From: Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]>
>Kindly refrain from quoting me back to me. I disavow everything I said over a month ago, in any case.

I'll go only as far as to point out your statement above, and let the reader interpret how it relates to the kind of long term (years?  decades?) informed discussions that take place among beekeepers (here and elsewhere).

>Quoting the Vatican on evolution is a hoot!

Ok, aparantly I was unsuccessful in illustrating the wide spread use of attributing the word (and concept) of "tool" to biological (especially evolutionary) processes by quoting both the Vatican and peer reviewed published scientific studies...both extremes using the term similarly...common ground.  Do a google scholar search for "evolutionary strategy"...(I won't bother pasting the links I found when I did one).  Certainly there are links discussing strategies used by humans _based_ on observations of evolution...but there are also pages and pages of other peer reviewed, published scientific studies using the term "evolutionary strategy".  You certainly don't have to use the term this way, but to argue about it seems moot....you clearly understood what I was trying to communicate with the term. 

>To suggest that sex is a strategy or a tool is useful metaphorically but scientifically untenable. 

"Why does sex -- that is, sexual reproduction -- exist? In many ways, asexual reproduction is a better evolutionary strategy"
The Advantage of Sex (the first sentence of the introduction)-Matt Ridley
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/sex/advantage/index.html
...again, you don't have to use the term this way, but it is common, accepted usage.

...but more importantly, I think what I posted earlier was a thoughtful (and not often discussed) aspect of evolutionary biology and how it relates to concepts in artificial selection such as "inbreeding", "outbreeding" "fixing traits", etc...at least that is how I intended it.  I've been working with our own survivor stock while teaching others how to rear queens themselves...so these are things that have been on my mind, (the term "boom and bust" is on the handouts we've been using in classes and workshops for the last few months).  I'd rather discuss them than simply present them...but I'm bowing out of the semantic argument.

deknow

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