Hi all
 
In response to Penny's response to this thread - I think I did not
state my idea clearly enough. It was mentioned that the problem with
such a bee whould be that it would allow poisonous honey.
 
This is not so.
 
To make a bee that is resistant to such a poison one would have to go
about a reasonable complex procedure. The bee would have to be able
to metabolise the poison with enzymes (just like bacteria did for the
oil spill from the Exon Valdez) converting the poison into harmless
substances.(This would be a big job in itself as breaking the ring
structure in the poison would be hampered by the natural antioxidants
in honey.)
 
In such a way bees would be bioremediating their honey. One could put
in a safe guard by say making it that only after metamorphosis bees
can produce the enzymes. Then the colonie would die unless the honey
was pure as young bees would die. This would all have to use some
pretty wacky DNA manipulation that would most probably mean that
trade marked strains would be infertile if crossed with wild strains.
 
This is just a personal flight of fancy - another idea that goes
along a similar vein is to clone the genes for certain viruses that
actually kill insect pests of certain fruits into the bees so they
are produced in the mouth parts of the bee - then it would go about
infecting all flowers with pest specific viruses meaning that all
fruit that set will be infected and thus protected. (I am sure this
is a technically very difficult feat) In this way you could have
brands of bees for pollinating certain crops etc. (eg Buckfast/etc
virus tm and so on) Then one would not need the above pesticide
resistant bees and one would never do this because pesticides are
more economically addictive than narcotics - a drug addict dies a
farmer who uses pesticides thrives, only his kids die - and lots of
tax comes of agro chemicals and little of environmentally responsible
actions (eg look at the opposition to food grade mineral oil
treatment of varroa - legislation in some countries stating that
dangerous poisons must be used rather than this often equally
succesful treatment)
 
In every problem there is an opportunity to make money - as long as
we look at problems and find problems with cures to the a cure, it
will never be found.
 
Just my two cents (given what the South Africa Rand is worth those
cents are alomost centsless!)
 
Garth
---
Garth Cambray       Kamdini Apiaries
15 Park Road        Apis melifera capensis
Grahamstown         800mm annual precipitation
6139
Eastern Cape
South Africa               Phone 27-0461-311663
 
3rd year Biochemistry/Microbiology    Rhodes University
Interests: Flii's and Bees.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this post in no way
reflect those of Rhodes University.