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Date: | Thu, 23 Feb 2023 12:02:12 -0500 |
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No geneticist here but a long time observer of various breeding attempts.
Many breeders have the objective of selecting for quite specific behaviors. From careful selection and controlling mating areas to, at the extreme, using II with a single drone. This is inherently an attempt to reduce diversity and increase the desired trait.
Many beekeepers tout the benefits of "local adaptation" believing that bees will adapt to local conditions in a few generations and that by preventing outside introductions that they can maintain specific traits. Again an attempt to reduce diversity.
Beekeepers of every stripe will purchase queens with desired, or at least advertised, advantageous qualities. These by definition have reduced diversity.
Then comes the cruel, (or saving) reality, depending on ones perspective, of north American beekeeping. 400 colonys on an 18 wheeler, packages in the mail, and queens from every corner of the country. Put them all in the washer and hit the spin cycle and in a decade you get our "all American mutts". Damn good bees for the most part. As has been said many times before, about the best we can realistically do is what good beekeepers have done for generations. Save the best and pinch the rest. This will increase whatever it is that makes a particular colony outperform and cull the underachievers, at least in an individual operation.
Like I said, no geneticist here, but I have never understood the belief that by simply introducing random new genetics it is universally an improvement. Take a smart weak women and a strong dumb man. We tend to believe we will get a smart strong child. Just as likely we get a weak dumb one. Darwin to the rescue. I love my mutts.
Paul
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