Mite resistance by definition is the limitation of the mite population so it dosen't build up to high numbers (or build as fast)
Mite tolerance is the ability to deal with high mite numbers.
Kefuss etal 2015
According to Schneider and Ayres
(2008), resistance and tolerance are two separate major
pathways for survival to infestations. Raberg, Graham,
and Read (2009) define resistance as “the ability of a
host to limit parasite burden” and tolerance as the
ability of a host “to limit the damage caused by a given
parasite burden”.
Mite tolerance is not often seen in survivor stock, likely do to the fact its viruses that cause the crashes, and they are constantly changing. As a whole the long and short is hives with the lowest counts do best as they suppress the vector. Be it , keffus, Gotland, or the Arnot forest, that's the mechisim that keeps coming out on top. tolerance at the moment is a pipe dream
In honey bees, Danka, Rinderer, Spivak, and Kefuss
(2013) defined resistance as the ability of a hive to
“keep V. destructor at a relatively low level”. Efforts to
document resistance to varroa focus on the maintenance
of colony fitness being associated with reduced
numbers of infesting mites. Fitness in honey bees can be
measured in a number of ways such as amount of
brood, colony size, survival, queen, and honey production.
Although tolerance to the haplotype of varroa found
in Europe has not been demonstrated (according to the
above definitions), efforts to do so would have to focus
on the maintenance of colony fitness with elevated numbers
of infesting mites.
one only needs to look at Kefuss 2015 to see the results..
In both test populations, the number of mites found per 100 bees decreased compared to that found on the original population 1 of 1999 where 75% of the colonies had more than 5 mites per 100 bees. In 2001, 66.2%, 2002 65.5%, 2008 87%, 2009 92%, and 2010 80.8% of the colonies had less than 5 mites/100 bees
hives with high mite counts "removed' them self from the study.
Mite counts are very predictive to a hives survival. The key for TF fokes is to us a larger threshold number.. your looking for a number that tells you that hive is not going to be TF and to remove its genetics, traditional thresholds are set for production and economic reasons
The countings mean to me not to disturb the hives too much as with alcohol wash or looking at brood frames. Allcohol wash is not giving you an overall view of what happens daily in many weeks, it just shows the status of one moment. I believe the bees communication ceases for some time with opening a hive.
studys suggest the opposite. The alcohol wash is the gold standard for research
sticky boards are just short of tea leaves, and practically meaningless unless you know whats going on inside the hive.
swinging back around
sold time tested beekeeping is what is needed... not tea leaves, pipe dreams, and faith based beekeeping
Robert G Danka, Thomas E Rinderer, Marla Spivak, and John Kefuss-2013
Comments on: “Varroa destructor: research avenues
towards sustainable control”
selecting “blindly” for resistance, i.e., by
using an approach that simply targets low mite infestations. This has
already, however, been documented to be a viable breeding approach
that has led to honey bees that now are used by both small-scale and
commercial beekeepers with no or minimal acaricide input: Russian
honey bees in the USA (Rinderer et al. 2010; de Guzman et al., 2007)
and bees bred by John Kefuss in France (Büchler et al., 2010; Kefuss
et al., 2004). Resistance in other untreated bees selected for survival
may be functional but has not been documented with rigorous testing
breeding by mite counts works, and works well. Spiting what lives.....not so much
Honey bee strains that are resistant to varroa are a valuable resource
that beekeepers are using successfully. Although these bees
have not completely solved the problem, we are in fact moving toward
the ideal of sustainable varroa control described by Dietemann et al.
(2012). Further research to determine the best IPM procedures to
support the full expression of resistant phenotypes would move us
more quickly toward ending reliance on acaricides.
an IMP path is likely the fastest and most realistic way forward.