# Pan-European Study finds honey bee survival depends on Beekeeper and Disease Control



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Well, duh!

I enjoyed the reference to Multivariate _Poisson_ Regression Models - I always feel there is something a bit _fishy_ about statistics.

But, seriously, I think we can do a lot better getting information out to beginning and hobbyist beekeepers and counteracting the absurd - though often spread about - notion that you can just throw bees in a box and then "let them be bees" and have any hope of long term success.

Nancy


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

I thought the study kinda indicated that more study was needed to add the real cost of managing hives. It did indicate that the ones with more loss had mechinizims to counter those losses that needed to be studied to find the cost of those mechinisims. It was short term and pointed out that the impact of weather was hard to define as to the impact of the study its self and how that may have skewed the results. The one thing that it did find was sign of disease and mite pressence based on keeping practices but even there reconized the differrence in the resistance of the bees them selves to those things and that all bees were not the same.

I did not see it make any recomendation except on what else to look at with this knowlage as part of the looking.

It seems to be a study that gives something to everyone. Psm1212, thanks for posting it.
Cheers
gww


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

It is the absolute truth and need not be explored, that the loss rates through beekeeping methods that have developed in over 30 years, to the detriment of the bees, have led to the fact that the bees are no longer able without good care to survive.
Therefore it must be our, and the task of the legislation, to redirect beekeeping back to more natural ways more in line with bee nature and to convey it and, especially in Central Europe, to create the conditions in agriculture and nature that support the bees' immune system to deal with brood diseases again.
This approach has already been taken by banning three nicotinoids.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Yawn. Another study without context. Take bees that need treating, and put them in the hands of people who aren't good at treating. High losses.

An interesting study would look at the abundance and health of feral bees as a useful surrogate as a canary in a coal mine, in relation to industrial beekeeping and agriculture. Here we will get a a better sense of the resilience of bee population health.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

The EU neonics ban is now 5 years old. It appears to be expanding this year to a complete ban, and not just a ban on pollinator-attracting plants. We now need only sort through the data to determine the net effect of the ban and, hence, the tale-of-the-tape on what role neonics has played in the demise of bee colonies. It is done. Neither side of this debate will be able to escape the data. Though we know they will try.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

The number of bee colonies in europe is rising every year and in 5 years the before 1990 level can be reached.
This higher number in earlier times was not because of mite or disease but because of politics.

This raising numbers today are caused by the hobbyists or sideliners mostly which want to support pollination and sell local honey.
They want to be more natural beekeepers too as one can see with the different "natural beekeeping" projects.

It´s time some losses are accepted and to find scarecrows will be no necessity.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

The general thrust of this study might also be born out by the American experience.

Back when CCD was a thing, there were several prominant beekeepers claiming high losses and blaming it on various culprits of their choosing. But I can remember some Beesource commercial members stepping up and saying that they, or someone they knew, was keeping bees in the same area without problems.


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## fatshark (Jun 17, 2009)

lharder said:


> Yawn. Another study without context. Take bees that need treating, and put them in the hands of people who aren't good at treating. High losses.
> 
> An interesting study would look at the abundance and health of feral bees as a useful surrogate as a canary in a coal mine, in relation to industrial beekeeping and agriculture. Here we will get a a better sense of the resilience of bee population health.


Like this one from 2014? Quote from the abstract ... _"Samples of forager bees were collected from paired feral and managed honey bee colonies and screened for the presence of ten honey bee pathogens and pests using qPCR. Prevalence and quantity was similar between the two groups for the majority of pathogens, however feral honey bees contained a significantly higher level of deformed wing virus than managed honey bee colonies."_

So the feral weren't really healthy I'm afraid.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

SiWolKe said:


> The number of bee colonies in europe is rising every year and in 5 years the before 1990 level can be reached.
> This higher number in earlier times was not because of mite or disease but because of politics.
> 
> This raising numbers today are caused by the hobbyists or sideliners mostly which want to support pollination and sell local honey.
> ...


Yes. Overall hive counts can, at least partially, be attributed to rising popularity. In the United States, our gross hive counts have been fairly static over the past 20 years. 

I think the issue, however, is annual hive loss as a percentage of that count. One would expect the number of annual hive loss (as a percentage of count) to now be lower in Europe after the benefit of the 5 year ban of neonics. If neonics were the problem, wouldn’t you agree that their removal should have a statistical impact on the annual hive loss numbers?


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

psm1212 said:


> I think the issue, however, is annual hive loss as a percentage of that count. One would expect the number of annual hive loss (as a percentage of count) to now be lower in Europe after the benefit of the 5 year ban of neonics. If neonics were the problem, wouldn’t you agree that their removal should have a statistical impact on the annual hive loss numbers?


Depends on the relative contribution of neonics versus other causes of mortality. The high variation in losses this study found - both in terms of latitude and in bee keeper experience - suggests that factors other than pesticides are the predominant drivers of hive mortality.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

It is logical that the Ferals have higher DWV titers because they are not manipulated. But they seem to be more tolerant than the others.

I have learned from sources who kept bees before Varroa that 10% losses were considered normal. At that time there were mainly production colonies coming from swarming multiplication and artificial swarms for sale.
A big part to have healthy bees in my eyes working with nature.

Today beekeepers have to use a "reserve" strategy or they will loose more and more bees and this is not the non-treated ones alone. If the dark forest honey is harvested, treatments often come too late and the colonies crash.
The commercials then have some nucs as reserve. That to "mite bombs" in late fall.

There are many factors involved in resistance and tolerance, and there are many neonics. All together have never been banned and there are other chemicals that work. The correlations between these chemicals have not been explored much by science.

Lack of diversity of pollen and beekeeping methods are also an issue.

What I see this year is that the dropleg method of spraying is much more in use and that the air spraying is done late in the evening or at night.
Both methods help the bees much.
So it´s getting better for the bees 

It would be a good thing to have a control of the mite impact and act accordingly, but it must go in the direction of breeding and multiplying the more resistant and tolerant. 
Law should forbid to treat prophylactically, to treat colonies which are under a threshold, and this must be a strategy used on all livestock IMHO.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> It is logical that the Ferals have higher DWV titers because they are not manipulated. But they seem to be more tolerant than the others


Most of the studies point otherwise… 



> I have learned from sources who kept bees before Varroa that 10% losses were considered normal. At that time there were mainly production colonies coming from swarming multiplication and artificial swarms for sale.


