>>"Bee-Keeping", by definition, would be
>> the attempt to not kill bees.
>> Workers are a fungible commodity,
>> for the most part, so there is never
>> a reason for workers to die.
> You are breeding mainly for traits
> passe[d] [on] by the queens and drones,
> not necessarily by the workers.
I was speaking of beekeepers not breeding their own queens. See the paper I
cited recently in the post "'Kin Selection' Crops Up Again". The paper
concludes that workers play a larger role in the genetics that get passed on
via queens and drones than we might have suspected, and might need to be
overtly culled or included breeding programs.
> I.e., the Bond method does not
> need to be taken to the death
> of the entire colony--you can
> intervene to save the workers;
> just eliminate the queen.
But wasn't the "Bond Method" admitted as failing to make a significant
tangible difference in practical queen selection and breeding?
".we emphasize that what we demonstrate in the Bond bees is only a relative
mite tolerance, yielding a slower mite population build up compared to
colonies where mite control has been practiced".
"Possible host-parasite adaptations in honey bees infested by Varroa
destructor mites"
Fries, Bommarco Apidologie (2007)
http://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/abs/2007/06/m6117/m6117.html
http://tinyurl.com/k3vqco8
(In other words, "survivors" were not showing sufficient mite resistance as
compared to selected-for-traits stock.)
and
"However, the higher survivability rate of colonies from selected strains
could not be correlated to differences in the relative natural mite
mortality (mite mortality/1000 bees), the number of damaged mites in the
natural mite fall, hygienic behavior (pin-killed brood test), or the
infertility rate of Varroa in worker brood."
"Breeding for resistance to Varroa destructor in Europe"
Buchler, Berg, LeConte Apidologie (2010)
http://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/abs/2010/03/m09147/m09147.html
http://tinyurl.com/l9pwze5
(The statement above being an acknowledgement that the surviving colonies in
"Bond" programs survived by mere luck alone, and had no traits of measurable
tangible value in a breeding, exposing the subjective valuation of "higher
colony strength" as, at best "optimistic", and at worst "confirmation bias".
)
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