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Date: | Tue, 3 Nov 2015 14:41:37 +0000 |
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> 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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