If that was true, the package bee industry would have never taken hold… like the myth of the immortal bee tree it’s a good story and may have been true in an isolated case or 2…….but doesn’t hold up well in daylight.
_. “The most importance as far as wintering is concerned, is gradually leading to the practice of only wintering colonies in proper condition; that is, with an abun- dance of young bees, plenty of stores, plenty of pollen reserves and reason- able protection. All other colonies are removed before the winter period begins. This will decrease the winter loss, but it will increase the number of hives that are empty. From our own experience we find thirty-five out of one hundred hives are empty each spring from all causes and must be replaced one way or another."_
American Bee Journal, 1947
Written by Gladstone Cale, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Maryland College of Agriculture, Head of Dadant Apiaries 
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B5dxtbosHna7YUhiY1MwMGVzYU0
Of note 1947 was the peak year in US colonys



> Yawn. Another study without context.


I dissagree 3,00+ apairys, tracking location and mangment across a lot of difrent countrys and enviorments
No boogy man snatching hives
Survival was do to how well the stock was manged


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Many colonies were combined if the hive system allowed it, as it is done today with weak hives.
Packages were done to sustain the numbers.
But I´m only speaking about europe, I don´t know about US, in europe they used the native bees then.

msl 
I´m searching for statistics about losses in earlier times in middle europe, you are a fine provider of links, do you per chance know about this if some research was done then?
It´s all hearsay for now.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

sadly "losses" seem to be like fishing stories (even in the past)
ie I had 20 weak nucs and combined them to 10 and then lost 5 over winter.. Did I lose 5, 10, or 15 hives? or did I save 5 from certain death. did I gain not lose as I now have more then I did this time last year. 

Europe winter 2015/16
_Altogether, we received valid answers from 19,952 beekeepers. These beekeepers collectively wintered 421,238 colonies, and reported 18,587 colonies with unsolvable queen problems and 32,048 dead colonies after winter. This gives an overall loss rate of 12.0% (95% confidence interval 11.8–12.2%) during winter 2015/16, with marked differences among countries. Beekeepers in the present study assessed 7.6% (95% CI 7.4–7.8%) of their colonies as dead or empty, and 4.4% (95% CI 4.3–4.5%) as having unsolvable queen problems after winter._
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00218839.2016.1260240?af=R

however they go on to say
_ For the same winter, a pan-European surveillance program, implemented in 17 countries, ascertained winter mortality based on field inspections to range from 4.7 to 30.6% in different countries _
and the OP link put it at up to 32%


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Very interesting, thanks, msl

Thought the losses would be higher with native genetics. They seem to me in a normal range, yes even lower than nature selects normally.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

msl said:


> sadly "losses" seem to be like fishing stories (even in the past)
> ie I had 20 weak nucs and combined them to 10 and then lost 5 over winter.. Did I lose 5, 10, or 15 hives? or did I save 5 from certain death. did I gain not lose as I now have more then I did this time last year.


This is the reason I've long ago tuned out all the talk about losses. Everyone has their own definition of a loss and what they feel is acceptable. The only things I am certain of are that honeybees are in no imminent danger and there are a lot of politics and potential and pending lawsuits in play beneath the surface.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

SiWolke: Completely off topic, but I bought some German creamed honey today. It is from a company named Langnese and labeled as “Creamy Country Honey.” Made in Bargteheide, Germany. Not sure exactly how it got to Alabama, USA. Haven’t tried it yet. Know the group?


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

fatshark said:


> Like this one from 2014? Quote from the abstract ... _"Samples of forager bees were collected from paired feral and managed honey bee colonies and screened for the presence of ten honey bee pathogens and pests using qPCR. Prevalence and quantity was similar between the two groups for the majority of pathogens, however feral honey bees contained a significantly higher level of deformed wing virus than managed honey bee colonies."_
> 
> So the feral weren't really healthy I'm afraid.


Feral bees would do poorly around treated bees. If you did a long term study, their would be genetic contamination from unselected treated bees. If you plopped feral bees in a new environment they would also do poorly. Also viral titres would be artificially inhibited in managed bees, but it doesn't mean they would have more vigour than a feral bee. Or place feral bees in a box, perform swarm control, try to get a honey crop. In a more natural situation, bees would only perform mite control to the point where they had too. Anything more would be a waste of energy. When a bee is placed in a box, they have to spend more energy on mite control. They are capable of doing this over time with selection. But feral bees are a good starting point. Sometimes something like a viral titre is a artifact and doesn't govern overall success. Context is necessary to interpret. Also with ecological studies, there can be different outcomes with repeated studies. Its not that they are necessarily flawed, but ecology is noisy, and multiple outcomes are often found. Again context is necessary.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

msl said:


> Most of the studies point otherwise…
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yes but only in the short term. When varroa is introduced (the real crime and an indictment of modern beekeeping and the movement of bees) a massive die back needed to occur with surviving bees moving forward. This can was kicked down the road with treatment. It still needs to occur, and those who are trying to introduce resistance into their stock will occur losses one way or another. 

BTW as a general comment. If you are a person that needs medication to survive, you are not a healthy person. I think the same applied to bees.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> When varroa is introduced (the real crime and an indictment of modern beekeeping and the movement of bees) a massive die back needed to occur with surviving bees moving forward


That is certainly one view, but I can't think of one domestic live stock that has been manged this way... 
This is not how bee pathogens of manged stock have been over come in the past, and its unlikely that its how they will be overcome in the future. 
how was EFB dealt with ? 


> As queen rearing developed into a large-scale commercial enterprise in the Southern States and Italian queens from Europe were used extensively in the breeding program, a strong, Italian-type bee predominated. Before the end of the 1920’s, however, after years of persistent requeening with southern queens, northern beekeepers largely replaced the black bees with a less nervous, Italian-type bee that resisted European foulbrood.


 History of Beekeeping in the United States-EVERETT OERTEL

as you say


> In a more natural situation, bees would only perform mite control to the point where they had too. Anything more would be a waste of energy


Nature selects for bees traits to be expressed at the minimum needed, that means most traits are lost quickly in out crossing. This keeps bees flexible and gives them a multitude of options as to what will work best and aloes the species to adapt quickly to change. The flipside is then nature prunes back what dosen't work, to the tune of 60+% a year to maintain the stock. Great for the wild, not so much for a apiary with 20 hives. 

