Hi All
 
Some really interesting posts about trracheal mite resistance in
bees.
 
Vince had some particularily interesting news about the natural
selection of bees with resistance.
 
No this raises a question in my mind. If we consider the North
American bee population to be really inbred, with the majority of the
bees coming from a few production regions, and natural swarms being
just about gone then there are some big problems.
 
A hive is a single reproductive unit, capable of giving out not more
than 22 or so sets of genes in some or other order. The chances are
that anyy drones that are infected with TM are not going 'too be much
good in the air' and will not satisfy prospective queens, so we can
cut out a chunk of the potential gene pool of each hive, as that
whhich will be naturally selected out.
 
Now we will also loose a lot of queen line genetic inforrmation from
hives where the queen line was not much good and did not get out and
about enough.
 
So the result is that, through naturral selection for TM resistance
one gets a hell of a bottleneck in the amount of variability for
other traits in the natural environment. SO yyes one may get TM
resistance, but what resistance does one loose to other things in the
proccess?
 
Have any of the beekeepers with such problems noticed less vibrant
colonies?
 
Just a thought
 
Keep well
 
Garth
---
Garth Cambray       Camdini Apiaries
15 Park Road        Apis melifera capensis
Grahamstown         800mm annual precipitation
6139
Eastern Cape
South Africa               Phone 27-0461-311663
 
On holiday for a few months     Rhodes University
Which means: working with bees 15 hours a day!
Interests: Fliis and bees
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this post in no way
reflect those of Rhodes University.