Having just read an article on silk worms, it is quite obvious that
the difference between wild and domesticated silk worms is immense.
Not so, the difference between feral and kept bees. I submit we
haven't done that much to change the honey bee over the years. But my
point of view is that maybe this is just as well, as much of the
so-called improvement of domestic livestock appears to be a double
edged sword.

Following work done by Ben Oldroyd and others, I have abandoned the
point of view that the genetic base of the domestic honey bee has
become critically narrowed. That is not to say that intra-colony
diversity is not important; I just do not believe we have inbred bees
to a critical point.

As an example, the entire population of African bees in America can be
traced back to a few individuals, whereas bees in the US and Europe
have much broader assortment of lineages. Finally, the mating scheme
of the honey bee seems tailor-made to prevent inbreeding and where
real inbreeding has occurred, the colony tanks pretty quickly.

I think one thing that is missed in all these discussions is that we
are dealing with long term changes in an entire population of honey
bees. This is not about your hive and my hive, but all of the bees of
Europe and North America have been afflicted by varroa, etc. for
decades and the physical makeup of this *population* is what has
changed, what we have to deal with. These are real sick puppies.

-- 
Peter Loring Borst
Ithaca, NY  USA

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