Only a few years back the hot argument was flagellum could not possibly have developed via evolution.  So, evolution simply had to be wrong.  What a pile of bull shit!  We learned the molecular details of how flagellum work and all of a sudden evolution made all kinds of sense.  So now we are going to argue the eye thing one more time.  The eye thing has been used before.  Why not get clever enough to at least use some new example?  Or are we going to think the public is so stupid they never heard the worn out eye argument before and we can just be lazy and not think of anything new?

We are still in the rapid learning phase on what makes DNA tick.  Only a few years ago people thought there was nothing but protein coding genes in DNA and all the rest was accidentally incorporated junk.  Now we know that without that junk life would not exist at all.  Humans  have about 22,000 protein coding genes and a hand full of RNA only genes.  That junk has so many genes we really have no idea what the count is.  Maybe 100,000?  Or more?  The control theory guys tell us the math is unstable when you get more than on average two switches per protein coding gene.  They tell us nothing about how many promoters or regulators are possible.  For epigenetics our understanding today is about where we were on protein coding genes in 1970.  In English that says we know nothing of any real use about epigenetics.

So, when I see papers like this pop up every few years my experience tells me to file them for 20 years then come back and see if they had anything to say of the slightest value and the historical answer is no.  Darwin knew nothing at all about genetics.  He was way before Mendel published his fudged data.  All he had was loads of practical breeding results on multiple animals, particularly pigeons and dogs and his observations of a bunch of finches on some islands.  And, he also took a very long boat ride that gave him loads of time to think.  All we have done since he made his proposals was learn details on how things work.  This is the same model that gave us physics and calculus.  Newton spent a lot of time out on the farm bored out of his mind to avoid the plague in the cities so also had time to think and invent new math and apply that math.  Since Newton all we have done is polish his ideas and learn details on why things work the way they do.  Were it not for that slow and long boat ride and the late 1600s plague epidemic in the UK science would be way behind its current state.  In both evolution and physics there is still a lot more polishing needed before we will understand either subject.  But, the current state of understanding is pretty darned good in both.

In terms of how any of this applies to honey bees I would rate our current state to roughly the same as pigeon breeders in the 1700s. That was before either Darwin or Mendel.  The only solid hint of bringing real science to the breeding table that I see is the Saskatraz program.  I do hope that as long DNA reads become more affordable that we could make a major step forward.  That still looks 20 years in the future to me.

Dick

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