small bees/mites

[charliesnike]

these mites that have been troubling our bees have been around for a long time . from what i understand beekeepers brought the trouble on themselves by trying to have bigger bees through genetics.
    ive also read that mites are getting med resistant.....what to do HuhHuh

    we are going to buy bees every year,not medicate. and see who(if anyone) survives....if they do survive it will be because they are smaller. if we all did this i think eventually the mites would be whipped.
   maybe im all wet... but i have seen med tolerance develope in lab situations...meds are not a long term answer and just keeping these big bees around a little longer is only making the problem worse..let nature seperate the smaller, resistant ones....it may take quite a while but long term solutions usually do. i dont think we got inyo this overnight. or that mites are taking advatage of u.s. emigration policies.

[Michael Bush]

150 years of trying to breed bees to be larger may have had an effect, but the biggest effect was by enlarging the foundation.  All you have to do to correct that in the long run, is to stop using foundation.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesnaturalcell.htm

Not that breeding for smaller bees isn't a good idea too...

[Eric Bosworth]

I have not seen any mites on my bees. I don't use foundation.

[Culley]

we are going to buy bees every year,not medicate. and see who(if anyone) survives....if they do survive it will be because they are smaller.

If you want better genetics, why not collect local swarms and do cutouts? If you are going to buy them, at least maybe buy from as local and as diverse sources as possible. Or buy from someone who does local cutouts.

[AR Beekeeper]

Buy queens from breeders that have VSH bees, they usually do well.  Split each year and let them raise their queen and any queen line that lasts 3 years or over will be the line to raise more queens from.  Don't let the colonies die, learn how to tell when they are close to a crash, and when you have one in that condition use a mite treatment.  Requeen the colony and continue.  Keep the colonies well fed, monitor the varroa populations, and practice good beekeeping.

Bees survive varroa if they have VSH hygienic traits and tolerance for the viruses the mites carry.  Cell size has nothing to do with how well they do.  If you ever see varroa mites on the adult bees, usually you will have a colony that is close to a crash because the varroa population will be huge. 

Original poster, put what state you are in.  If we know what part of the country you keep bees our answers to your post will be more accurate.  What may work in Florida may not work in Michigan or the Pacific Northwest.

[Eric Bosworth]

Cell size has nothing to do with how well they do. 

Perhaps not... But it only seems reasonable that bees making their own comb that they survived for thousands of years doing can't hurt any. Not to mention how much less work and expense is involved with foundation.