Personally, I've tried a number of mitigations with varying levels of success--most all resulting in requeening due to toxicity of treatment. At this point unless a truly successful new therapy is found it seems like a losing battle tbh. I meet monthly with beekeepers and scientists monthly for a few years now, an 99% of the time discussions involve Varroa destructor. It has that name for a reason...
It was explained to me this is well planned and solved in Czechia. Varroa treatment is refunded my the government, but only one type of medication every 6 months. It's cheaper for beekeepers to use whatever the government gives them for free, than use something else. And the medication is free only for a few weeks, so everyone will use it at the same time.
Wiki page about the specific parasite that affects honey bees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_destructor
On that page there mention of "honey bee genetics" as a form of parasite control. It is called "Varroa sensitive hygiene". Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_sensitive_hygiene
> Varroa sensitive hygiene (VSH) is a behavioral trait of honey bees (Apis mellifera) in which bees detect and remove bee pupae that are infested by the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. VSH activity results in significant resistance to the mites.
It sounds like you need to buy better gene stock in your area. USDA started publishing about this finding in 1997, almost 30 years ago.Of course having only colonies with a strong VSH would be the end goal so we no longer need to treat our bees. But until then, better treatments are needed.
> Even with careful breeding, the VSH behavior often vanishes (or is greatly reduced) after 1-2 generations.
This is very interesting. I guess it well explains why these parasites are still a major issue.You can also use drone frames, and remove drone brood during the summer, or cage the queen a period of time. These are both mechanical treatments and obviously doesn't hurt the honey.
Formic acid is one of the few treatments which is acceptable to use while honey is present.
And, by the way - natural pathogens exist in just about any population. These very, very rarely led to extinction. There is a media trend to claim the mites are at fault. This reminds me of prior fault yielding e. g. "mad cow disease" - and then the media also stopped doing any further investigation at that point. It's as if they have break points where you can not go past those points. Now it is the mites that get blamed.
The removal of habitats suitable to insects and modern farming certainly plays a part as well.
Honeybees deal fairly well with pesticides, wild bees doesn't[1], but none of them can deal with losing habitats.
1) https://www.biavl.dk/medlemmer/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Bi... (In Danish).
Your response is analogous to how people project onto vapid AI slop meaning which was not present in the process used to generate it. The primary difference being that there is a true meaning behind these words, something against which we can compare your reading. (I would like very much for your reading to turn out to be closer than my reading to what shevy-java intended to say, but I do not expect it.)