Feelings Aren’t Facts in Beekeeping with Hope as a Breeding Strategy !!
Lately I keep hearing more and more beekeepers claiming that after stopping Varroa treatments for a year or two, their bees have somehow “become VSH” and are now naturally resistant. “They’re uncapping brood.” “They’re removing mites.” “My bees adapted.” And honestly… I think we need to slow down a little before jumping to conclusions. Because feelings are not facts in beekeeping. And hope, by itself, is not a breeding strategy. True Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH) bees did not appear overnight through wishful thinking. Resistant populations are usually the result of either: careful selective breeding over multiple generations, or intense long-term natural selection where enormous colony losses occurred before stable resistance traits began emerging. That process takes time. A lot of time. And perhaps this is the part many people underestimate: the first truly significant observations of naturally resistant unmanaged bee populations often appeared only after many generations...