Hi Steve

> Adding to that, it seems to me that relying strictly on natural
> selection for overall fitness for a particular geographical area
> would depend on everyone in that area doing the same thing.

It is actually rather like IPM, you do not rely on any one strategy, you
use what is appropriate at the time according to what you find.

> If it is, then you would in essence be mixing natural and man made 
> selection and not having much control over either.

You have to ensure that both nature and you are pulling in the same
direction, by generating selection criteria that are known to be 
achievable against the background population (which you must record, 
investigate and measure), your selection criteria must take into account 
what can be done rather than reaching for the moon. You have to start 
with what you have already and can sensibly introduce.

> But since the only way to have complete control is 
> through instrumental insemination, 

II has it's place, but II is no magic bullet... It has limitations as
well as plus factors. When all said and done II is just an alternative 
mating technique that has a few useful 'spin offs' or technical tricks 
for both limiting genetic diversity and increasing it. But the II is not 
the important part of the technique, it is making the decisions about 
what is mated to what that really matters, II is merely the means by 
which it is achieved.

> It would seem to me that the best way to go about this would be to
> place the highest value on the most general characteristics which
> would be things like persistent survivability and overall vitality.

If, and only if, those characters are linked to single or small numbers
of genes.

> In the natural selection scheme that Dave advocates, you are choosing
> which queen to make queens from, 

I was putting as much effort and possibly more into producing drones to
known specifications that I was in generating queens.

> while in II you choose both the queen and the drones. Either way you
> have to make choices as to which characteristics you like in a bee colony.

And after you have made your matings you have to follow up every colony 
assessing the recorded details of each behaviour that you chose, to 
establish what has actually happened in the crossings. Armed with this 
information you can ditch the ones that do not fit your criteria and do 
further work with those that do. One single cross is not likely to yield 
much information, you need to do this many times.

> After that morespecific factors could be considered like hygienic
> behavior, gentleness, early and rapid buildup, etc. 

You have to generate your stable population first, so that when you make 
small changes to things like hygienic behaviour, they do not disturb the 
overall 'trueness of breeding' of the population.

> What I would like to know from them is how much can we really expect
> from any kind of bee breeding program? 

It depends on how much you care to learn about the behaviour and 
characteristics of the bees. The more you know the further you will get 
in the breeding. There is an opposite side to this coin that says you 
will achieve very little if you do not learn enough to make choices that 
are actually possible.

> Is there a limit to what we
> can get out of the gene pool for our seemingly limitless demands?

I used the phrase 'reaching for the moon' earlier in this post, I think 
some do expect too much too quickly, but what you can actually achieve 
goes hand in hand with how much you are prepared to learn about the 
biology and mechanisms of the breeding process and are also prepared 
investigate the genetic linkages to the behaviours encountered. Do not 
be put off by this appearing to be 'something that should be done in a 
lab' the knife and fork came before the microscope and it is amazing 
what can be achieved on the 'kitchen table' or in the 'garden shed'.


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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