Nothing pleases beekeepers more than a good argument with the morning coffee.
what an ordinary beekeeper can do in VHS , ... nothing
An ordinary beekeeper can do whatever he or she chooses to do, pick a place, put a stake in the ground, and start to work. My stake in the ground came 11 years ago and is dramatically different than what B+ is doing. I started with a mite tolerant swarm and added some known mite tolerant stock from Purvis. For 11 years now, my bees have gradually eliminated any mite susceptible colonies so that all that is left are mite tolerant. There were sacrifices such as getting much more swarming than I care to manage. The end result is a diamond in the rough, bees that need a lot more work in terms of selecting for management traits.
Part of me envies B+. He has access to stock that I can't get here in the U.S. Another part of me knows that what I am doing is just as valid because I am working to transition a huge region of the U.S. to mite tolerant genetics. There are queens I raised in 3 more areas now, 7 queens in California where the worst imaginable test conditions apply. The others in two operations where hobby beekeepers with 20 to 50 colonies are working on going treatment free. I'm just a tiny part of this, most of it is in the hands of hobby beekeepers who are doing exactly what I did. Get mite tolerant stock and stop purchasing commercial mite susceptible queens.
Someone questioned hygienic behavior and why it is valuable. I can answer that. When the tests were being run in Baton Rouge, they had identified some colonies as "SMR" (suppression of mite reproduction). They did not understand the mechanism by which the mite populations were held in check. When queens were sent to Marla Spivak, she found that they were ultra hygienic. When she notified the Baton Rouge team of her findings, they went back and tested to see how the bees were controlling varroa and found that they were actively uncapping and removing brood infested with mites. They then renamed the behavior "VSH" (varroa sensitive hygiene). Spivak then went back to her hygienic selections and found that the strongest hygienic behavior is positively correlated with VSH. So the reason for focusing on hygienic behavior is because it is a net positive for colony health and it is positively linked with VSH. This does not make hygienic behavior a cure all for varroa, but it is one more link in a chain of traits that bees need to fend off varroa. The short version is that all VSH bees are highly hygienic, but not all hygienic bees are highly VSH.
Four resistance/tolerance traits are exhibited in my bees. I can prove easily that they exhibit Varroa Sensitive Hygiene. I've even caught them in the act of removing infested larvae and pointed it out to visiting beekeepers. I can prove my bees exhibit high levels of allogrooming and mite mauling. These are two separate traits, bees may self groom or may groom each other, but this is most beneficial if they chew on the mites causing physical damage. The fourth trait my bees exhibit is abrupt shutdown of drone production when nectar and pollen are in short supply. This means I see a huge pulse of drones produced in March, April, and May, then none in June to October. There are obvious implications for areas with different nectar and pollen patterns than here.
Sometimes people need to be pushed out of their comfort zone. If you as a beekeeper have gotten comfortable with treating your bees for mites, maybe it is time to wake up and smell the coffee. When you insist on treatment free genetics, voila, breeders will start to produce treatment free genetics. It will be a rocky road with many pitfalls along the way, but if you really want to do it, you can get there. Queen breeders in the U.S. offer queens with a range of mite tolerance traits. You can get the same level of selection or better in the EU. As B+ has shown, you can work with advanced genetics and have the best of both worlds.
