> >I was speaking of beekeepers not breeding their own queens.  See the
> paper I
> cited recently in the post "'Kin Selection' Crops Up Again".  The paper
> concludes that workers play a larger role in the genetics that get passed
> on
> via queens and drones than we might have suspected, and might need to be
> overtly culled or included breeding programs.
>

I did read the paper, but apparently interpret it differently.  As I
understand it, when the researchers state:

 "We investigated the degree to which worker and queen phenotypes
contribute to colony fitness by examining if proteins with caste-biased
expression show differences in the prevalence of positive selection."

that they had analyzed the protein expression based on caste, which
suggested that variation in the expression in workers had more to due with
colony fitness than in variation in queens.  But I did not get the
impression that the authors suggested that it was the workers who passed on
such inheritance.

However, in my own breeding, I do include nurses from the queen mother
colony in my cell builders in case microRNA's in their jelly have some
transgenerational epigenetic effect.


> > I.e., the Bond method does not
> > need to be taken to the death
> > of the entire colony--you can
> > intervene to save the workers;
> > just eliminate the queen.
>
> But wasn't the "Bond Method" admitted as failing to make a significant
> tangible difference in practical queen selection and breeding?
>

I spent some time with Dr Fries recently--his Bond bees on Gottland were
having problems with fitness, although not necessarily from varroa.  When
one selects for only a single characteristic, one may lose other important
characters (throwing the baby out with the bath water).  Genetic (and
epigenetic) diversity is critical in honey bee colony fitness--this may
have contributed to the problem on Gottland.

On the other hand, does anyone know whether Kefuss's bees or those in
Avignon are still doing OK?

>
> >(In other words, "survivors" were not showing sufficient mite resistance
> as
> compared to selected-for-traits stock.)
>

Not sure that I interpret the same way.

>
> >"However, the higher survivability rate of colonies from selected strains
> could not be correlated to differences in the relative natural mite
> mortality (mite mortality/1000 bees), the number of damaged mites in the
> natural mite fall, hygienic behavior (pin-killed brood test), or the
> infertility rate of Varroa in worker brood."
>

May I suggest reading Barbara Locke's more recent evaluation (2012)?

The VSH and Russian bee breeding populations are maintained with zero mite
treatments, suggesting that they have some sort of handle on varroa.  I've
also personally observed individual colonies that keep varroa completely in
check over long periods of time.  Such observations, and the survival of
Apis ceranae despite infestation by varroa, certainly suggest to me that
bees that are resistant to varroa are a reality.


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

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