From: Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]>

>This leaves out natural selection as a prime factor in the formation of distinct populations...Presumably they then would breed and strengthen that trait, but that comes after, not before selection. 

Well sure, natural selection is a kind of selection...roughly parallel to choosing colonies to graft from and colonies as drone producers.  Natural selection has historically been the prime factor in the formation of distinct populations.

But when I'm talking about a uniform population, I'm talking about many, many traits of uniformity, not just mite resistance.  The kind of uniformity that gives races/strains reputations for behavior, production, broodrearing, frugal wintering, mite resistance....the reasons that breeders seek out certain races for predictable traits.

Whether the selection is artificial or natural, it is not the selection of a few primary individual colonies to breed, but how the genetics sort out over several generations as traits (both good and bad) are fixed that provides uniformity and predictable traits.  The end result is not defined by an initial selection event.

deknow

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