Hi Peter (and all), there are some important things in here to discuss!

From: Peter Loring Borst <[log in to unmask]>

>Of course. I have written on the perils of narrowly focused selection quite a bit... Charlie Mraz advocated NOT raising queens but rather divide the colonies ...The result is not a good line of bees but rather a population of good bees.

This is, I think, the central discussion that has to occur with bee breeding.  At our treatment free conference this year, I talked a bit about breeding, and the need for very hard "bottleneck" selection for survival (most of which I have posted here at some time or another I believe)....then, Kirsten Ebbersten gave a talk specifically about breeding, and advocated splitting all colonies (like Mraz) to encourage diversity.  Although we like it when speakers don't agree with one another, there was much confusion over this one point, and as we had a pannel discussion on breeding planned as the last talk on Sunday, I decided that we should focus on hashing this out.

What I think we all agreed upon (Erik can probably add to this) is that, given a healthy, fit population to whatever environment the population exists in, the Mraz model is the correct one...maintain the diversity that is maintaining population.

On the other hand, if your population is not fit, does not thrive in its environment, maintaining that kind of diversity doesn't help.

I came up with the analogy that if you have a sales force of 10 (5 are good and 5 are not performing well) and want to expand to 20, how do you train the 10 new employees?  If each salesperson takes a trainee, then 5 people that you are paying (and will continue to pay in the future) are not learning how to do the job you are paying them for from someone who does the job they way you want it done.

If we can avoid the "intentionality" argunments, I'd like to reference a post I made in June discussing inbreeing, outbreeding, and natural selection:
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=BEE-L;111f21c5.1106

It's also worth looking at Dee's operational history....lots of grafting while breeding through the mites and seconary diseases....now only propagating with walk away splits....even in years where 200 deadouts are restocked from 100 survivors.

Now, if one is treating routinely (or even as need arises), the "environment" for those bees is one in which the mites are knocked down by the beekeeper....that's not a problem unless you are looking for bees that can survive without treatments.

My point is that if you, for your needs, have a healthy population of bees at your disposal, then by all means maintain as much diversity in that population as nature would.

But....if your population is unfit for the environment, it can only adapt by adding genes or subtracting them.  If you think there is better stock, go buy it....but notice that every year you are buying "better stock" from a different breeder, and you never end up with what you want.

Survival might be considered a "narrow" selection criteria....but it is also the ultimate "meta criteria"....I doubt that any breeder is freezing sperm in the fall so they can use the genetics from the stock that didn't survive the winter.  Subtracting genes from the pool is exactly what happens in a "bust" (see the post linked above)...it's exactly what a breeder does when he/she chooses a queen to graft from.

>I suggest purchasing different queens from different sources.

Well, yes, and no.  If you really think there are "better" genetics than what you have, you should get them....but at some point, you have to sort out what you have...you have to let selection take place....you have to achieve some kind of uniformity...this you can only do by limiting what genetics come in...not by bringing in the "best" every year.

There is a video of Kirsten talking about sustainable breeding at the Oracle conference in 2008:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1482532387683707833

deknow

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