>>> Bob & Liz <[log in to unmask]> 08/09/01 03:44PM >>>
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Martin what percentage of open mated daughters of SMR queens would carry the same amount of SMR as the breeder queen.   25%- 50%-75%-100%?
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That is a good question.  Open mating queens mate with somewhere between 15 and 25 drones.  Some of those may be the sons of SMR queens.  As drones carry only their mother's genetic information all SMR queens make 'SMR' drones.  Obviously the offspring of an SMR drone and queen should be SMR, but what I cannot answer since I do not know whether or not the SMR trait is recessive or dominant, is whether the offspring of an SMR queen and non-SMR drone will be SMR or not.  Is the trait recessive then no, if dominant, then yes.  I did a brief search of the web pages describing SMR bees and all I found was that it is a heritable trait, but not whether or not it is dominant or recessive.  The statement "Fortunately, the trait is widespread in the U.S. honey bee population and so is readily available in the present gene pool" (taken from an extract of the Florida Extension Beekeeping Newsletter, APIS and can be found at the site http://www.ceris.purdue.edu/napis/pests/shb/newsapis/apis0104.html#SecF) would lead me to believe that it is a recessive trait. If it were dominant then we would most likely all have SMR bees by now (well, at least if we had let natural selection run its course and not treated for varroa...but that is only speculation).  Therefore open mated queens would only give SMR offspring in the same proportion as there are SMR drones to mate with.  One great aspect of bee breeding is that all drones of SMR queens carry the SMR traits.  So once one has a good proportion of SMR hives, many SMR queens are mating with SMR drones and given natural selection the frequency of the SMR trait should increase rather rapidly.  Again under artificial selection and instrumental insemination with only SMR-bearing sperm the breeding will be much faster.

If the SMR trait is truly widespread in America then that is very good news.

Martin Damus