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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Subject:
From:
Aaron Morris <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 25 Jan 2003 01:18:28 -0500
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> Open mated is a crap shoot, I do not think so. Honey bees for eons have
> been mating in the open to create the variability that gives breeders
> today the material they use to manipulate the genetics for the good or
> bad.
True.  If your goal is a diverse gene pool, a real primordial soup of genes,
then open mating is ideal to keep everything, the good and the bad all mixed
up.  If diversity is the sole goal, then open mating ideally serves the
goal.

It is highly doubtful that the super bee will be a mutt.  Possible, but not
likely.  It will more likely be and in fact IS the result of a concerted
effort by breeders and/or researchers to isolate the good from the bad in a
gene pool of all mixed up qualities.  The researchers and breeders work for
generations (bee generations, not people generations) to repeatedly isolate
the best of the good, and strive to pass the best of the best on to the next
generations.  After a lot of work and many generations of isolating the good
and culling the bad, breeders arrive at a lineage that has tested positively
to possess the quality sought, be it SMR or HYG or AFB resistance, whatever.
It is this proven lineage that is sold for BIG bucks to the producers.

If the producers are good producers, they successfully maintain that
lineage, that bred for trait, the results of all the work put into it by the
researchers and breeders.  If the producers are good producers they will
deliver this lineage in the product they sell.  The super beekeeper will ask
of their producers, "What are they doing to maintain the lineage of their
breeder stock?"  A weak answer will be drone saturation (flooding mating
areas with drones of superior lineage similar to their breeder queens).  A
better answer will be continued assays to evaluate the progeny of their
breeder queens, keeping only the good and culling the bad.  It's not a
trivial exercise to isolate all these good qualities and it is very easy to
lose them.  SMR is heritable across generations but can be lost.  HYG is
recessive.

Genetic diversity is a safeguard against inbreeding, and THAT is the
evolutionary advantage to open mating.  What you need is open mating that
maintains genetic diversity while maintaining the desired quality of the
lineage that has been delivered by the breeders to the producers.
Unfortunately, open mating is more likely to dilute the lineage, not
strengthen it.  It's Catch 22!

A good analogy can be found in the wine industry.  There are hundreds, no,
thousands of wild yeasts, any of which will ferment grape juice.  Centuries
of isolating the yeasts that produce good tasting wine from the yeasts that
produce swill have resulted in a comparatively small set of yeast cultures
that are actually used in vineyards.  A vintner wouldn't dream of chancing a
harvest to any old wild yeast (although there is a hugely diverse gene pool
of wild yeasts out there any one of which will do the job).  Open mating
queens is like trusting a vineyard's harvest to wild yeast.

Getting back to the distinction between breeder and producer, I don't mean
to put words in Dr. Spivak's mouth, but I interpreted in what she said a
growing frustration that all the work being done to bring great qualities to
the forefront, the successes in producing the so called super bee are
quickly being lost at a level higher than the end user.  Researchers HAVE
isolated bees who can stand the ravages of V.d.  They HAVE isolated
qualities to resist AFB.  It's been done repeatedly.  The frustration is in
that the qualities isolated at the research level are not making it to the
beekeeper level.  Where is it lost and who is responsible for making sure it
not be is a current debate.

Perhaps it IS the producers who are accountable.  In writing this I am
starting to convince myself that is where the blame should lie.  I'd like to
think that at least SOME producers ARE delivering what they advertise, but I
can't say with confidence who they are.  And I still believe that some of
the responsibility, a LOT of the responsibility lies with the consumer,
precisely because they have bought an open mated queen.  In a lot of 50 or
100 queens, I expect at least a few duds.  Assembly line production of
queens is such that if a queen is laying eggs in a mating nuc, she is deemed
saleable.  I'm buying a queen whose mother is known, whose sperm donors
might have been any Tom, Dick or Harry, Larry, Moe or Curly AND I expect
that queen to be every bit as good as her expensive breeder mother!?

I think that's asking a lot.  I can buy queens advertised to be descendants
of SMR breeders for $8.50 a pop in quantity.  At that price I don't know how
much expectation I can have of that open mated queen to have retained all or
enough of the SMR trait that I can sit back and be confident that
suppressive mite reproduction is happening in her hive.  I can buy an II SMR
queen for $50.  At that price I think it's very reasonable of me to expect
suppressive mite reproduction in her hive.  Hmmm.  That's a $41.50
difference.  Nice chunk of change.  That easily covers any sort of strips I
might use (back when strips worked) and leaves money to pay for an
independent source that could be evaluating those open mated $8.50 queens
(as Allen has proposed).  I'm not sure what to make of that figure.  $50 a
hive is took much for me, guess I'll have to get more hives, which means
more queens at $50, so more hives, more queens, more, more, more....  OK,
that's not working.

> Super beekeepers will learn to be real beekeepers and rear and mate
> their own queens.
Yes, I even wrote this conclusion down in my notebook at Niagara Falls.  The
rub there is it takes time and raising queens definitely puts the beekeeper
on the bees' schedule and good queens don't just happen!  Growing queens is
easy.  Breeding and mating superior queens is at least an art, arguable a
science!  But yes, breeding your own queens is a better solution.  However
you still have the open mating issue and the possibility of bad wine.
Raising your own and practicing II, the ultimate solution!
Guess THIS beekeeper is going to need longer days and longer weeks to run
all those extra hives and raise all those queens.

Good night,
Aaron

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