Hi All/Andy
 
Thanks Andy for the e-mail supporting a dubious view of modern day
ways of 'discriminating' bees.
 
You mentioned a few cases where bees are difficult to distinguish on
a genetic basis.
 
I think for bees there are a few ways of distinguishing bees with DNA
as the foundation for this. One is to amplify up some pieces of DNA
with special enzymes and then to use other enzymes which cut DNA at
specific sequences to chop it up. Hence it is very similar to running
a program through a book and telling it to create a paragraph at
certain word - eg every time there is a the press enter.
 
As a result a number of different size chunks develop and these move
at specific speeds if put through a get which slows things down, The
smaller the piece the faster it goes. In the end you get a line which
is a fingerprint. I don't like this sytem that much as it is subject
to contamination. It is however not so expensive and can be used on a
large scale. I think it is better than morphometrics. If somebody
messes up they can get contaminants in. The primers used in the
initial step are universal primers so they can magnify everything up.
 
In forensic labs, the rooms used for PCR (the enzyme reaction that
amplifies the DNA) are seperated from the places where DNA is
prepared and so on. DNA froms aerosols which can float around in the
air and contaminate reactions giving false results. Most bee research
labs I am sure suffer from at least a small amount of such
contamination as this is not industrial science where big money is
involved - in industry one cannot afford to publish incorrect results
as the factory you build will not work. In bee science very few
people are ever even going to bother duplicating ones work.
 
Another system is to actually sequence certain sections of the DNA.
This is quite neat. But a bee has a lot of chromosomes, and hence one
has to select a little piece that is representative of the whole
animal. People often simplify this by looking at mitochondrial DNA.
This is DNA in little organelles that live in the cell and produce
the cells energy. Traditional science says these are passed on from
mother to child, and never from the father/drone, so theoretically
one has a pure source of DNA. Other research has shown that
mitochondria actually evolve over time in various parts of the
animals body, so taking mitochondria from the stomach and wings will
give slightly different sequences for so called characteristic bits
of their genome.
 
So that is not so good either. It has also been shown that in bees
mitochondrial DNA from the drones is passed to the offspring. So what
else is there to do? Maybe one can look at little bits of DNA in the
actual bees chromosomes. As such little is known about the genome of
the honeybee. It has still to be sequenced. Areas are known that are
good for distinguishing bees. but how does one decide which ares? I
suspect that observer bias may always be a problem with an animal as
large as complex as a bee. Depending on where one looks one could
prove anything.
 
My geuss would be with bees the best way of assesing a bees
productivity and temperament will be not through any of there above
techniques, but rather through a simple record of productivity,
temperament and so on. Oneday in the future we will be able to use
the above techniques, but a lot of develompment is needed - which
will come from other richer areas of science as spin off
technologies.
 
Just my thoughts
 
Keep well
 
Garth
 
Garth Cambray           Camdini Apiaries
Grahamstown             Apis mellifera capensis
Eastern Cape Prov.
South Africa
 
Time = Honey
 
After careful consideration, I have decided that if I am ever a V.I.P
the I. may not stand for important.
(rather influential, ignorant, idiotic, intelectual, illadvised etc)