It is possibly if we all just stopped mite management, and we all just stopped moving bees loses would settle in the 60% realm. Past that we are going to need to breed from the best so that there offspring trait expression is above the advrage and re queen our hives so our drones are expessing the traits at a higher level... If we don't keep up high pressure the trait back slides toward nature. like many traits we desire, strong mite resistance and others like gentleness, production of excess honey, low swarming, excess colony longevity etc are at odds with wild survival and need the hand of the beekeeper to select and maintain them as they are at odds with natural selection as in the wild they are a waist of energy or a detrimental behavior.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

The arguements in livestock can be a little simular. Take mad cow diseise and the millions of cows killed to contain it. There were arguements on both sides on whether to vaccinate but then not be able to test for the diseise or destroy the cows. I know it is a bit differrent cause they were trying to destroy a diseise and not make animals strong enough to resist the diseise. The decision of which way to proceed was still a disscussion though and unlike mites or dmw, mad cow diseise could be caught by people. The desision in the end was made based on what was best money wise as far as trade agreements were concerned.

So the bee decisions are in the end money based also and the money so far has said that we don't want the finacial burden of losing a lot of bees in case it makes then stronger. This really sorta fits the study that started this thread where it was mentioned that even the guys that lost more hives has systems for replacement. And like it was mentioned, those system cost need to be studied to see finacially if they are actually worse.
Cheers
gww


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Well sort of...maby.... 
No vaxizine, no cure just stop feeding cow parts to cows and kill off the infected and keep them form entering processing systems and contaminating it... I would say its more like AFB don't feed honey or let bees rob AFB hives and burn them.. like AFB the prions can be viably for decades 

The money issue about inishal losses is just the surface argument. What is missed is there are continual high losses that will keep happening if a "natural" path is chosen. 
Traits in bees fade, fast witch is why re-queening with select stock after a few year was the gold standard of old
An example form a member here... it came from a time I was a bit more enthusiastic about feral being the golden goose


Colobee said:


> My BF production hives have averaged 200 lbs, per, for the last two years. 100-150/per, over the decades. Well worth the cost of replacement queens every 2-3 years.
> It's probably just dumb luck - nothing to do with superior genetics or not wasting time & resources on feral mutts.
> .


select breeder queens and requeening is how you mantian a trait in your yard at a stronger expression then "natural" . 
when a honey production trait fades you requeen, what happens when a mite resistance trait fades? you lose the stock if you don't treat and re queen.

despite story's of the "golden" years historic loses were high, especially in the swarm propagation era when selection was much more natural (swarm) and you couldn't make 100 queens from one and requeen your stock (hard to find a queen in a fixed comb hive)


> Keeping bees has been, and is now, by the majority, deemed a hazardous enterprise. The ravages of the moth had been so great, and loss so frequent, that but little attention was given to the subject for a long time. Mr. Weeks lost his entire stock three times in fifteen years.





> Weeks, in a communication to the N. E. Farmer, says, " Since the potato rot commenced, I have lost one-fourth of my stocks annually, by this disease ;" at the same time adds his fears, that " this race of insects will Become extinct from this cause, if not arrested." (Perhaps I ought to mention, that he speaks of it as attacking the "chrysalis" instead of the larva; but as every thing else about it agrees exactly, there is but little, doubt of its being all one thing.


- Quinby 1853


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

msl
It is a natural way and it isn't, most still pick the best of what they have to make more with. I also, from reading those old guys, seen that losses were big sometimes. Nobody that raises live things can be compleetly risk free no matter what their practices are. I remember from when I was really young where we killed a bunch of cats cause a fox came out during the day and drank from thier water bowl. The cats were not worth taking a chance on waiting to see if they got sick when a fox acts so out of character from how a fox should act and the impact to people could be so bad.
Cheers
gww


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

psm1212 said:


> SiWolke: Completely off topic, but I bought some German creamed honey today. It is from a company named Langnese and labeled as “Creamy Country Honey.” Made in Bargteheide, Germany. Not sure exactly how it got to Alabama, USA. Haven’t tried it yet. Know the group?


Bergteheide is the seat of the company, where honey is bottled from the EU and Mexico, so it's not local honey, but big business.



> select breeder queens and requeening is how you mantian a trait in your yard at a stronger expression then "natural" .


msl,
agriculture and livestock performance still depends much on natural circumstances like the climate or weather and local managements, so there is no silver bullet to success and success might change every year just like nature influences all living things. Maybe not to the same extent if some managements or trait breeding is done but still, nature selects.


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## Virgil (Jan 14, 2018)

psm1212 said:


> I think the issue, however, is annual hive loss as a percentage of that count. One would expect the number of annual hive loss (as a percentage of count) to now be lower in Europe after the benefit of the 5 year ban of neonics. If neonics were the problem, wouldn’t you agree that their removal should have a statistical impact on the annual hive loss numbers?


The claim isn't that the three treatments banned caused colony loss in the managed populations it was that meta-analysis indicated they may be harmful to pollinator populations.Using managed colonies as an indicator of pollinator health has always struck me as disingenuous; pet cats aren't a good guide to wild mammal health. 

My key takeaways from that paper are that basic animal husbandry techniques are the best way to keep bees alive in boxes.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

as you say 
Nature selects for bees traits to be expressed at the minimum needed, that means most traits are lost quickly in out crossing. This keeps bees flexible and gives them a multitude of options as to what will work best and aloes the species to adapt quickly to change. The flipside is then nature prunes back what dosen't work, to the tune of 60+% a year to maintain the stock. Great for the wild, not so much for a apiary with 20 hives. 

Most mortality with wild bees is a result of competition for nest sites, predation of vulnerable nest sites, or weather exposure also due to poor nest sites. This has been stated before. The 60 percent figure has no relevance if bees are given decent nest sites and protected from bears.

