- Joined
- Oct 16, 2012
- Messages
- 18,254
- Reaction score
- 9,587
- Location
- Fareham, Hampshire UK
- Hive Type
- 14x12
- Number of Hives
- 6
You've picked up a random post in reply to another ...Sorry for the battery of Qs here.
But isn’t the harm potentially the continuation of less resistant lines?
I don't treat my bees for varroa - however, I'm not particularly selective and I don't worry unduly about proliferating bees that can't withstand varroa - my view to some extent is that bee genetics at local level with open mating are almost impossible to control. I like to keep queens that produce strong healthy colonies and I have a mix of home bred and bought in queens. The only thing I won't tolerate is agressive colonies and they (the couple that I've had over the years) do get re-queened. My colonies produce large numbers of drones and I let them ... if they want drones they can have drones - with over 100 apiaries within a 3km radius of my apiary it's going to be a very varied mix of drones. A queen will want to mate with the highest flying, fastest flying drones and by definition these will be the healthiest - and those are obviously the drones I would want my queens to mate with.