> Susan Cobey, a bee geneticist at the University of California and Washington State University. “I would say we are just in the infancy of bee breeding.”


This is ironic. Bee breeding is hardly new, having been practiced for 200 years. What is in its infancy is the understanding of the genetic underpinnings of behavior, and how that affects the traits of a colony. There is no direct link from the behavior of one colony to the behavior of the colony that develops from the parent colony's offspring.

People are still applying conventional genetics to the honey bee which does not have a conventional inheritance system. What a lot of folks fail to acknowledge is that a breeding system that is based upon a "good theory" will not necessarily yield good results. 

Good results come from a system that has proven to yield good results. The proof is in the pudding, not the recipe. Some very wise bee researchers have stated outright that human breeding of bees cannot yield longterm success, that natural selection taking place in wild populations of adequate size will yield the hardiest bee varieties. 

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Peter Loring Borst
128 Lieb Road
Spencer, NY  14883
607 280 4253

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