It also flies in the face of some tf keepers who are developing a track record more on the order of 10 to 20 percent. All beekeepers will experience epidemics of one sort or another. We would expect the number of epidemics to be lower if bee movement was slowed down, tf or not.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> The 60 percent figure has no relevance if bees are given decent nest sites and protected from bears


The whole point of amimal hunsbdry and slective breeding is to over come those losses
Decent nest protected from bears...Seeley 2017

(the following chart can be found in: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-017-0519-1#citeas )










43% loses on hived swarms, 21% on established hives, figger 75% of the cast swarms are a loss....... 
spread out and not clustered witch loweres epidemics hence losses... and not asked to do anything but live while being kept in small hives and alowed to swarm, likely lowering stresses and losses. 
The issue is by providing shelter and care, poor genetics are propped up and spread, till pruned back by a crash or epidemic. 



> We would expect the number of epidemics to be lower if bee movement was slowed down


agreeded, and then some serious work on bond type selection could happen..till then any progress is wiped out in a sea of fresh imported genetics.
Mass importation of resistant stock and persistent re queening over many years is the likly answer... that is what it took and to replace the black bee and bring in EFB resistance in the US 



> It also flies in the face of some tf keepers who are developing a track record more on the order of 10 to 20 percent.


it dose not, you misinterpret my statement. 
Me-


> It is possibly if we all just stopped mite management, and we all just stopped moving bees loses would settle in the 60% realm. Past that we are going to need to breed from the best so that there offspring trait expression is above the advrage and re queen our hives so our drones are expessing the traits at a higher level


The point was natural section creates natural loss rates
If you have less then natural loss rates(propping up weak stock) there is less section presure and the stock weakens, creating a colaspic and recovery cycle 

As we have noted "losses" are a subjective and usess subject... so a "track record" as you say is taken with a grain of salt, there are many TF keepers out there whos numbers don't add up.... 
Mike B, catching 30-40 swarms a year + makeing splits, only loosing 15 hives a winter and his numbers stay static around 100 hives.....
Sol P seems much the same 

The TF keepers who are truly doing well on a large scale and have repeatable results in mutpul areas share one trait. Grafting from highly selected breeder queens...This alows for strong section pressure threw re queening, the removal of weak genetics, or genetics that would produce weak stock in an out cross with out the loss of hives.

Mites aside we know what "natural" beekeeping looks like, and what results it will likely have, there is a reason such thing were left behind in the 1800s.


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## Virgil (Jan 14, 2018)

msl said:


> The TF keepers who are truly doing well on a large scale and have repeatable results in mutpul areas share one trait. Grafting from highly selected breeder queens...This alows for strong section pressure threw re queening, the removal of weak genetics, or genetics that would produce weak stock in an out cross with out the loss of hives.


Aren't they selecting for a bee that can be maintained within apiary with minimum treatments and other traits beekeepers value? I don't believe you're doing this, but I do think that often people conflate treatment free selection for natural selection. If humans are selecting for traits there is nothing natural about it.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

Virgil said:


> The claim isn't that the three treatments banned caused colony loss in the managed populations.


Neonics, primarily the three that were banned by the EU, being a primary cause of colony loss in managed populations of honey bees is an often-asserted claim.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

msl, can you provide a more complete reference for the chart pasted in your post #28?

if not we may have to remove it, chances are it is copyrighted.


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## Virgil (Jan 14, 2018)

psm1212 said:


> Neonics, primarily the three that were banned by the EU, being a primary cause of colony loss in managed populations of honey bees is an often-asserted claim.


Just not by the regulatory bodies providing guidance to the Council of Ministers.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> Aren't they selecting for a bee that can be maintained within apiary with minimum treatments and other traits beekeepers value?
> 
> I don't believe you're doing this,
> 
> but I do think that often people conflate treatment free selection for natural selection. If humans are selecting for traits there is nothing natural about it.


yes they are, those who are just spiting everything left alive are not

I am, my 2018 breeder queen rolled 14 mites, brood off in late Oct 17 after last being treated Nov 2016. she and the rest of the stock did receive a nov 2017 OAD do to colasping hives in the area as insurance as I had the data i needed. and the plan is to requeen the majority of the stock with her and offer cells to my package bee neighbors. at the moment I am able to hold the mite in check with a spring flyback split, natural july brood break from a dearth, a single late fall broodless OAD and about 3 mouths broodless in the winter, my feral based stock starts brood rearing much later then my neighbors. There are of coarse the few outliers that need extra treatments and so get re queened or culled and broken in to nucs. 

agreeded



> msl, can you provide a more complete reference for the chart pasted in your post #28?


Seeley, T.D. Apidologie (2017) 48: 743. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13592-017-0519-1
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-017-0519-1#citeas


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

thanks, i added it to the post.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

IMG]https://media.springernature.com/lw785/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs13592-017-0519-1/MediaObjects/13592_2017_519_Fig3_HTML.gif[/IMG]
43% loses on hived swarms, 21% on established hives, figger 75% of the cast swarms are a loss....... 
spread out and not clustered witch loweres epidemics hence losses... and not asked to do anything but live while being kept in small hives and alowed to swarm, likely lowering stresses and losses. 
The issue is by providing shelter and care, poor genetics are propped up and spread, till pruned back by a crash or epidemic. 

Yes, that is the issue with treating. But providing habitat (a box) is giving a colony an even playing field with its peers. Founder colonies provided the same type of box as its peers did much better than founders having to settle. Bees cannot create their own habitat. It should be noted here as well that in nature there are catastrophic losses that occur as well. Well adapted critters die at the same rate as unadapted ones. Here a beekeeper plays a role and can reduce these (and sometimes increase them in the case of accidental rolled queens and harvesting too much). But it has nothing to do with natural selection. 



it dose not, you misinterpret my statement. 
Me- 
The point was natural section creates natural loss rates
If you have less then natural loss rates(propping up weak stock) there is less section presure and the stock weakens, creating a colaspic and recovery cycle 

And you are half way to the point why some treatment isn't useful. The shortest path to resiliency is bond. The selection pressures in a tf apiary are different than in a forest situation. But the bees are still able to apply the right metric, given time. Feral bees only are a useful starting point for stable genetics within an apiary. Read my point above re catastrophic events to see why a good keeper should have less loss than in natural situations. 

