Status and Perspective of Disease Resistance Breeding in the Honey Bee

Abstract

Breeding for disease/Varroa resistance is much more complex than for production traits. Hygienic behaviour against diseased brood is the most important factor of disease resistance and likely to be controlled by a small number of loci, which affect a bee’s sensitivity to the stimulus of diseased brood. Disease resistance traits are likely to exceedingly benefit from markers-based models for genetic evaluation.