMR project and what to expect and NOT expect from the SMR lines. I too am choosing my words very carefully, and nothing of what I write should be construed as coming directly from Bob or any of the other speakers at EAS. For the next few paragraphs I am staying away from saying anything in particular about SMR bees, I am writing more about bee breeding in general. And I have written to this effect before (search the archives for "Good queens don't just happen"). It seems more evident to me than ever before that one can select for just about any trait one desires in their bees. The problem is that once one pays PARTICULAR attention to a specific trait, be it color, or resistance to AFB or chalk or varroa, or honey production, or over wintering, (the list goes on and on), once one starts to FOCUS on a PARTICULAR trait, by necessity the other traits become blurry. If one focuses only on honey production, then the bees may lose some of their darkness or yellowness, and the breeder won't really care about the loss of color because they've been successful in their selection for honey production. If one selects for over wintering, they may not care that their bees produce less honey in view of the fact that their bees are alive the following spring. A lesser producing hive from last year that's alive in May is far better to a breeder targeting on over wintering than a buster last fall that's dead this spring. And what's good for a beekeeper in the north (over wintering for instance) may be of little to no concern to a beekeeper in the south. Alan writes there is no "one size fits (suits?) all" when it comes to bee equipment, the same is true when it comes to queens! Or as Brother Adam put it, "There is no perfect queen!". Addressing SMR specifically: be aware that breeders have been FOCUSING on Suppressive Mite Reproduction. They have not concerned themselves with honey production or temperament or over wintering of ANY of the myriad of traits that make up honey bees. They have been FOCUSING on SMR and have successfully isolated that trait, possible to the point of extreme inbreeding depression. Glenn Apiaries warn of this on their web page for those considering buying pure SMR II queens. They warn against using pure II SMR queens in production hives, recommending rather that the queens be used to bring the isolated SMR genes into your own gene pool and attempting to breed them into your bees. And as soon as the concentrated SMR genes are open mated in your yards, there will be a mixture of good results (open mated queens that retain the SMR trait) and poor results (open mated queens that do not retain SMR traits) and there will be middle results (open mated queens that retain a certain degree of SMR traits). It will be up to individual beekeepers to assess the degree of success in retaining SMR retention and it will be up to individual beekeepers to assess the combination of other traits (over wintering/honey production/color/etc.) that is mixed in with the open mated queens begat by the SMR breeders. I was left with a rather ironic appreciation that the SMR breeders are attempting to provide beekeepers with isolated SMR traits and most beekeepers are determined to watch that isolated trait disappear through haphazard beekeeping practices, supersedures, and lack of assessment of their own breeding efforts. One cannot expect to buy SMR queens and enjoy all the traits they've come to expect of good queens AND never have to treat for varroa again. It ain't a gonna happen! At best you can expect to bring in a concentration of SMR into your yards. If you aren't actively breeding, testing, assessing, culling the crap and keeping the good, then you're probably wasting your time and you're better off buying your queens from someone making the effort. SMR is not the silver bullet, it's a tool. The trait is out there, it can be selected, and it can be lost in an open gene pool far easier than it was isolated. The challenge is to keep SMR prominent with the other desirable traits for bees in you yards in your area! So I'm keeping this short, right? I doubt I'll have time to write more before my next trip and will be pressed to catch up upon my return. What I REALLY wanted to say was go to these meetings if you can. The resources and RAW TALENT available to Joe Beekeeper attending the conference boggles the mind! The appreciation for what good breeders are doing and what researchers are discovering and how to be a better beekeeper dwarfs by far the costs of attending. The company is superb and the experience is priceless! Aaron Morris - thinking Go New York (where EAS 2002 will be hosted at Cornell University from August 5-9)!