As we have noted "losses" are a subjective and usess subject... so a "track record" as you say is taken with a grain of salt, there are many TF keepers out there whos numbers don't add up.... 
Mike B, catching 30-40 swarms a year + makeing splits, only loosing 15 hives a winter and his numbers stay static around 100 hives.....
Sol P seems much the same 

But why do you ignore Keufuss, sp fp and others? The above still have bees regardless of accounting, which is what matters. I'm sure there is nothing wrong with M. Bush's bees and he can easily maintain numbers. Of course Sol has moved around much too much to say anything about his success. A fact conveniently ignored by the naysayers. 

The TF keepers who are truly doing well on a large scale and have repeatable results in mutpul areas share one trait. Grafting from highly selected breeder queens...This alows for strong section pressure threw re queening, the removal of weak genetics, or genetics that would produce weak stock in an out cross with out the loss of hives.

Of course, its selection on top of natural selection. If I have a chalkbrood ridden colony that sits there, I replace it instead of waiting for nature to do the inevitable. We also select for production and colonies that respond to swarm prevention. Its not natural beekeeping, its using natural selection as a baseline and respecting ecological principles to lesson the frequency of epidemics. 

Mites aside we know what "natural" beekeeping looks like, and what results it will likely have, there is a reason such thing were left behind in the 1800s.[/QUOTE]

But those who wish to do this probably make some useful genetic contributions to bee populations. There is nothing wrong with this for the average back yarder who has other priorities. 

BTW thankyou for posting Seeley's article. It was a good read that underscores the resiliency of natural systems.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> But why do you ignore Keufuss


I find it interring you would say that....
Kefuss is exactly the type of bee keeper I am refering to when I said 


> The TF keepers who are truly doing well on a large scale and have repeatable results in mutpul areas share one trait. Grafting from highly selected breeder queens


He had a EFB problem in his Argentinian opperation
Did he just split from survivors, or from hives that showed no EFB?.....Nope
He did a frozen brood assay on over 380 hives, selected the 14 most hygienic and grafted from them, Pinched the queens of the other 366+ and placed cells
Massive beekeeper selection pressure based on objective metrics, that's how you shift and or maintain traits. 



> But those who wish to do this probably make some useful genetic contributions to bee populations. There is nothing wrong with this for the average back yarder who has other priorities.


It laughably to suggest the average back yarder is going to make any sort of contribution to bee genetics. They are peeing while swimming the ocean, the other swimmers will never notice a thing. The only people who gain from such a method are the package bee sellers. 
Its not wrong to walk that path if it makes the keeper happy, but its wrong to tell them it has anything to do with the greater good 



> If I have a chalkbrood ridden colony that sits there, I replace it instead of waiting for nature to do the inevitable.


So why do you resist the suggestion to use the same method on a mite ridden colony? 



> We also select for production and colonies that respond to swarm prevention. Its not natural beekeeping, its using natural selection as a baseline


I am not sure what your getting at, can you explane. 
Not dead under your care is a baseline for most selection programs. High production and low swarming are at odds with wild survival and what nature selects for.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

msl said:


> It laughably to suggest the average back yarder is going to make any sort of contribution to bee genetics.


Nevertheless, in the other direction, to make the population weaker, it has also worked, at least in my area, the hobbyists and sideliners ( no commercial big enterprise here) have achieved that.
It could then work the other way round, but only with a group of beekeepers who have the same goal.


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## mike bispham (May 23, 2009)

msl said:


> High production and low swarming are at odds with wild survival and what nature selects for.


Are you sure about that? Energy is what powers all life. High production is energy stored. 

Reproduction is another matter. Rates vary according to circumstances. When higher frequency than average swarming supplies an advantage over lower rates, that will tend to become a feature of the population - for as long as that condition holds. 

When circumstances reverse the opposite will apply. 

Quite what effect scale breeding (by which I mean breeding at a scale sufficient to make a difference) or controlled breeding (AI) can have on rates I don't know. (What the cost to feral bees of such activities is, is of course another question: no-one seems to care much but its worth asking just for educational purposes) 

What the average and bell curve look like, and how much they vary in different races I don't know either. 

The big picture in nature is this: 

_the winners in the competition to influence the next generation are those individuals who use the present resources to most efficiently turn the available energy into viable offspring._

Think about that for a moment. That's the natural selection baseline. 

Mike (UK)


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## Virgil (Jan 14, 2018)

lharder said:


> BTW as a general comment. If you are a person that needs medication to survive, you are not a healthy person. I think the same applied to bees.


We should stop treating malaria, people will eventually evolve out of it.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

msl said:


> I find it interring you would say that....
> Kefuss is exactly the type of bee keeper I am refering to when I said
> 
> He had a EFB problem in his Argentinian opperation
> ...


But Seeley in the same study showed low brood disease in Arnot bees in the same study you posted. I don't know the history of his south american operation, but they didn't start out as tf nor had a long history of tf. How can you ignore that efb affected colonies would have low survival and reproductive success? Again context is important in interpreting what went on. Don't raise queens from efb infested colonies. Makes sense to me. 

I just read the site of Olympic Wilderness Apiaries (http://wildernessbees.com/) who had N. ceranae sweep through their mostly tf operation. Nature selected hard for 2 years, then losses back to 10 percent. Now we have an increasingly visible queen breeder in BC who is have great success with TF, but with high losses initially. Again 10 years for an approximate timeline. Pruning by nature is hard when it needs to. Assays for hygienic behaviour accelerates what nature is doing for those diseases that are selected against that would be less acute but still detrimental. 

As far as mites are concerned, if we knew exactly what we were looking for and understood the mite/virus dynamic exactly and thought there was no effect on microbiota (a reach), then we could. But we don't, so there is some throwing out the baby with the bath water. A mite count of 10 percent on one hive is not the same as a mite count of 10 percent on another. Its the rule of unintended consequences. Meanwhile my microbiota is not affected. If most of my hives are good and they will be because they have been selected, an occasional mite bomb won't effect things and provides some useful additional selection pressure. 

The other advantage nature has over a breeder is the scale of selection. No critter is exempt. That is why TF backyarders are important. To ramp up the scale of selection. That is why education about using local bees and having regional self sufficiency is important. Changing the adaptive landscape is where bee associations must be much more responsible. For some it may not work, but who is anyone to say it won't until it is tried because local spatial considerations are important. If it doesn't it indicates that local beekeeping has totally screwed up the adaptive landscape. So who should change? An person who is trying to shift the system to something more sustainable long term, or people who ignore ecological principles?

