" In Britain, where most bees are imports found in managed hives, it is estimated that one-third of the wild population has disappeared over recent decades, decimated in particular by the varroa mite.
The Blenheim bees appear unaffected by this, leading Salbany to suspect they have evolved to live with the parasite, among other adaptations.
Blenheim, home to a World Heritage Site palace and centuries of heritage, boasts the biggest collection of ancient oak trees in Europe in its thousands of acres (hectares) of largely untouched woodlands.
With large tracts off-limits to the public, and no managed hives or agricultural production using pesticides on-site, it has provided the perfect environment for the ecotype."
Can we all see how that fits the Darwinian and breeder conditions? Isolation, not from varroa, but from bee genes - from ecotypes lacking the specific programming for managing varroa? The population has, free from beekeepers' bees, simply raised those characters through natural selection.
It is, in my view, unlikely that this has much to do with native dark bees - though if beekeepers have been kept out since they were around, and if there are sufficient nesting sites for a good number of colonies (Filipe estimates 500) it is entirely plausible that high levels of the native dna survives.
But it will be the isolation, not the ecotype that has enables them to overcome the new parasite. Any local strain can - in a sufficient population - raise such defences. That has been scientifically demonstrated by Marla Spivak.
