Probably the second oldest domestic animal is the common pigeon.  These are native to Eurasia mainly in areas where they have cliffs for nesting.  Man has selected many fancy breeds as well as meat breeds.  Some can not even fly.  Yet, escaped domestics now populate the world.  DNA results show that ferals in the US are today mainly escaped Racing Homers.  It is hard to escape the influence of a few million new lost domestic Homers each year.  In Europe on the other hand ferals are mainly derived from an ancient domestic currently known as Modenas.  Yet, if you look at a flock of ferals most places in the world there is no problem at all spotting any number of mutant genes that came from fancy breeds.  Escaped fancies may not live too long in the wild.  But, it is rather obvious that they  frequently live long enough to mate and produce young thus seeding the feral population with mutants.  Ferals the world over approximate wild type in size, form and
 color.  But, it is a rather poor approximation when you look closely at them.  In my personal experience most fancy birds that can fly can figure out how to glean food and find water on their own very fast if they are given free flight even if they have food and water in their loft.  Back in the 1950s when raptors were not much problem even fancies like Fantails that can barely fly could find food and water.  With today's raptor populations any bird that can not fly well does not last long.  Beating a raptor attack is a matter of the pigeon being able to out climb and out turn the raptor so poor fliers do not have a chance.

My ABC copyright 1972 on page 96 has a table summarizing the results of selective breeding at the Univ of Minnesota during the 1930s for increased honey production on only 22 colonies.  Over a period of four years the poorest colonies honey production was increased by a factor of eight while the best colonies showed an increase of 1.3 simply by requeening from the best producing colonies each year and leaving good producers alone to fend for themselves.  That 1.3 increase may well be nothing but weather differences.  Still, the overall results show clearly that selection for production is rapidly effective.  This refutes any argument that progress can not be made by selective breeding in honey bees.  I will be the first to admit honey bees are not easy subjects for selective breeding experiments for all the well understood reasons.  There is a big difference between not easy and impossible.  This experiment makes me question requeening with purchased
 queens unless the queen producer has some such selection program incorporated in his production.  I know some do have such selection so am not knocking all queen producers by any means.

Dick


" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

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