Hi Steve > Adding to that, it seems to me that relying strictly on natural > selection for overall fitness for a particular geographical area > would depend on everyone in that area doing the same thing. It is actually rather like IPM, you do not rely on any one strategy, you use what is appropriate at the time according to what you find. > If it is, then you would in essence be mixing natural and man made > selection and not having much control over either. You have to ensure that both nature and you are pulling in the same direction, by generating selection criteria that are known to be achievable against the background population (which you must record, investigate and measure), your selection criteria must take into account what can be done rather than reaching for the moon. You have to start with what you have already and can sensibly introduce. > But since the only way to have complete control is > through instrumental insemination, II has it's place, but II is no magic bullet... It has limitations as well as plus factors. When all said and done II is just an alternative mating technique that has a few useful 'spin offs' or technical tricks for both limiting genetic diversity and increasing it. But the II is not the important part of the technique, it is making the decisions about what is mated to what that really matters, II is merely the means by which it is achieved. > It would seem to me that the best way to go about this would be to > place the highest value on the most general characteristics which > would be things like persistent survivability and overall vitality. If, and only if, those characters are linked to single or small numbers of genes. > In the natural selection scheme that Dave advocates, you are choosing > which queen to make queens from, I was putting as much effort and possibly more into producing drones to known specifications that I was in generating queens. > while in II you choose both the queen and the drones. Either way you > have to make choices as to which characteristics you like in a bee colony. And after you have made your matings you have to follow up every colony assessing the recorded details of each behaviour that you chose, to establish what has actually happened in the crossings. Armed with this information you can ditch the ones that do not fit your criteria and do further work with those that do. One single cross is not likely to yield much information, you need to do this many times. > After that morespecific factors could be considered like hygienic > behavior, gentleness, early and rapid buildup, etc. You have to generate your stable population first, so that when you make small changes to things like hygienic behaviour, they do not disturb the overall 'trueness of breeding' of the population. > What I would like to know from them is how much can we really expect > from any kind of bee breeding program? It depends on how much you care to learn about the behaviour and characteristics of the bees. The more you know the further you will get in the breeding. There is an opposite side to this coin that says you will achieve very little if you do not learn enough to make choices that are actually possible. > Is there a limit to what we > can get out of the gene pool for our seemingly limitless demands? I used the phrase 'reaching for the moon' earlier in this post, I think some do expect too much too quickly, but what you can actually achieve goes hand in hand with how much you are prepared to learn about the biology and mechanisms of the breeding process and are also prepared investigate the genetic linkages to the behaviours encountered. Do not be put off by this appearing to be 'something that should be done in a lab' the knife and fork came before the microscope and it is amazing what can be achieved on the 'kitchen table' or in the 'garden shed'. Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************