Peter said:  "Genetically, they are not different. To have a genetically
distinct population requires much more isolation than simply being in
the woods. You need an isolated island or a controlled breeding
program to produce a distinct strain.'  "It's just like using seed from
hybrid vegetables. In one or two generations, they revert to primitive or
indistinct types. This is not the way to get *better* stock, although there
are other very good reasons to see that the gene pool is kept diverse."

Peter, are you sure about this?  Are we perhaps dealing with semantics in
using the term "distinct strain"?

I am certainly not either a geneticists or a queen breeder. However, I have
been present during several discussions where very competent queen breeders
have said that beekeepers are missing the boat by not doing more selection
and breeding of their own stock to produce bees most appropriate to their
management practices and micro-climate.  In this part of the woods there are
at least two commercial beekeepers who do not practice re-queening, as such,
yet enjoy tremendous average hive production and have relatively gentle
bees.  To have the kind of average hive production they do, one must have
bees that are good at over-wintering, build up fast in the spring, and have
a low swarming tendency.  I have understood that if one is not into
pollination/migratory beekeeping, that one can let supercedure have its role
and over many generations the bees in your hives will be those that best fit
your management practices and micro-climate.  Of course, pollination and
migratory beekeeping take an extraordinary toll on queens and make
re-queening necessary in order to keep up production.

Now, these bees will not be a "distinct strain" in scientific terms, but
they will most definitely be different from bees found a hundred (or fewer)
miles away.

Is this not correct?


Lloyd
Lloyd Spear, Owner, Ross Rounds, Inc.  The finest in comb honey production.
www.rossrounds.com