Mark,
Thank you for asking.
When I first started into breeding and expansion into a full business, I bought breeder queens from Glenn Apiaries, and russian stock directly from a friend who bought russians from Charlie for years. This was to get as pure as I could when it came to SMR, Carni, etc. At that same time, I bought queens in lots of 50 from various places around the states, and placed them into various yards, and overwintered them. This went on for several years.
I never treat them. I let nature cull out the weak.
Every spring, I hold "evaluation" days, where I take out a few volunteer beekeepers to evaluate, test, and select queens from various yards. I have a 12 point system. Two things automatically gets a queen rejected for breeder consideration. Agressiveness, and ANY signs of pests or disease. One wax worm sighting, one SHB, one cell of chalk....failed.
We also do various hygienic testing. It can be as simple as placing paper towels with thymol oil onto the top of the bars, or killing off brood. We then select those hives (If they passed the other criteria) that shred and pull out the paper the fastest, or removed the dead brood..
We do look at v-mites, and test for those also.
We think several things have happened over the years that has helped us.
*We have slowly changed over the feral population in the areas surrounding our breeder yards.
*We actually use drone saturation and have spent much efforts grouping our breeding colonies with 4-8 support yards in the area. This is something that many so called breeder lack....actual drone yards.
We have not brought in any stock other than carni and russian for the past 6 years. The past three years, we have not bought any breeders, and have relied on getting other northern stock through the northern states queen breeders association members, so we have good diversification of stock.
I still get some queens from various producers every year. I place them in out yards, and go back the second year to evaluate them. I may not use them for grafting, but use these hives many times for drones.
I have tested my own comb, and know the queens being produced are not being effected by beekeeper induced treatments, which I have never used except the first year I had 6 hives. I think chemicals are effecting queens from some places, as well as inbreeding and poor genetic selection.
I do play around with disease and issues for breeding efforts. I have never really selected or tested beyond a few tests, for nosema. I have had the state run some tests, and the nosema was always below the standard threshhold (one million spore count), even for testing in the fall. I'm not sure how he (Johnson) will be running his selection and nosema testing, but many things actually effect nosema levels, and I think the research needs to be very specific and take many things into account. With that said, I will leave any further comments alone.
As for ferals, I have collected and evaluated many of them. To me, much.....lets say MOST of the hype around ferals are a pipe dream. You got good and bad, and mostly bees just a generation away from being just a swarm. There is some information that some german genetics have been found out of the mid-west. But for many, beekeepers would be best to focus on selection and support their local breeders, associations, and state efforts, and quit looking for magic in a bottle....or would that be....a hole in the tree.
Hope this helps.