Hi Joe

A couple of points... The brood estimation pictures...
http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/broodest.html
are of British sized frames not Langstroth.

 > Solidness of Brood Pattern- (Brood Viability).  Denotes out-breeding
 > associated with open mating (Brother Adam I think).

Let me take this phrase by phrase...

 > Solidness of Brood Pattern- (Brood Viability).

Correct

Denotes out-breeding

No! It denotes a large number of alleles being available... It does not 
matter how this large number becomes available in the gene pool and can 
occur just as readily in a closed population, providing that the 
population is large enough or leaky round the edges.

associated with open mating

Not necessarily, you have to differentiate between 'free flight mating, 
unknown drone population' and 'free light mating with closed population 
drones'.

(Brother Adam I think).

He may have said that, but his breeding work was conducted mostly using 
free flight mating with a closed population that was augmented, from 
time to time, with genes from external sources for inclusion or 
integration into the gene pool.

Diploid drones can be a result of inadequate scale of closed population 
and more readily show up in races like Italians, simply because of their 
low mating frequency.

Increasing the variability in the drone background, will reduce diploid 
drones, but result in more culling being required during selection.


Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net
Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable)

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