As mentioned by others, bees are often naturally productive and there are ecological reasons for it. They can produce lots of spring swarms and will dominate the local genetic space. My bees will swarm if left to their own devices, but respond to space management and some population management. Some bees don't. What my bees have to contend with is the lack of brood break associated with swarming. So they probably have to pay more attention to mites than in the wild. But they seem to have the tools to do so as many by now have shown.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Virgil said:


> We should stop treating malaria, people will eventually evolve out of it.


But mites aren't the same as malaria. If we knew that there was no adaptive possibilities, then I would chalk it up to another example where people messed up something good. BTW when small pox came to north america, indigenous people were horrifically affected and a genetic bottleneck occurred with the survivors carrying on. A terrible example that it even happens with us.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

Siwolke said:”It would be a good thing to have a control of the mite impact and act accordingly, but it must go in the direction of breeding and multiplying the more resistant and tolerant. ”

The beekeeping industry has been trying to do that for 30 years or more. The problem is keeping those good traits with the honey bee. They swarm and these traits are diluted over time. Location makes a difference too; where I live most packages are brought up from the same area, S. Carolina, and Georgia. I have to say most migratory beekeepers in this area are down in South Carolina for the winter and bring their packages up from there, or other non-migratory beekeepers travel down and pick up hundreds of packages and sell up here, so genetics are sort of bottle-necked. Everyone around here buys those bee’s. Year after year this is done. Having a sustainable apiary is good; you save money, and some of it can be spent on importing queens that are being bred for VSH or tolerance, and get those genetics in your apiary and surrounding area by swarming. As per Tom Seeley 20% of swarms will live and make it over the winter, so then my queens can mate with them.


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## fatshark (Jun 17, 2009)

Malaria was the selective pressure that led to the sickle cell mutation in human haemoglobin ... we haven't 'evolved out of it' but those carrying the mutation are more resistant to malaria.

Of course, as with many other examples, the (partial) resistance comes with its own problems ... heterozygotes have the advantage against malaria, homozygotes develop sickle cell anaemia, with reduced longevity, long-term pain, bacterial infections and swelling of the hands and feet.

We may be able to select bees with increased tolerance to Varroa but they may have other detrimental traits as a consequence - like the increased tendency to swarm described by Seeley in his studies of survival of large and small colonies.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

mike bispham said:


> Are you sure about that? Energy is what powers all life. High production is energy stored.


yes I am sure, as you said


mike bispham said:


> _the winners in the competition to influence the next generation are those individuals who use the present resources to most efficiently turn the available energy into viable offspring._


Nature select’s for bees that make the most offspring and low production. A large surplus of left over honey come spring is wasted energy that could have been offspring.



SiWolKe said:


> Nevertheless, in the other direction, to make the population weaker, it has also worked, at least in my area, the hobbyists and sideliners ( no commercial big enterprise here) have achieved that.


I can’t speak to your area, in the US mass propagation of non-resistant stock do to other traits being considered to have more value is the problem. The way you fight that is mass propagation and distribution of resistant stock… 



Cloverdale said:


> The beekeeping industry has been trying to do that for 30 years or more. The problem is keeping those good traits with the honey bee. They swarm and these traits are diluted over time.


The beekeeping industry hasn’t.. if they had dilution would not be as big an issue. If all the queen breeders in the US made mite restiance the primary criteria there would be no mite problem 
but as fatshark says 


fatshark said:


> We may be able to select bees with increased tolerance to Varroa but they may have other detrimental traits as a consequence - like the increased tendency to swarm described by Seeley in his studies of survival of large and small colonies.


Yes and in the weaver program it came with increased EFB and chalk sestibuilty that then had to be sorted


lharder said:


> Pruning by nature is hard when it needs to. Assays for hygienic behaviour accelerates what nature is doing for those diseases that are selected against


Not it the least, with FBA you are picking traits that are highly expressed far above the average and propagating them so the off spring for a few generations will express it at a higher level then average. I have an EFB hive I just requeened, it was still making drones and some swarm prep, nature was not selecting against it hard enuf…


lharder said:


> As far as mites are concerned, if we knew exactly what we were looking for


But we do know, Kefues has led the way with others, resistance to mite build up not tolerance of high might levels has been what has worked. Keep the virus down.

John slected based on FBA, and mite counts If we look at this chart form 
Selection for resistance to Varroa destructorunder commercial beekeeping conditions
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00218839.2016.1160709








We clearly see at what mite level mites removed hives from the program….


lharder said:


> just read the site of Olympic Wilderness Apiaries (http://wildernessbees.com/) who had N. ceranae sweep through their mostly tf operation. Nature selected hard for 2 years


Maby re read the web site…. It wasn’t nature that shifted the stock, they grabbed a microscope and started counting spores and grafted form those with the lowest counts and backed it up with USDA lab testing…
http://wildernessbees.com/2017/04/22/stock-selection-criteria/
"We graft from untreated colonies whose queens have been overwintered for a minimum of one season, and have passed our strict standards for these following traits:
Hygienic Behavior-_Minimum of 95% removal of freeze-killed brood in 24 hours This trait will reduce or eliminate Chalkbrood; AFB; and varroa mite levels w/o the use of chemical treatments_
Varroa Mite Resistance_VSH trait is determined by Alcohol Wash Assay during spring brood build-up and fall peak mite infestation.
Grooming Behavior is determined by Alcohol Wash Assay during the winter broodless period_
Nosema Tolerance
_Demonstrate vigor with high exposure: UNTREATED.
Our selection process is verified by in-house microscopic testing and USDA Laboratory reports_.
Hoarding Behavior _Excellent Honey producers Heavy pollen collectors_
Gentleness _No need for gloves_
Swarming Behavior_ Not prone to swarm_
High Degree of Longevity & Solid Brood Patterns"
*once again, highly selected breeder queens and grafting, not "nature"*



lharder said:


> That is why TF backyarders are important. To ramp up the scale of selection


Not in the least, LOL
The issue is its only negative selection, to move forward positive slection is needed, positive traits need to be mass propagated so they aren’t lost by being diluted to non-expression f1-f2. But that’s not what is happing. Even if the backyarded finds something great, they sit there, maby make a replacement split or 2…. And then its lost in the outcrossing…peeing in the ocean

Now the same backyarder takes mite counts, knows he/she has something specical, maby gets together with another backyard keeper and grafts and passes out 100 queens cells to the neighbors for the next 3 years… NOW your enacting change..... but thats not what TF backyard keepers are told to do to "save the bees" 



lharder said:


> That is why education about using local bees and having regional self sufficiency is important.


