There's a second avenue which is the treatment-free solution practiced by some beekeepers. The idea there is to keep the selection pressure and just out-evolve the parasites. Given that managed bees reproduce much more often than natural populations there's a chance it might work and some encouraging results:
For anyone interested, (one of?) the way that this selection pressure manifests is in grooming behavior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWMSIbeKoFQ The trade-off is less honey production and slower comb building.
I mean, you can always withhold treatment until mite counts indicate a problem. Letting mite populations explode can impact other colonies(domesticated & feral) in the area as well.
With care we can prevent antibiotic resistance becoming significant for decades, or we can get it to show up in the first week an antibiotic is introduced. While parasites are slower to develop resistance we still face similar issues with Lice and other pests and we really should consider both the short and long term impacts of any approach which is directly fighting evolution.
I imagine that the reason this isn't done is because it's not in the interest of Big Ag's medium-term profits.
Or, it may be that native pollinators are simply invisible. In other words, they won't know what they've got until it's gone.
My understanding is that synthetics are a specific category of treatment. Oxalic doesn’t fall into that group and I don’t think lithium chloride would either, but someone more expert may have a better idea.
The article talked about Lithium Chloride. Where do would bleach and oxalic acid come in?
Under the conditions of the common beekeeping practice in non-tropical regions, which are characterized by high colony densities, prevention of swarming and periodical mite control, it seems difficult to achieve a more balanced host-parasite relationship. Thus far, a long-term survival of A. mellifera colonies without any control measures is nearly exclusively reported from feral populations or colonies kept continuously under natural selection pressure
Varroa mites have evolved resistance to all available synthetic acaricides
In other words, this discovery is just another step following the footsteps of other failing herbicidal & insecticidal campaigns. Doing things nature's way is inconvenient, so we develop chemicals. But eventually, resistance is developed, and then we are in an arms race that will never end.
It would be nice to see more attention paid to the well-being of native pollinators, which already take care of themselves in regards to parasites & diseases, but whose numbers have been falling in recent years.
Managed honey bee colonies supplement the work of natural wild pollinators, not the other way around. In a study of 41 different crop systems worldwide, honeybees only increased yield in 14 percent of the crops. Who did all the pollination? Native bees and other insects.
https://www.wired.com/2015/04/youre-worrying-wrong-bees/
http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2011/10/native-bees-are-bett...