Hi all

Often in these discussions we hear reference to "honeybee genetics" or "hygienic genes", as if these exist and could somehow be added to our bee lines like adding vanilla to cake batter. The study of genetics and heredity has only gotten more complicated as we have looked more closely at it. Honeybee inheritance in particular is made further complicated by the multiple mating, the haploid drones, parental effects, and trans-generational transference of microbes and quasi-cultural factors

> In the early days of genetics, the characters chosen for analysis were largely those that could be interpreted in terms of genes that behaved according to Mendel’s laws of segregation. It soon became clear, however, that the relationship between genes and characters is complex: It is not a one-to-one relationship but, rather, a many-to-many relationship. An allelic difference in a single gene can lead to many character differences, and what is seen depends on the external environment, the internal cellular environment, the other alleles present in the genome, and the level at which the analysis is made. 

> Furthermore, several different alleles, often located in different parts of the genome, may, as a combination, collectively affect a character. Often a variation in a single gene makes no difference to the phenotype.  Although these facts became obvious quite early on in the 20th century, the temptation to see a simple causal relation between genes and characters was not resisted.  The attraction of simple linear causation is still present: It is not uncommon to read reports in the popular press about the discovery of a "gene for" obesity, criminality, religiosity, and so on. 

> Many nongeneticists believe that knowledge of a person’s complete DNA sequence will enable all their characteristics to be known and their problems predicted.  What the new knowledge about the relation between DNA and characters shows is that thinking about the development of traits and trait variations in terms of single genes and single-gene variations is inappropriate.

Jablonka & Lamb writing in BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2007) 30, 353–392

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