>
> >This is a conservation issue - perhaps a worthy one - rather than
> strictly to do with producing a good beekeepers' bee. As soon as you start
> selecting amongst your stock for favourable beekeeping traits, you are
> departing from the wild type. Probably not what you want if conservation is
> your goal.


You make a good point Chris, and yes it is a worthy goal to maintain
ancestral stocks.

Similar to other domesticated species (of animals or plants), there exist
human-selected "breeding populations," as well (in most cases) the
ancestral wild-type populations.  However, due to the lack of mating
control with the honey bee, there is more gene transfer between their
domestic and wild-type bee populations than occurs with other species of
livestock.

In a wild-type honey bee conservation effort, it would be wise to minimize
the introduction of other races.  On the other hand, exposure to
bottlenecked populations derived from the founding wild-type population
would not be expected to be of as much concern.

That said, some allelic exposure might be of benefit in helping a wild-type
population adapt to today's changing environment.  Then, natural "purifying
selection" and the resulting regression to a mean would help to sort out
which novel alleles were of benefit to the wild population overall.

To put it simply, I don't know how important it would be for you A,m.m.
wild-type breeders to use MAS (other than for founding stock), so long as
you allow nature to apply its selective forces upon the total allelic pool
(including the introduced alleles) of the wild breeding population.  That
natural selective pressure will tend to favor the genetics conferring the
greatest fitness in that environment, and to reduce or eliminate those
alleles that exhibit a fitness disadvantage.


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

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