> Using methods of natural selection

Is leave alone beekeeping natural selection?


      > Perhaps the loss of season's productivity seems a waste to you.

I do have help to pay and overhead. How many seasons are we talking about
losing production? Having kept bees over forty years all I have seen
produced from "leave alone" beekeeping as been a bunch of stinging inbred
bees. I have looked through many a yard of bees kept by the "mother nature
knows best method".

>There are those of us conderned with being successful beekeepers in the
long term, and not just maximizing profit in the short term.

Big difference between successful hobby (no need to make a profit) and
successful commercial.


>Beekeepers who have queens that are cousins and aunts and 2nd cousins have
a much higher chance of making it through hard times when disaster hits.

Are you saying inbred bees do better? I have never before seen the terms
cousins and aunts used to describe bees.

> Weakness is filtered as nature places pressures on "life". A colony
displaying weak traits is either not going to survive or will not often have
the strength to divide.

Over how much time can I expect the same results as you. A season? Two
seasons ? Ten years?

>The presence of weakness is therefore eliminated or its
expression severely limited. Strengths are reinforced as stronger
specimens divide more frequently and therefore issue more genetic
influence in the pool in the form of drones. Eventually, strong
displayed traits will simply overrun the weaknesses by sheer population
numbers.

In other words we are all going down the wrong path with bee breeding and
selection and should forget about bee improvement and let nature take its
course?

> Mothernature has a whole heck of a lot more experience in development of
lifeforms than we do. It is awefully arrogant of us to think that we know
better than nature about what makes for a better bee.

Quite a bit of research has been done on the honeybee and we do know solid
facts on bee improvement. It is the bee mother nature gave us we are trying
to improve on!

>Now to address a few comments that stem from  misunderstanding.

Have you read any of the books I suggested to you the last time I discussed
bee breeding with you? So we can get indepth into the subject and used
correct termonology.

I am on BEE-L to learn. So far all I have heard is the opinion that if we
leave our bees to their fate we will solve all our problems. Hope we can
agree to disagree!

Bob

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