" I submit that evolution requires specific time scales and isolation to effect significant changes in populations, whereas breeding is constrained by the actual potential of the organism"
Compared to fish, birds, mammals or plants we know such a tiny amount about insect genetics it is impossible to know how long speciation might take in a fast case.  But, we for sure can say something about plants.  For instance the very first event that took place in the creation of wheat was crossing two other species.  An unusual thing happened in this cross and I am not going into details on how it happened as it is so far from honey bees.  But, the result of that cross was creation of a tetraploid brand new species.  That brand new species could be selfed and produced perfectly fertile offspring.  But, if mated to either parent it most likely lead to a dead embryo or at best a totally infertile and very weak offspring.  So, here is an example of creation of a new species in a single generation.
Or another example would be the brand new species of Killifish Colonel Scheel in Denmark made in two generations also by way of a hybridization.
While not speciation Darwin's Finches were shown a few years back to evolve significantly different beak shapes in only three or four generations as a result of changing climate. 

My point is simple.  In either natural selection or a breeding program things can change really fast sometimes.  So, making blanket statements about "this is the way it has to happen"  is not a wise choice.  What is a wise choice is a statement more along the line that if there is pressure to change in some way in order to produce enough offspring to be sustainable one of two things will happen.  Either the species will fail to produce enough offspring to sustain itself and as a result go extinct or the species will change so it can produce more offspring.  It makes absolutely no difference if that pressure is natural or a result of selection by humans.  The result is the same, even at a molecular level.
To bring this back to honey bees could we selectively breed honey bees and accomplish much?  Sure.  It has been done over and over.  The best examples are older ones.  Honey production is easy to select for.  Do not expect a big improvement in your best hives from such a program at least not in the first ten years of the program.  Rather expect your poorest hives to improve dramatically.  Selecting for docile is also easy as is selecting for low swarming tendency.  Most of the recent attempts at selective breeding have violated many of the rules of a successful breeding program and thus lead to very slow progress and a final product that is unstable with regards to the objective which was selected.  This failure to follow the classic rules are due to people thinking they know enough about genetics they can do a breeding program smarter.  When someone thinks that chances are he does not really know much about genetics at all unless he is spending say at least a few hundred thousand $ a year on sequencing or mapping or the equivalent.

Dick

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