Regarding inbreeding and the Laidlaw and Page 1982 paper:

This good contribution has been perhaps taken too literally as a dire 
warning, while disregarding the approach and assumptions outlined in 
the paper.  I don't have the paper available, but from what I remember, 
it assumed a low number of matings per queen (with the information 
available at that time) and it certainly assumed a closed population, 
with no new material of any sort introduced through the years of 
crosses.  It was an exercise to model required numbers that gave 
probabilistic results and expectations.

"We" are here now, in a very different situation.  There is no one that 
I know of trying to maintain an absolutely closed population (partly 
because it is not possible or prohibitively expensive).  More pertinent 
to the original modeling, the number of estimated matings per queen 
have been found to perhaps be higher by ten fold than when the paper 
was produced.  This changes the risk of losing alleles considerably.

Thinking that anyone attempting anything ranging from queen rearing, to 
maintenance of certain "stocks", or furthermore selection and 
improvement of any kind has bigger issues to contend with.

 

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