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Date: | Fri, 16 Jul 2021 13:56:59 -0400 |
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> One does not have to know what genes are involved. In fact, a devil's
advocate could argue that there are no genes involved
We've learned from Spivak's work with the Minnesota Hygienic Bee that the behaviors of uncapping and removal of pupa from varroa-infested cells are heritable traits. So much so that you can breed bees that will remove brood to the extent that the colony can't survive. One of our local breeders managed to get to the same point with a line of his stock. We also have two common assays that prove the point - the liquid nitrogen and pinprick tests. I think this early work led the research community down the gene-driven hygienic route aided by the fact that the principal researcher won the MacArthur Genius Grant. It seemed to me that all we had to do is fix these traits and we had our bee. But the so-called hygienic bee gets mixed field reviews and although it seems likely to play a role, gene-driven hygienic behavior alone is clearly not the answer.
We also have some research that suggests other unknown factors influencing bee behavior are at work at the colony level and are possibly independent of genetics. The supporting study that comes to mind is the good brood pattern versus bad brood pattern queen study by Lee et al. in 2018.
> We studied one specific sign attributed to queen failure: poor brood pattern. In 2016 and 2017, we identified pairs of colonies with “good” and “poor” brood patterns in commercial beekeeping operations and used standard metrics to assess queen and colony health. We found no queen quality measures reliably associated with poor-brood colonies. In the second year (2017), we exchanged queens between colony pairs (n = 21): a queen from a poor-brood colony was introduced into a good-brood colony and vice versa. We observed that brood patterns of queens originally from poor-brood colonies significantly improved after placement into a good-brood colony after 21 days, suggesting factors other than the queen contributed to brood pattern. Our study challenges the notion that brood pattern alone is sufficient to judge queen quality. Our results emphasize the challenges in determining the root source for problems related to the queen when assessing honey bee colony health.
> Is the Brood Pattern within a Honey Bee Colony a Reliable Indicator of Queen Quality?
Kathleen V. Lee, Michael Goblirsch, Erin McDermott, David R. Tarpy and Marla Spivak
The combination of environmental factors and genetics makes the pursuit of breeding a varroa-resistant colony extremely complicated to even get your mind around let alone trying to do something about making an individual toward that goal.
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