Hello gentle beekeepers and breeders,
 
I am rather new to this list. This is my first posting. I'd like to ask for
your opinion concerning the following problem, which doesn't seem to be easy
to decide. But none the less I am hoping for someone, who has some good
ideas.
 
In order to preserve his Buckfast strain Brother Adam practiced a "line
mating". This means, virgin queens mated on a secure mating place with
drones of colonies the queens of which were sisters of a selected line.
He says in his book "Breeding of honey bee", that this way he preserved
his strain over years without noticing any decrease of vitality and capacity.
(The words he used might have been others, I just translated. Perhaps I
should bye the English version of this book to quote from.) Anyway, his
words demonstrate well, that he always keeps in mind the danger of inbreeding
and as a consequence of it genetic defects.
 
Buckfast breeders in Germany practiced the same basic procedure over the
last 12 years. Admittedly, there were exceptions to this basic procedure:
Brother Adam incorporated new combinations in his Buckfast strain from
time to time, and he gave excellent queens to Germany from time to time,
which there were used to produce daughter queens as drone queens in mating
places. Both additional measures served to prevent inbreeding.
 
Since Brother Adam no longer can send queens to Germany, we have to stand
on our own two feet.
The question is now: Do you consider this basic procedure as sufficient
-------------------- (without any additional measures) in order to
                     permanently prevent inbreeding or what do you think?
 
Bee scientist Dr. J.P. van Praagh knows our situation and says 'no'. He
suggests a second procedure: Mating virgin queens on secure mating places
with drones of as plenty as possible selected colonies. Every beebreeder
should contribute with at least one of his best colonies to serve as drone
colony. The condition of sister queens as drone queens is given up.
 
The differences between procedure one and two seem to be clear:
Procedure one gives quicker progress to a certain breeding goal but has
the disadvantage of possibly loosing parts of genetic spectrum over the
years (how many?). Procedure two gives slower progress but without loosing
any genetic diversity. Both procedures could complete each other.
 
Now I ought to have good arguments what to do, because even younger bee
keepers often are rather conservative. And one has to do a lot of propaganda
work to convince and introduce new measures.
 
We discuss at the moment even a third procedure, based solely on selection.
I'd prefere to tell about this another time, because it has less to do with
the first two procedures. But it has interesting effects too.
 
Now a word to the background: We are a community of Buckfast bee keepers,
named "Gemeinschaft der Buckfastimker e.V.". Circa 700 members belong to it,
most of them are in Germany, but there are also members in The Netherlands,
Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland and Austria. In Germany we use two
isles as secure mating places, one in the North Sea, the other in the
Baltic Sea. In The Netherlands there are additional secure mating places on
isles, in Switzerland and Austria in high-mountain regions.
 
Enough for today. I hope, my article hasn't become too long. I would
appreciate any comment!
 
Best regards,
R.E.Bahr
 
 
NISI APES FINIS