Greetings
I have been working with bees since 1974 so I feel comfortable talking about the
difference between commercial queens and homegrown ones. We have two quality
issues here: the quality of the queen and the overall quality of the colony. Not the
same. A supercedure or swarm queen may be big and fat and lay a zillion eggs, but the
colony may be prone to disease or mean as hell.

I think that if you let the bees raise their own queens for years or raise your own using
your own stock, you needn't worry about inbreeding at all. The mating system of the
honey bee virtually prevents inbreeding. Colonies can raise up to 5000 drones per year
and the average colony is within range of hundreds of hives, so you can see the
potential for inbreeding is small.

You get mongrels, not inbred bees. It's like with dogs, if you aren't selecting both the
mother and the father of each generation, you quickly lose any particular qualities you
have -- and you certainly cannot move toward a quality you want. If you have a goal, you
need to select for it, and use a technique that moves you toward that goal. Just letting
the bees (or dogs) breed freely gets you mutts.

Mongrels may be hardy critters, of course. But most of the crops and animals we use
are selected and bred for particular qualities: taste, productivity, resistance to pests,
and so on. Lots of cultivated species no longer exist in the wild forms. Many of the
heavily bred types cannot exist without human care, but many also tend to revert
backwards once they are no longer controlled by breeders.

I would like to have a bee that is healthy, productive, and reasonably easy to manage. I
think the future of beekeeping lies in controlled breeding. But others do not. Some point
to wild vigorous types like those in South America that do not require breeding and
excessive care. I certainly appreciate that view, even if it may not be practical for all
areas.

pb

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