I intend to say it outright. Treating mites is unnecessary. Period. If we all had never treated we would have been past this 20 years ago. I was past it 15 years ago.
Michael, I find that such a dangerous absolutist statement for someone in your position to make.
By 'your position' I mean that certain beekeepers have acquired what could be described as 'Guru status' within the beekeeping community. Several names immediately some to mind: Sam Comfort, Michael Palmer, Kirk Webster ... and your own. I'm sure there are many others - my apologises to them for omission.
With this status comes responsibilities, because there will be many beginners hanging onto your every word, and following what they consider as wise and sensible advice, to the letter.
There are those who keep hundreds of colonies, and can afford to lose a fair number of them in their search for Varroa-resistant/tolerant behaviour. But what of our beginner, with perhaps just one or two colonies in their back-garden ? What chance does such a person realistically have of achieving Varroa-tolerance this year, or next year ? I'd say next to zero. And so our trusting tyro stands a very high chance of opening a hive full of dead bees come the spring.
Of course such a person could 'invest' their money by purchasing a VSH queen - but will those characteristics be passed onto other colonies in due course ? Personally, I'm far too cynical of such claims to find out for myself, but that's not what Randy Oliver has found.
http://scientificbeekeeping.com/the-varroa-problem-part-7/Now to put things in some perspective, Randy runs well in excess of 400 colonies (maybe a 1000 ?), and rears 2500 queens each season, and yet even with those numbers hasn't yet 'cracked the problem'. So what chance does a back-garden beekeeper realistically have ?
I'll pull a quote from that webpage which pretty-much sums-up my own view of the situation:
We beekeepers need to move beyond varroa, and turn varroa management over to our bees. Breeding for mite resistance is indisputably the long term solution to The Varroa Problem. My half-assed breeding efforts to date have shown some success, but I?m as yet unable to dispense with mite management. It?s clearly time to step up my game.
There are others successfully keeping bees without needing mite treatments, and I want to be there too (but without going through the pain and cost of the Bond method). Perhaps by sharing my trials and tribulations in attempting to breed for mite resistance, I can further our collective progress.
LJ