I agree
Step one is keeping enuf bees alive to keep the region self sufficient. Keeping a f1+ out cross alive is prefurbul to the importation of another package, even if it takes treatment
Step two is adopting objective selection metrics 
Step 3 is mass propagation and disturbtion of the top performers



lharder said:


> So who should change? An person who is trying to shift the system to something more sustainable long term, or people who ignore ecological principles?


The people such as you self who ignore the basic principles of stock selection and propagation are the ones that need to change. 

“nature” “adaption” “regression” and all the outher BS that is being spread needs to change…

The message to backyarders need to be 
#1 they are a consumer of TF stock, not a producer
#2 They need to montor there mites, work with bee/mite biology to give there stock a leg up
#3 All traits fade in outcrossing and is to be expected… and when the counts say the traits have faded they need to stop the mitebomb and protect there stock till a local mite resistant replacement queen can be brought in. 

Stop the influx of outside gentnicts and give locals a $$ reason to graft some good queens for sale. 

Like most things $$$$ is what will create change, a market for restanct stock need to be created, and at the moment much of the TF movement is doing the opposite. 

backyard bond is driving the importation of packages 

The anti mite count message means al TF people see is dead/alive. They don’t see one line doing better to the point maby a spring split and drone culling might be eufff to get them threw, so they don’t see the value in a local restiacant queen that may be a few $$ more and they may have to wait a bit later in the year to get.

The failure to recognize that keeping a local out cross alive with a treatment is preffabul to a new spring package. Is a huge mistake. Much better if you requeen form local stock… you now have a laying queen to build up your hive in the spring and feel you can afford to wait the extra weeks for local queens to be avaibul

The above reasons is why I feel a good chunk of the TF movement is cutting off its nose to spite its face.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

Whew, that was almost too much to take in; so what I gather from your discourse (and just a little disagreement) is:

1- have an IPM management plan and treat accordingly
2- we ALL (beekeepers) have a responsibility to take care of our bees and
3- not anthropomorphisize bees with human conditions
4- varroa arrived here in 1990? I am sure breeders started around then to breed for resistance, hygenic behavior, etc. So maybe 25 years. 
5- a good amount of beekeepers need to educate themselves on varroa. I had the priviledge of hearing “soon to be Doctor” Samuel Adams and his presentation on varroa. If you had seen the slides he presented of varroa eating and depleting the fat body of a honey bee you would never be treatment free again. 
6- mite bombs exist, collapsing hives usually abscond and find another hive to live in, ours.
7- there needs to be a program to have good genetics available easily and not cost hundreds of dollars to buy one queen. 

There was much info there MSL, thanks for the time you put into it.


Your quote from Randy Oliver is succint.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

1 Yes, but the foundation, and most important part of IMP is resistant stock, and that's often missed 
3 Some did/do but not at a unified scale eunff to shift the pool past the areas they have drone domination on . The market isn't there, that our fault as beekeepers for not buying there stock and filling the air with drones form it 
5 he is comeing to CO in june...thinking about making the drive 
6 Mite bombs are a robing event of a collasping hive with the robbers bring mites back home, simple education about entrance reducers/robbing screens could help shift the impact. Absconding some times happens, but more often if bees flying off to die till there is nothing left. I haven't seen much work pointing to mite bomb bees ending up in the other hives, the sluction would likely be the same, robbing screens
7 Yes and no I don't see the cost of a good breeder queen changing much.. In the 1860s Italian queens were going for $20, a bit over $300 in todays money.... no suprize queen rearing texts started appearing at that era. 
The problem as i see it is there is little market for the offspring of such. People don't seem willing to by a $40 queens with better tratis then $25-$30 run of the mill. 
I think what we need more of is what Meghan Milbrath did to get the ball rolling in her area. She took her local virgins(from 2 year TF queens) to Purdue for II with ankle biter stock and made those breeder queens available for the cheap price of $150, the catch? The buyers had to make 100 queens form it available for sale... That's how you shift the drones of an area!


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

Definitely make the drive to hear Samuel Adams. We drove around 2 hours to hear him. It was so worth it. We have NY BeeWellness here in NY, and Pat Bono (founder) does workshops here every year. She gets good people to learn from; Randy Oliver (twice), Megan M., Al Avitable, Peter Borst, Aaron Morris (he runs the Bee-l email fotum) plus more. All excellent workshops. This year Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk will be the *star*. We are lucky to have this program. As for Megan, what a great idea! I would buy some.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

fatshark said:


> Malaria was the selective pressure that led to the sickle cell mutation in human haemoglobin ... we haven't 'evolved out of it' but those carrying the mutation are more resistant to malaria.
> 
> Of course, as with many other examples, the (partial) resistance comes with its own problems ... heterozygotes have the advantage against malaria, homozygotes develop sickle cell anaemia, with reduced longevity, long-term pain, bacterial infections and swelling of the hands and feet.
> 
> We may be able to select bees with increased tolerance to Varroa but they may have other detrimental traits as a consequence - like the increased tendency to swarm described by Seeley in his studies of survival of large and small colonies.


But swarming is what feral bees do. He noted that life history characteristics of Arnot bees were largely unchanged. Yet we know a genetic bottleneck also occurred. So its not just about swarming. We also have examples of people maintaining productive tf bees over time. Keufus is not interested in resistant bees that don't do anything. He selects for production.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

msl said:


> yes I am sure, as you said
> 
> 
> Nature select’s for bees that make the most offspring and low production. A large surplus of left over honey come spring is wasted energy that could have been offspring.
> ...


A survival field test was initiated in 1999 to observe the effects of no treatment against Varroa destructor on European honey bee colony survival. After losses of over two-thirds of the 268 original colonies, new colonies were made from the survivors. In 2002, genetic material from these survivors was bred into an independent group of 60 colonies. In 2013, 519 non-treated colonies from both groups were being used for commercial beekeeping, and mite populations were very low. This indicates that under commercial beekeeping conditions, simple methods can be used to select for reduced mite populations.

