In contrast to the effort to "breed a better bee" there is an undercurrent to allow honey bee to revert to a more "natural" status:

> This plea is about leaving room for nature in ordinary daily beekeeping, but also about leaving room for nature in the reproduction of the bee colonies, i.e. beekeeping *without queen breeding* and *without cultivation of breeds.* Our European honey bees (Apis mellifera) naturally possess numerous traits including behaviors that make them less vulnerable to diseases and other threats in their environment. 

> It is very important for these properties to be retained in their full genetic width, in order to sustain the colonies’ capacities to continuously adapt to new conditions. It is also important that we, as beekeepers, utilize as much as possible these adaptive abilities of the bees (Seeley, 2017a). This means that it may occasionally be better to follow the bees’ nature rather than to force the bees to meet our requirements.

Tjeerd Blacquière & Delphine Panziera (2018) A Plea for Use of Honey Bees’ Natural Resilience in Beekeeping, Bee World, 95:2, 34-38, DOI: 10.1080/0005772X.2018.1430999

disclaimer: I am not promoting nor condemning either of these approaches, but trying to Bee Informed.

PLB

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