Yanta,
I'm hoping importing bees won't become too popular. I do think the risk is less if they stay in Canada. The Asian bees in Australia don't carry varroa so they are no more likely to be a vector than our more common european bees. Sugar shaking will only tell us the bad news, but I did learn how to do it a couple of weeks ago. Once we know we have varroa, it will be too late.
Ozbee, why can't they send over frozen drone semen if we need different genetics here? After all, we have a world record holding texan longhorn near here bred through AI!
Having varroa here will be a blow for sure, but most especially in the chemicals that will be introduced in the honey and wax. For now, I doubt my hives at home have access to chemicals. In town you wouldn't know, but very little I guess compared with saving hives with the first onslaught of varroa. I don't think us little hobbyists could afford any of these new lines of queens until maybe after a few decades the genes appear in feral bush hives. I'm just speculating, but time will tell.
Lone