"I think there is a consensus that "marker assisted breeding" isn't going to be an important tool for bee breeders."

I both agree and disagree.  Today it is a formidable and obnoxiously expensive idea to use marker assistance due to the nature of honey bee DNA and the dramatic limits we face in sequencing techniques.  With the newest sequencing techniques today's problems could largely be in the rear view mirror in as little as five years.  But, even when we get such DNA information you are still likely to need to use II so you can control the drones you mate with.  I expect that in 20 years the major queen breeders will all have a full time DNA jockey on their staff or perhaps band together and share a DNA jockey.  I also would expect by that time they would be paying a decent hunk of change every year to a statistician to make sense out of the flood of data.

Marker assisted breeding is a powerful technique.  Today for a few hundred $ the Holstein cattle people do DNA stuff on a newly born bull and can tell if that bull should be kept for test breeding or turned into veal for the dinner table.

I could give you a book full of examples of marvelous things that people who knew between little and nothing at all about genetics were able to accomplish simply by selecting and breeding from the best and getting rid of the rest.  What things like marker assisted breeding allow is the same progress in five years that used to take 100 years.  But both methods can get you to the same end point.

I also agree that swarming is natural and without it wild bees do not survive.  Botulism toxin and Fugu are also natural and I do not particularly want to eat any of either even if they are natural.  I would prefer my bees to not swarm and select in that direction.  I am more than happy to raise new queens in an artificial plastic cup to increase my hive numbers.  I did that this year starting with seven nucs and today have 25 using no resources other than those seven nucs, a bunch of wooden ware, plastic foundation, some sugar water and my personal time which I value at $0/hour.

Dick

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html