What we know about robbing, mite bombs and large scale Varroa spread

As part of the Honey Bee Health Coalition's Hot Topics video series, Kelly Kulhanekan, an applied research scientist specializing in honey bee health and beekeeping management practices, discusses robbing, mite bombs and large scale Varroa spread.

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There are just so many assumptions in this, but probably not the correct assumptions. For instance, high bee density areas tend to also be areas where more bees are brought in from commercial apiaries sold as Packages, or Nuc's right off the Almond Fields--that are importing mites every year--where as a low bee area is probably working with more bees that spent the winter in that spot, have adapted better to the weather of that area, are stronger stock, and aren't bringing a new supply of bees and mites in each year! Weak hives also tend to be from a lot of human error, so importing Packages or Nuc's in the early spring to get the first sales of the year, often times leads to a weak colony in the Fall. Package bees tend to be older when they are delivered, and are generally put in to spaces that are too large for the number of bees that are put in. When those bees start to raise brood, many die off in trying to maintain 94 degrees on nights that get extremely cold, and the colony will never build up to the size they need to be for winter survival, but generally as they are getting a foot hold...people add more space and that pretty much seals the deal that they aren't going to make it. But you don't make that sort of assumption...only that it's because people didn't have a mite protocol that you might approve of could be the only thing to blame! Then there's just the question of your bees robbed my bees, but my bees are to blame??? Natural selection might be good to look at here, because once again Packages and bees from the Almonds are probably going to have a lot of Italian bee genetics, and Italian's are more prone to robbing other hives! Bees that adapt to not robbing, like many of the feral stock seems to be doing, don't have that problem, but bees raise in commercial settings that are fed at every low point in the nectar flow...have never adapted to real world scenarios. Science really needs to spend more time with bees to see past the charts, in to what's really going on, or what else it might be--instead of just blaming what they need to to get more funding for studies that really haven't changed the varroa issue for the past 30 years.