I appreciate your challenging me on points, Pete, as it helps me to see
where I'm not being clear in my explanations : )


> >Captive breeding programmes and especially gene selection programmes can
> never adequately keep up with the changing environment, certainly not to
> the extent that a “live-and-let-die” approach can. Allowing natural
> selection to determine who the winners are, will always be the most
> sensible strategy.
>

I've long been in agreement with Allsopp's point.  But many misunderstand
the "live or let die" concept.  It is only unsuccessful gene combinations
that need to die, not the worker bees of a colony.

When one performs selective breeding (aside from genetic engineering), one
does not create anything--one simply (and blindly) eliminates gene
combinations that do not result in the  expression of chosen traits (such
as resistance to varroa).  We do not need to understand how the bee does
it, so long as we select for those who somehow manage to do it.

Every other genetic line "dies" when the breeder replaces the queens in his
hives with daughters from those that met his selection criteria.
Genetic/epigenetic combinations that successfully deal with varroa thus are
allowed to "live," whereas the unsuccessful genetic combinations "die" when
they are not further propagated.

My suggestion to the bee industry, since most of us replace queens at
regular intervals, is to only replace queens with daughters of queens whose
colonies "lived" (maintained low mite levels), as opposed to replacing them
with daughters from queens whose colonies would have died (as evidenced by
high mite counts).   The point is, that so long as we are ruthlessly
selective at the queen level, there is no need to ever allow the workers on
a colony to die from mites.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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