I found one single queen that exhibited high tolerance to mites in a swarm in 2004. In 2005, I purchased 10 queens from Dann Purvis (high levels of varroa tolerance) and used them to produce drones to mate with queens raised from the swarm queen. In 2006 and 2008, I pushed my bees to swarm heavily, all it takes is a bit of crowding of the brood nest. The result was pushing several dozen feral colonies into the surrounding area. Those feral colonies have survived and thrived such that I routinely catch a few swarms from them each year. The end result is that I can mate queens in this area with most of them expressing a very high level of varroa tolerance. I currently have 14 colonies in 4 apiaries, one here at my home, one 7 miles east on some land I own, one 4 miles southwest at a friend's place, and one 155 miles north east at my mother's home. I would have more colonies, but have been giving and selling colonies to other beekeepers to get them a start with mite tolerant genetics. One of them has 10 colonies now, another has 7, a third has 11, one passed away and his bees were sold. I have two more requests to get people started with colonies this spring so I plan on raising queens from selected breeders and producing new colonies by splitting those I currently have. I am also going to try to raise more queens to distribute to a few beekeepers who are interested in evaluating their mite tolerance.
The mite tolerant swarm queen I found in 2004 was probably mixed with a significant amount of Apis Mellifera Mellifera genetics. This is based on the traits:
1. Flying and foraging at low temps and very late in the day, specifically 4C to 7C on a sunny day just before dark.
2. Excessive stinging behavior, typical AMM, sting if you get within 20 ft of the colony.
3. Highly aggressive when the colony is manipulated, not like Africanized, just hotter than any other bees around.
4. Overwintered on less than 20 pounds of honey, foraged early, still built up faster than any other colony I had.
5. Very fast to swarm, typical of AMM, not typical of Italian or Carniolan.
6. Very good tolerance to mites which is NOT typical of AMM and tells me they were likely crossbred.
I do not do any mite counts, I don't check for varroa mauling, I don't check for VSH. My bees have such low mite counts that I can't find any mites in a colony except in mid-summer, if I search drone brood, I sometimes find one or two. Two years ago, I collected all the mites a colony dropped in 48 days. I got 15 mites. Someone recently challenged me about not checking. I just replied, after 11 years and my bees are alive, what would I check for?
What are their negative traits? They have a very strong tendency to swarm. They are sometimes excessively aggressive. I've been able to trim the aggression down so that only one colony is left that is seriously difficult to work. All of my other colonies can be worked in shirtsleeves. They winter with small clusters typically the size of a football or a bit smaller. They can under some conditions haul honey in so fast I get behind putting supers on them.
I've kept bees for 46 years and lost all my colonies to acarine in 1988, rebuilt using Buckfast queens, and lost all again in winter 1993/1994. I'm now back at the stage of beekeeping that I was at in the early 1980's when I could simply manage the bees for honey production.
Someone asked why I don't get rid of the queen in the aggressive hive. I take 100 to 150 pounds of honey per year off that colony with no work done on my part except the adding of supers in spring and removing of the honey in fall. When a goose is busy laying golden eggs, don't disturb the goose.
