>
> >My point was only that inbreeding leads to degeneration while carefully
> constructed hybrid lines can be far superior to the wild type.


Pete, could you please support your claim that inbreeding leads to
degeneration.  Each race of honey bee is by definition inbred, but that
doesn't imply "degeneration."  And every "superior" cultivar of crop is by
definition inbred from the wild type parental strains.

Could you also please define "superior."  If the hybrid Starline bee were
indeed superior, it would have displaced all other bee bloodlines across
the U.S.  If the latest hybrid corn, soy, or chicken were "far superior"
they would also have displaced all wild types.  My point is, the word
"superior" is an arbitrary value judgement--"wild type" is what Nature has
deemed to be "superior" in its environment.


> In the video, Brother Adam says: "There is no such thing as a perfect
> honeybee, it has to be created, bred, ... developed by the hand of man."


Odd for a monk to claim that God would have left it to humans to create the
perfect bee, and that he (Brother Adam) was smarter than God : )

Pete, you're a scientist.  Brother Adam ran ~400 hives of bees, yet claims
to have tested a huge number of hybrid crosses for performance through the
F-2 generation and beyond.  Have you done the math?  Would he have been
able to make such a claim in any refereed journal?

I am not in any way dissing Brother Adam--I have great respect for what he
accomplished.  But as a scientist, I must take some of what he says with a
grain of salt.


-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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