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Date: | Fri, 29 Apr 2022 09:03:27 -0500 |
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>The number of unmanaged colonies has rebounded or increased in the
southern states, with the invasion of Africanized bloodlines. And in some
northern areas, the feral population also appears to have rebounded.
While I have but a limited perspective, I know there are
significant populations of non-africanized feral stock being trapped and
evaluated for potential introduction into resistance breeding programs
within the Ohio River Valley.
If you're on FB, you can check-in on the 'Chasing Feral Honey Bees
<https://m.facebook.com/1994228894002765/>' page which is a loose
confederation between Purdue, the Heartland Honey Bee Breeders Cooperative
<https://hhbbc.org/> and the associated state breeder's clubs that are a
part of HHBBC. In short, they are catching, evaluating and cross-breeding
feral stock from the Valley, and sometimes back-crossing with Purdue MBB
stock.
>In my opinion, What's at risk are our commercial genetics which are
extremely gentile, 60,000+ strong and capable of producing super upon super
of honey year after year for commercial honey production.
This may certainly prove prescient. As Mr. Cory Stevens
<https://www.stevensbeeco.com/> (quoting Thomas Sowell) often remarks, *'There
are no solutions, only trade-offs'.*
That said, I do admire the yeoman's work that folks like Cory and our own
Randy Oliver are doing in attempting to thread the needle in producing a
honey bee stock that is simultaneously market-viable and reliably resistant
to mite population growth (and hopefully tolerant of mite-vectored viruses
too).
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