> Peter Edwards <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:"...it has been clearly demonstrated that locally adapted bees
> are best...."
>
> That claim has been made twice now.  Might you espouse on that in more
> than just a snippet?
>
I am sure that Peter will provide an answer to that when he next checks 
his emails but in the meantime you might be interested in this link:

http://www.coloss.org/taskforces/beebreeding

This is taken from the announcements pages:

"A total of 621 colonies of 16 different genetic origins were set up in 
21 apiaries in 11 different European countries managed by 15 research 
partners. Each location housed the local strain of bee together with two 
of “foreign” origins. The colonies were set up in the summer of 2009 and 
were managed and evaluated according to a standard protocol used by all 
participants until 2012.

IBRA Science Director Norman Carreck says: “The results of these 
experiments show that the locally adapted strains of honey bee 
consistently performed better than the “foreign” strains. This may seem 
logical to many bee scientists, but may come as something as a shock for 
many beekeepers who believe that purchased queens are likely to be in 
some way “better” than the bees that they already have in their own 
hives. There is growing evidence of the adverse effects of the global 
trade in honey bees, which has led to the spread of novel pests and 
diseases. These papers which provide evidence that locally-adapted honey 
bee strains consistently perform better than imported strains may thus 
strengthen local bee breeding programmes, and encourage the use of 
locally bred queens over those imported from elsewhere”

There is a link on the bee breeding page to this:

http://www.coloss.org/accomplishments/gei/startpage

It provides an extensive list of peer reviewed papers that have caused 
the authors to arrive at their conclusion that locally adapted bees are 
best.  Most of the links are not working for me but the titles can 
easily be found by google.

Those of us who keep bees in more marginal districts can see how our 
bees struggle to thrive without a lot of beekeeper intervention and are 
trying to select for the successful traits that existed before bees were 
introduced from markedly different environments.  We were doing this 
before the Coloss experiments and before small hive beetle became an 
issue.  This season was particularly difficult and the traits that would 
have helped most for me were cold weather mating and apiary vicinity mating.

Steve Rose
North Wales

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