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You (me): How can the breeding methods of traditional husbandry be used to raise strains of varroa-resistant bees? ChatGPT Given your interests in bee breeding and ecology, it's fascinating that you're looking into varroa-resistant bee strains. Traditional husbandry methods can indeed be...

It's a given that the best chance of successful treatment free beekeeping is to obtain free-living genes. The quick route lies in catching, collecting, or extracting a few nice colonies of thriver-survivor bees. And the best route to that happy position is to put out plenty of ideal homes, in...

. . This is for discussion of bees that have acquired the ability to cope with varroa without any help. The core assumption is that in the UK and Ireland this has occurred through natural selection for the fittest strain, and any subsequent selection has built on that. The idea is to learn...

An excellent account of present understanding of the mechanisms of varroa resistance, and the breeding conditions that promote, or discourage it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7236208/

Thumbing through my new copy of Oliver S. Field's Field Notes on Queen Rearing I was pleased to see he places smooth supercedure at the number one slot of his list of desirable traits. I've long been annoyed by hives that swarm and fail to requeen, and hives that let the queen run to a drone...

With energy costs lifting it seems without end, and commensurate food and fertiliser prices in lockstep, I think the economics of the traditional small mixed holding, with some new tech to assist, might come into its own. My first thought is that my soil is very poor (unimproved and unbroken...

Following on from the Drone boosting thread: Drone producing colonies ...this thread relates specifically to drone boosting in the context of natural selection-based/genetic husbandry. Such beekeeping relies on genetically-founded mite resistance (and/or tolerance), and therefore seeks to...

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Does anybody know where you can buy the older style post and slot queen cups that isn't China?