Hi Mike
You list some characters...
> gentleness; good honey production; strong, early population buildup
> for the main honey flow; resistance to various diseases and pests;
> low swarming characteristics.
I will come back to them at the end of this post, but before we even
make any choices of characters, we need to have an in depth knowledge of
what a stable population ensconced in the region that it is inhabiting,
can actually provide.
We need a benchmark to make a realistic target, it is too easy to say I
want a very large honey crop and I don't want to spend much time and
energy getting it.
By selecting our assessment criteria wrongly we can end up casting about
aimlessly trying to achieve ideals that are unattainable. So we first
have to find out what the bees we have can do and what they can do easily.
If our existing population is of no known type or totally hybridised, we
have to set criteria which we know can be achieved within one type of
bee, then we can set our goals to the characters of that type and by
hard work we can work towards it. Yes, I said hard work, nobody said
this process is easy and it seems that every short cut that people may
think they have found comes back and bites them in the end.
Various races of bee have evolved in different areas of the world. The
races are reasonably well defined in terms of their geographic range,
performance, behaviour, morphometry and DNA. So we can match the
suitability of an existing type to whatever geography and weather
conditions we may have. What is wrong with selecting the characters of
that type and allowing them to shine through over a few generations ?
The fact that this is not done is in some way due to seeking holy grails
or the grass being greener on the other side of the fence.
There is another aspect that I hear voiced on this list... The USA is
very large in area and has many regions of different weather,
topography, geology flora and fauna, what I say in countering this is
that the largest range of a racial type is that of AMM found in Europe,
this has just about as much diversity of habitat as USA apart from a
lack of desert, yet AMM lives and thrives over the whole range of these
conditions, because of it's highly developed adaptability. On the edges
of the AMM range are small regions with racial types, Ligustica,
Carnica, Caucasica that are less adaptable in general, but have evolved
as specific types to suit the specific regions that they inhabit so why
select them for use over a large area ?
Having said it is hard work it is interesting and challenging work, bee
breeding luckily pays some fairly big dividends in the first few years
of selection. The increments drop a little of year by year, but they are
still in the right direction.
Returning to Mikes selection criteria... I have nothing against any of
the criteria, but would like to make some qualifying comments.
gentleness;
Great choice for first priority, makes life easier and more pleasurable
for both beekeepers and the non beekeeping public and is exhibited by
stable populations of bees. There is a slight downside as that some
colonies may exhibit gentleness or docility due to inbreeding, but we
have tools to establish that as well as a finger and thumb to correct
the problem.
good honey production;
While I agree that it is most peoples ultimate goal, it is not a
character that is linked to a single or even low number of genes so it
should not come high on our list during the early phases of selection,
first we need our stability then we can make subsequent selections
within our stable population for those colonies that yield more than
others. This is the bit that everybody wants to short cut, but by using
it as a selector early in you program you will lengthen the time it
takes to gain stability and possibly lengthen it so far as you never
actually achieve it.
strong, early population build-up for the main honey flow;
The only comment I would make here is that whatever the honey flow is
and whenever it is, the bees should be well tuned to it and raise
amounts of brood appropriate to the forage available.
resistance to various diseases and pests;
No quibbles here !
low swarming characteristics.
I go along with this, but may have personally put it a little further
down my priorities. My judgement on this is tinged by my own work with
bees that have a high propensity to natural supersedure which also has
low swarming as a by product.
Just as an extra, I will throw in the selection criteria used by GBBG,
but bear in mind this list was generated for AMM bees with characters
important to that race. I also include items 1-5 which are management
questions that you should ask yourself at each inspection, but are not
rated for selection purposes.
1 Has the colony sufficient room?
2 Is the queen present and laying the expected quantity of eggs?
3 Is the colony developing as fast as others? Any queen cells?
4 Are there any signs of disease or abnormality?
5 Are there sufficient stores to last until next inspection?
Selectors A-E
A = Docility (non jumping, non-stinging, non-following).
B = Steadiness on the comb (absence of running).
C = Brood Pattern (compactness of brood, absence of empty cells).
D = Pollen Storage (pollen packed over, around, and under the
broodiest).
E = Comb Building (speed in occupying supers, drawing foundation,
honey storage, and quality of comb capping).
Each of these characters A-E is given a rating 0-5 making a best
possible score of 25 per colony.
more on this is on...
http://www.gbbg.net/mmcrecords.html
Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net
Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable)
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