Apparently in referring to Varroa, Acebird said:
I will stick my neck out on this one and say this is a worry for commercial operations. As a hobbyist it is of no concern. The ones that die you don't want and the ones that live are the ones you want to propagate. Knock yourself out with your testing and what not. As long as you treat you are on the chemical treadmill beholding to corporate America. Or is that corporate Germany?
Acebird is free to do as he chooses. For me, compared to hives dead and riddled with worms after a basic split, I'd prefer some intervention to that. Luckily there are many options between hard-chems and do-nothing. Since there are lots of brand new beeks reading these posts, here are some links with responses to non-intervention/no-treatment strategies that supposedly lead to survivor bees, but actually don't.
http://www.honeybeesuite.com/let-the-bees-be-bees-really/
"Being a caretaker means you tend to your charge, look after it, and keep it as comfortable as possible. If it happens to be a horde of honey bees, you make sure it has fresh air, a water source, and a place to forage. You treat foulbrood and, yes, even mites.
The details of how you proceed are up to you. If you prefer not to use chemicals, fine. Great, in fact. But you will need to use another method, be it mechanical separation, brood cycle interruption, or weekly applications of confectioner’s sugar. The choices are yours alone, but they are choices you must make.
Do I think there are exceptions? Sure. I believe in scientific inquiry and research. I believe in carefully designed experimentation with controls, data collection, statistical analysis, and peer review. But if you are not doing research, if are going around half-****ed pretending you are Darwin and preaching “survival of the fittest,” if you are letting your bees die from Varroa mites, you are just plain lazy. How much easier it is to do absolutely nothing and proclaim you are “letting nature take its course.”"
and
http://scientificbeekeeping.com/queens-for-pennies/
"Unfortunately, there is also a great deal of confusion as to what “treatment free” beekeeping really means. Allow me to use an analogy to explain:
Dairymen prefer to keep Holstein cattle. Holsteins are thin-skinned, thoroughly domesticated cattle selected solely for milk production. Their normal care requires shelter, supplemental feeding, routine vaccinations, and treatment with antibiotics. If a dairyman turned his Holsteins out on the range to fend for themselves without care, and half of them died each year, he would be accused of having committed animal neglect—“the failure to provide the basic care required for an animal to thrive.”
Yet this is exactly what thousands of recreational beekeepers do every year. Under the misconception that they are practicing “treatment free” beekeeping, they are in actuality simply neglecting their domesticated animals. The reason for this is that they are starting with commercial package bees—bees akin to Holstein cattle, in that they are bred for high brood and honey production under standard management practices (notably mite management, but also supplemental feeding or antibiotic treatment if indicated). Most commercial bee stocks should be considered as domesticated animals. There is absolutely no reason to expect that your wishful thinking will miraculously transform your newly-purchased “domesticated” bees into hardy survivor stock able to survive as wild animals without standard care and treatment.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am no more criticizing the commercial queen producers than I would criticize the dedicated breeders of Holstein cattle. The queen breeders are producing the best breeds for beekeepers willing to provide their colonies with the “standard” degree of husbandry (which includes at this time, treatment(s) of some sort for varroa). I have no problem whatsoever with that; but my crystal ball says that someday the market will dwindle for bees that require regular treatment for mites.
Do not delude yourself. Allowing domesticated package colonies to die year after year is not in any way, shape, or form a contribution to the breeding of mite-resistant stocks. There is a vast difference between breeding for survivor stock and simply allowing commercial bees to die from neglect! By introducing commercial bees year after year into an area, and then allowing those package colonies to first produce drones and then to later die from varroa, these well-meaning but misguided beekeepers screw up any evolutionary progress that the local feral populations might be making towards developing natural resistance to varroa. Not only that, but those collapsing “mite bombs” create problems for your neighbors. Referring to yourself as a bee-keeper confers upon you a responsibility to the local beekeeping community. Allowing hives to collapse from AFB or varroa makes you a disease-spreading nuisance!
Update April 15, 2014: I’ve received a great deal of positive feedback from experienced beekeepers who have been frustrated by all the well-intentioned, but sadly misguided, feel-good dreamers who don’t understand the difference between working with nature to promote varroa-resistant bee stocks, versus neglecting livestock that you have taken under your care. I like Rusty Burlew’s blog ““Let the bees be bees” Really?”
A Solution
Enough scolding. I strongly support those willing to actually practice selective breeding for treatment-free (or minimal treatment) locally-adapted stocks of bees. But let me be frank (try to stop me); if you start your hive with commercial stock, then by all means care for them as domesticated animals! If you want to go treatment free, then start with survivor stock bred to be naturally resistant to mites and viruses, such as VSH, Russian, or locally-adapted ferals. Do not kid yourself into thinking that allowing innocent domesticated bees to die a slow and ugly death is the same thing as breeding for survivor stock—“breeding” instead means the propagation of bees that don’t die [1]—the key word being propagation. And this is a frustration for many well-intentioned beginners—no one in their area is propagating survivor stock for sale. That is why I wrote this article."