"By heritable, you mean via DNA. This is an very limited definition, imposed upon the earlier sense by geneticists."


Pete, by 'heritable' I was referencing the manner in which we select for traits. Humans have been breeding livestock the Mendelian way for thousands of years, long before Mendel. Mendel showed that some traits could be quantified. He didn't know about DNA. Lucky for him, he picked pea plants that had single gene traits, or he would still be scratching his head in his grave. Randy said we should breed bees for mite resistance. I'm pointing out that our ancient breeding techniques work best on one gene's set of alleles, and that we can only hope to select for a couple of genes at a time (i.e.polygenetic inheritance is terrifically difficult to get to breed true). Both polygenetic and non-allelic inheritance mechanisms are poorly understood. We cannot expect to have a successful "breeding program" for mite resistance by just applying the current Mendelian practice of selecting breeder queens, etc. Mite resistance has already proven to be a difficult trait to breed for, and that's because we don't understand how the genetics of this behavior work. And even if we do learn how it works it probably won't be inherited via straightforward Mendelian mechanisms....more likely it is a combination of epigenetic as well as genetic modification. Add to this the ongoing problem of virgin queens from desirable stock breeding with mutt drones from anywhere (the scenario most of us live with). So we may be wasting our time trying to "breed true" for mite resistance.


Christina

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