Aaron Morris wrote:
>
> Michael Thiele bases
> >> the opinion that honeybees are getting weaker and weaker?
> upon
> > artificial breeding methods (artificial insemination, artificial queen
> > breeding, using the larvae of worker bees) ....
>
> This kind of generalization and mis information has really degraded this
> list the last week or so.  One need look no further than Sue Cobey's
> New World Carniolan breeding program at Ohio State to debunk a claim
> that AI (Sue prefers II (instrumental insemination)) leads to weaker
> bees.
Hi Aaron and All,
 Artificial insemination of queen bees, with a diverse gene pool,
gathered from unrelated drones, will help us in facing some of our
beekeeping problems.The fact, that in the USA , we have 8 family's of
Apis mellifera as studied by Dr. Sheppard WSU ,in a two year DNA survey.
We do not have a great genetic diversity to  start with for our queen
breeders.So leaving it up to nature and not doing some selective
breeding is shooting ourselves in the foot.Instrumental insemination
allows us control some of the traits that we are looking for in our
bees.
 The queens that I purchased last year did very well. I did my homework
on what  stock selection the breeder was using and the fact that he was
using semen from 100 drones from various hives to do his insemination.We
do have some good work being done by some of our breeders.If we can
bring in some more new stock in a controlled manner, we will make some
very good progress.
 If you want to look at natural selection, check out, Apis Scutellata in
Africa.What survived was a very defensive bee.Its tough, but hard for us
to work compared to our European bees.I believe in nature, but we have
to be smart enough to see and understand how She works.We need to use
the tools that we have come up with, to improve our stock.
 
Roy Nettlebeck