Peter Borst writes:  “So imagine, if you will, if behaviors can be 
regulated through substances introduced into the diet and if changes these 
can be passed on via heredity. If the appropriate "switches" could be 
found, a bee could be raised with improved hygienic behavior. Further, if 
behaviors are regulated via gene expression, then the bad behavioral 
qualities like aggressive stinging and excessive swarming could be
down-regulated.”

     A lot of ifs in there, Peter.  I can’t imagine that there are so many 
of these genetic switching mechanisms that you could ever hope to have as 
much control over the behavior of bees as you might like just by regulating 
their dietary intake.  For one thing those switches that do exist 
presumably have good reasons why they are sometimes on and sometimes off 
under natural conditions.   Their expression, having evolved over the 
millennia, must have something to do with what is of survival benefit to 
the species.  It is reasonable to assume that if such a mechanism existed 
for a given behavior, it would have arisen as an evolutionary response to 
some real and repetitive environmental condition.  It is highly unlikely to 
have arisen in some random way to fortuitously be there to meet some new, 
unforseen challenge.  I'm sure such randomly fortuitous genetic traits do 
exist but they are rare.  Those mechanisms that do exist, such as caste 
development in insects, will likely be observable under conditions which we 
normally expect to see bees in.  That they would be latent, waiting for a 
highly unusual dietary elixir is not likely, it seems to me.    
     Also, I have a hard time believing we are anywhere remotely close 
enough to understanding how these things work to be able to slice and dice 
them into the gene sequence to get the kind of control that we are capable 
of  imagining or desiring.  I also have to admit that I am a little nervous 
about where genetic technology seems to be taking us.  It seems to me that 
it will be really hard to account for all the possible unintended 
consequences of playing with genes like they were tinker toys.  But I would 
have probably been afraid of sailing off the edge of the earth too.

Steve Noble
        

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