Hi Peter
> I think the correct word is acclimated. Personally, I think this idea
> is tossed about loosely without clear proof. Do we know how long it
> would take for honeybees to become acclimated? I would think at least
> several thousand years.
It only take seven years to reach about two thirds acclimatisation,
using positive selection and adequate culling, if your program runs
twenty or more years you can reach figures as good as 95%-98%.
However this takes work (interesting work, but never the less work).
It is no accident that in my breeding outfit the ratio of hive types was...
80 full sized hives (used for honey production, queen raising and drone
raising).
110 five frame nucs (used as mating nucs during early and late season,
but as small colony assessment units during the rest of the time and
also overwintering of nucs).
300+ mating nucs (each having 6,7 or 8 rounds of queen mating).
It is those that are discarded from the queens raised that make the most
difference and although I used to sell or give away maybe 20 % of the
queens, the vast majority were deselected as being unsuitable.
It seems to me that there are few US beekeepers that go to those lengths.
> Then you have to contend with the constant influx (at least in the
> US) of bees from the South.
The problem is similar in UK, but most of the exotic stuff comes from
continental Europe, but there are many many beekeepers importing queens
illegally and a few that do it legally, but they are still imports from
places where the grass may seem greener to some eyes. But even this
problem can be overcome by use of morphometry and adequate selection.
> There are plenty of beekeepers who never have to feed their bees,
> except to stave off starvation due to a crop failure.
You are implying that this is in some way due to action of the
beekeeper, only leaving honey of a quality that the bees concerned can
survive on, but in UK, for instance, we have late crops of ivy honey
that occur well after extracting has finished, if the bees can't cope
with that ivy honey as winter stores, they will not be around in
following seasons, so nature has a way of finding the fittest.
I too think that far too much stress is placed on winter feeding, when
the population dynamics of the bees and their racial characteristics
should be more explored to find or develop strains that do not require
excessive winter stores.
Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net
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