a Richard Cryberg snip followed by > my comment..
" Consequently, the beekeeping industry does not share the increased productivity that result from such programs, as have served the poultry, dairy, and swine industries."  [This totally ignores the strides that have been made in temper, honey production, lack of swarming and any number of other desirable traits generally found in commercial queens and thus is misleading if not an outright falsehood.  Just to take one example of what a mild selective breeding program can achieve consider the U or Wisc experiments as reported in "ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture, Copyright 1972, page 96.  More than doubling the per hive honey production in five years does not sound shabby to me.

>There is no doubt that you can take a shabby set of bees and greatly increase their production via simply selection techniques and by applying certain mananagement strategies.  I suspect you would have a difficult time doing this today in Wisconsin or many places in the upper midwest due to changes in cropping patterns. Cropping patterns which were likely in progress in 1972 but not full blown in their impact (to bees) as they are now. < small scale long term beekeepers from Wisconsin inform me that their average honey yield is now half of what it was even a decade ago. Corn and some soybean varies are known to not produce much if any nectar.  

>It should also be mention that the date pretty much coincides with the time strides in poultry, dairy and swine (note.. no mention of beef) began to take place and is also somewhat aligned with increased capabilities in computers and our capacity to crunch numbers.

>Your partial [ is in itself misleading in that you list some QUANTITIES that may or may not have occurred with a list of QUALITATIVE aspect which are debatable at best.

Gene temporarily a bit south of San Francisco, CA...

 

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html