I've been trying to find time to write a bit about EAS 2001.  After a week
away time is hard to find, especially when I'm heading for a week+ on PEI
this Saturday.  So I'll have to keep it short.

First I must exclaim that the Eastern Apicultural Society on North America,
Inc. conference 2001 was great!  There were may concurrent sessions and
threads.  For every session one attended there were sessions one was forced
to miss.  I tried to bounce around between the Pollination and Queen
Breeding sessions and wished I could have attended all of both!

Again, trying to keep this short, I'm compelled to comment a bit on SMR
queens and the general thread (of which I have not caught up on and frankly
I doubt I'll ever read all of the posts to BEE-L while I was away) regarding
Quick-n-dirty varroa resistence/SMR/4.9,etc.,etc.

Bob Danka (Baton Rouge Bee Lab) was at EAS and spoke very carefully about
the SMR project and what to expect and NOT expect from the SMR lines.  I too
am choosing my words very carefully, and nothing of what I write should be
construed as coming directly from Bob or any of the other speakers at EAS.
For the next few paragraphs I am staying away from saying anything in
particular about SMR bees, I am writing more about bee breeding in general.
And I have written to this effect before (search the archives for "Good
queens don't just happen").

It seems more evident to me than ever before that one can select for just
about any trait one desires in their bees.  The problem is that once one
pays PARTICULAR attention to a specific trait, be it color, or resistance to
AFB or chalk or varroa, or honey production, or over wintering, (the list
goes on and on), once one starts to FOCUS on a PARTICULAR trait, by
necessity the other traits become blurry.  If one focuses only on honey
production, then the bees may lose some of their darkness or yellowness, and
the breeder won't really care about the loss of color because they've been
successful in their selection for honey production.  If one selects for over
wintering, they may not care that their bees produce less honey in view of
the fact that their bees are alive the following spring.  A lesser producing
hive from last year that's alive in May is far better to a breeder targeting
on over wintering than a buster last fall that's dead this spring.  And
what's good for a beekeeper in the north (over wintering for instance) may
be of little to no concern to a beekeeper in the south.  Alan writes there
is no "one size fits (suits?) all" when it comes to bee equipment, the same
is true when it comes to queens!  Or as Brother Adam put it, "There is no
perfect queen!".

Addressing SMR specifically: be aware that breeders have been FOCUSING on
Suppressive Mite Reproduction.  They have not concerned themselves with
honey production or temperament or over wintering of ANY of the myriad of
traits that make up honey bees.  They have been FOCUSING on SMR and have
successfully isolated that trait, possible to the point of extreme
inbreeding depression.  Glenn Apiaries warn of this on their web page for
those considering buying pure SMR II queens.  They warn against using pure
II SMR queens in production hives, recommending rather that the queens be
used to bring the isolated SMR genes into your own gene pool and attempting
to breed them into your bees.  And as soon as the concentrated SMR genes are
open mated in your yards, there will be a mixture of good results (open
mated queens that retain the SMR trait) and poor results (open mated queens
that do not retain SMR traits) and there will be middle results (open mated
queens that retain a certain degree of SMR traits).  It will be up to
individual beekeepers to assess the degree of success in retaining SMR
retention and it will be up to individual beekeepers to assess the
combination of other traits (over wintering/honey production/color/etc.)
that is mixed in with the open mated queens begat by the SMR breeders.  I
was left with a rather ironic appreciation that the SMR breeders are
attempting to provide beekeepers with isolated SMR traits and most
beekeepers are determined to watch that isolated trait disappear through
haphazard beekeeping practices, supersedures, and lack of assessment of
their own breeding efforts.

One cannot expect to buy SMR queens and enjoy all the traits they've come to
expect of good queens AND never have to treat for varroa again.  It ain't a
gonna happen!  At best you can expect to bring in a concentration of SMR
into your yards.  If you aren't actively breeding, testing, assessing,
culling the crap and keeping the good, then you're probably wasting your
time and you're better off buying your queens from someone making the
effort.  SMR is not the silver bullet, it's a tool.  The trait is out there,
it can be selected, and it can be lost in an open gene pool far easier than
it was isolated.   The challenge is to keep SMR prominent with the other
desirable traits for bees in you yards in your area!

So I'm keeping this short, right?  I doubt I'll have time to write more
before my next trip and will be pressed to catch up upon my return.  What I
REALLY wanted to say was go to these meetings if you can.  The resources and
RAW TALENT available to Joe Beekeeper attending the conference boggles the
mind!  The appreciation for what good breeders are doing and what
researchers are discovering and how to be a better beekeeper dwarfs by far
the costs of attending.  The company is superb and the experience is
priceless!

Aaron Morris - thinking Go New York (where EAS 2002  will be hosted at
Cornell University from August 5-9)!