??I said:

> He had isolated the genes which caused aggression and had sent semen to
> the lab from AHb without the aggressive genes.

The above was written about in the bee mags of the period. Common knowledge.

Is below  a quote from Gene Robinson (reference below) or opinion of Peter
Borst? Although appears like from the reference I suspect more opinion.

>Nobody in the 1950s had the capacity to "remove" genes of any kind, even if
>there were specific genes which "cause" aggression, which there aren't. In
>the following reference they state: "Aggression is a complex, polygenic
>trait" which means that there are numerous genes involved, and these are
>turned on or off by environmental and other influences. None of this was
>known by Kerr or anyone else, in the 1950s.

The process Kerr used is the same as Harbo & Harris used to create the SMR
line. Kerr inbred bees with the trait until the trait was gone and then
shipped semen from those drones to Steve Tabor in Baton Rouge.


The capacity of queen breeders to remove and add traits by inbreeding out
was around in the fifties.The Paige book on breeding and genetics is the
bible for people like Sue Colby & Dann Purvis.


reference by Peter:
"Honey bee aggression supports a link between gene regulation and behavioral
evolution"
PNAS. September 8, 2009 Contributed by Gene E. Robinson

It would help in the discussion Peter if you could seperate your opinion
from quotes from your reference .

While we are on the subject posting quotes on AHB which are not relevant to
the subject only muddies the waters. Just because an author which has done a
piece on AHB gives an opinion does not mean it is so. In commercial
beekeeper circles we laugh at much that has been written about AHB. Simple
because its not what we see nor what happened when AHB arrived.

bob

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