North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

Title: Re: [NAFEX] Honeybee rebound?

There is resistance - some Russian strains with resistance have been imported into the U.S.  However, it's too soon for them to have spread that much.  More likely, the mites have died back due to lack of hosts.  With an increase in non-resistant honeybees, the mites will build up again.  Boom-bust cycles are very common in all sorts of species, and the bees are likely to be going through a boom cycle right now.
-Lon Rombough
>

> I have no news, but I've also seen a LOT of honeybees on my clover this year as well and I'm pretty sure there are no managed hives near me.  It makes sense to me that there would be a comeback due to natural resistances.
>
>  -----Original Message-----
> From:  Gene Spears [mailto:Spears@LMC.edu] 
> Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 8:56 AM
> To: North American Fruit Explorers
> Subject: [NAFEX] Honeybee rebound?
>
>  I've noticed a lot of Honeybees on my clover this year - far more than the past few years - and I don't know of any nearby managed hives.  I'm thinking they are feral (wild) bees.  Has anyone on the list come across any news items about the varroa mite & resistance?  Is no news good news?  I was always hopeful that there would be enough honeybees out there with natural resistance so that the dire predictions of pollination crashes were too pessimistic.
>
> gene