> For most of us, feeding queen rearing colonies well, breeding from our best, and encouraging deliberate rearing of healthy drones from superior hives is the bulk of what can, and should, be done. Creating, insofar as is possible, an area-wide improved gene pool.
>


I think the important part of that that sentence is "For most of us".  
For some of us on our side of the pond some of the rest of that sentence 
does not apply; probably because we have a native bee to work with.  
"breeding from the best" begs a definition of "the best".  I suspect 
many would say it's the one that produces the most honey or profit.  For 
me that would usually be the very last one that I would choose to 
propagate from.  The most productive in my environment is often only 
successful due to hybrid vigour and is very unlikely to pass on its 
useful traits to the next generation. It's a bit like saving seed from 
an F1 tomato plant. "deliberate rearing of healthy drones from superior 
hives" - I am not sure what that means but I like to ensure that every 
colony has 2 or 3 frames that are initially foundationless.  The bees 
are then able to raise as many or few drones as they wish.  Colonies 
that cannot or choose not to rear sufficient numbers of fit (in the 
Darwinian sense) drones are less well represented in the next 
generation.  Hybrids don't get the chance to raise many drones because 
they either starve themselves to death in the summer or fail to ride out 
our long, wet winters.  We also need to define "superior".  I would not 
argue against the last sentence though as we, in general, like to work 
in a beekeeping culture that is sustainable.  As most people here have 
to let their virgins mate with their neighbours' drones the traits that 
attracted the beekeeper to the parent queen can only be expected in the 
next generation if everyone keeps bees that are genetically compatible.  
In my area and a few others in the UK nearly all the beekeepers in the 
region work together to achieve that compatibility.

Steve Rose, N. Wales.

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