From: Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]>
>Nature follows no such plan in breeding of bees, adaptive traits are formed by the interbreedin of large populations without admixture from other regions.

That is certainly part of the equation, but not the whole thing.

I think it was Allen that wrote earlier today about insect populations being very "boom and bust"..and this is another piece to the puzzle.

These large populations undoubtedly have periods of "bust"...let's say a poor season followed by a tough winter.  Some large percentage of the population is now dead.....I'd think of numbers like 90-99% die off (in a class we ran yesterday, one of the students was describing such a situation....35 hives with zero stores in late fall, and 5 with good winter stores....without feeding the 35, survival was not possible).

So _something_ is different between the survivors and the dead hives...chance, genetic traits (frugal wintering, disease resistance, prolific robbing, etc), age of colony, etc.  In most cases, it's probably some of all of the above....but even if it's not in the forefront in all cases, genetics are always a factor.

These survivors are few (and they may already be closely related enough to share some of the desirable traits) and far between.  Perhaps there is a scattering of populations in ones, twos, and threes across the habitat that once hosted the larger population.

These "clumps" of colonies are now ripe for inbreeding.

"but inbreeding is bad"

Inbreeding is a tool.  Inbreeding allows the breeder (or "nature" in my example) to fix traits within a population.

_if_ there are genetic traits involved in why some of the survivors in these "clumps" survived, you've now got a process in motion whereby these traits (which were not terribly common in the larger population before the die off), are "fixed" into these smaller populations.

These smaller populations will get bigger, and will also suffer from diploid drone production and others of the downsides of inbreeding.

But...

When these smaller populations grow (or move) enough to run into one another and breed, instant "hybrid vigor" in any transitional zone.

Eventually, we are back to "boom"...until it's time for another "bust".

Please accept that I'm using an idealized (and simplified) scenario for illustration...things are much more complex than this.

Keeping how nature handles populations, inbreeding and outbreeding in mind is important if one wants to improve stock.  This is decidedly _not_ buying a queen from here, a queen from there, and a few more for good measure and mixing them together.

Now, there is no reason that a breeder can't replicate this process fairly closely.  The hard part is figuring out what traits are important, and what colonies to breed from.

deknow

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