Natural selection for varroa resistant honeybee colonies. Bijennieuws 28

Following the observation of colonies of honeybees surviving in the wild (North America, Tom Seeley; France, Yves LeConte) or obtained through planned naturalizing (Gotland, Sweden, Ingemar Fries), we started a comparable experiment in 2007. In 2007 a group of offspring colonies from the Gotland population was taken and brought to the Island of Tiengemeten. A newly set up group of a ‘Dutch mixture’ of colonies was placed in 2008 in a remote area (remote on a Dutch scale), the Amsterdam Water Dunes (AWD), at the North Sea cost, close to Vogelenzang. In both groups we ceased varroa control. However, to the 2008 Dutch mixture group we added a group of control colonies, which were managed similarly, but including varroa control twice a year