Not to rest at all!  Dr. Steve Sheppard and others continues to follow this.  Out of the entire US bee population of perhaps 4 million hives, the vast majority of queens are produced each season from a relative handful of breeder queens, by only a few producers.  This results, BY DEFINITION, in genetic bottlenecking.



This statement surprised me!  I would ask,  can you define bottleneck in this situation?  How many of the different types?  Alleles?  Not sure how you define a bottle neck in bees?

If we all choose to watch say  Fox news,  does that mean we have a bottle neck of shows?  Or that we simply choose that channel?   It seems to me in this case we choose to accept  these queens  as the best for our needs,  not because we have no genetic choice,  but because we like the traits?

Knowing the efforts that are put in this selection and rotation,  I don’t see this as a bottle neck at all,  but a simple choice of the best breed for what we are trying to do,  let alone even trying to calculate if its really a genetic issue.

These handful of producers are digging out new breeders every season,  from all over,  knowing this his me scratching my head as to what the definition of genetic bottleneck really means, and how in the world it can be applied to bee genetics?

If you look at Dalmatians,  we could say they are bottlenecked,  we see genetic defects from line breeding,  same with Chessies,  but  in dogs as a whole?  Hardly able to make that claim as I see it.   Are golden hamsters bottlenecked?  They are almost all descendants of 4 parents??


Seems to me we may be confusing genetics with choice?  We choose these queens for their traits......  it appears to me to be much different than a bottle neck in genetics?

Charles

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