This is the abstract that explains your graph. It was natural selection that did the work.

Re N. ceranae: They may have grabbed a scope, but they allowed nature to do the majority of the pruning. They chose not to treat and lost 90 percent 2 years running. Why is that not important in your eyes?

Colonies that come down with Nosema or EFB are either not reproductive or do not survive the winter. That is likely the reason Seeley found feral bees pretty healthy in regard to brood disease. If I prune out non productive hives, I am also doing the same thing. It should be noted that competitive forces between colonies can do the same thing. Weak colonies are often pillaged and destroyed by stronger ones during a dearth.

There may be things going on under our noses that we don't see, but if we follow basic rules, we can preempt many problems. So your conception of nature only using negative selection is in error. Reproduction requires production. To the strong go the spoils, at least in this case. 

The mantra is TF is to use local stock or otherwise resistant stock to start off with and to develop local stock, catch swarms. There is always that person who doesn't understand anything, and makes the same mistake time and time again. But again its the problems associated with the movement of bees that is high risk and this is not even considered to be a problem with most treating keepers. I have never heard once at my local bee club the need to be self sufficient locally in bees and to avoid packages.


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## mike bispham (May 23, 2009)

This has developed into a useful conversation, and I'm pleased to see msl working up his case. So far however there has been a failure to identify the single biggest cause of the failure of US beekeeping to overcome vulnerability to varroa and all that brings. 

That is of course the systematic removal of selective pressure via treatments. For as long as beekeepers think they - personally - can do better commercially through simple systematic treating, the problem will continue, and the vulnerable genetics artificially dominate the gene pool.

That's pretty much common knowledge now, yet it is also something of a taboo issue. It shouldn't be.

Msn writes (in reply to me)

"Nature select’s for bees that make the most offspring and low production. A large surplus of left over honey come spring is wasted energy that could have been offspring."

In nature a large spring surplus is what makes a large spring colony ready to do business. In robbing winter-weakened colonies, in raising a large foraging force, and in reproductive terms. Whether that is swarming or just raising a large drone population, the means is the same: it is the surplus that powers the colony in preparation for the year ahead. 

Nature selects for high energy storage on that basis, and through that mechanism. Nature does not waste energy. See my previous post: _energy is the ultimate object under competition in evolution_. 

That is one of the most powerful things you can say about life itself. 

Mike (UK)


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

lharder said:


> This is the abstract that explains your graph. It was natural selection that did the work.


:lpf: and we are done here.:lpf:
not my graph.....Keufus'
from the same sorce
_Genetic material was exchanged back and forth between these two independent test populations on an irregular basis by requeening with queen cells and virgin queens from the best 1–5 colonies in each group throughout the field test. *Low mite levels and general colony performance such as the ability to rear high-quality queens and honey production determined selection of the breeding materia*l._
a whole lot of natural selection (insert sarcasm)
once again *highly select breeder queens and grafting* shifts the stock


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

mike bispham said:


> This has developed into a useful conversation, and I'm pleased to see msl working up his case. So far however there has been a failure to identify the single biggest cause of the failure of US beekeeping to overcome vulnerability to varroa and all that brings.
> 
> That is of course the systematic removal of selective pressure via treatments. For as long as beekeepers think they - personally - can do better commercially through simple systematic treating, the problem will continue, and the vulnerable genetics artificially dominate the gene pool.
> 
> ...


Very good post.
Some pissed into the ocean and changed the world. Kefuss told us hobbyists we could do it. Read the "goal" sentence!


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

msl said:


> :lpf: and we are done here.:lpf:
> not my graph.....Keufus'
> from the same sorce
> _Genetic material was exchanged back and forth between these two independent test populations on an irregular basis by requeening with queen cells and virgin queens from the best 1–5 colonies in each group throughout the field test. *Low mite levels and general colony performance such as the ability to rear high-quality queens and honey production determined selection of the breeding materia*l._
> ...


Well of course, nature selects, then we do some more, what's your point? I do the same. You only talk about the later and ignore the former. The former takes care of factors that we are largely ignorant of. The later pushes the system towards something we think is important. In some cases we can accelerate what nature is already doing. The dink that takes of space is essentially non reproductive. Without the former, you can make large errors with presumption. That is why R. Oliver is still too scared not to treat. He reduces mites, but did he really using the important factors in selection? If he ever does stop treating, he will still find mortality unexplained according to his selection criteria. As will you. The question is once this happens, will you accept it and continue not to treat, or accept it and embrace it as an important part of the selection process? Results are the final arbitrator of this argument. We are waiting for those advocating this approach to achieve results. 

But as Mike says, selection one way or another is important. I would still prefer you as a beekeeping neighbor to those who don't do any selection. It may be inferior, we may wait a long time for you to finally jump off the high board. Hopefully it happens.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

SiWolKe said:


> Very good post.
> Some pissed into the ocean and changed the world. Kefuss told us hobbyists we could do it. Read the "goal" sentence!
> 
> 
> View attachment 39817


Yes, he is a man who works without so much fear. He in an interview also expressed that he wasn't so afraid of beekeeping neighbors. Some out crossing from them is not the end of the world and some good can come from it long term. You can affect your local environment. It will take some work and consideration of spatial configuration to reinforce your work. Hence the Fort Knox approach.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

lharder said: “That is why R. Oliver is still too scared not to treat. “

All this talk, treatment vs. non-treatment is much more complicated than we can figure out. I dont think Randy is “too scared” not to treat whatsoever! And what makes Kefuss the guy to follow over Randy Oliver?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Cloverdale said:


> All this talk, treatment vs. non-treatment is much more complicated than we can figure out.


well said. there really is more that we don't know about why some populations are resisting varroa off treatments while others cannot, but we are learning.

in the meantime i think the conversation is better served when open minds prevail regardless of what side of the issue we find ourselves.

beekeeping will never be a one size fits all endeavor. like with many issues that appear to be either/or this is one that may end up being both/and instead.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

I'm not sure if "it can't be figured out". TF bees and ferals have difficulty getting established where large numbers of keepers treat and with movement of bees. There are well established ecological principles that make me suspect this though it hasn't been established in a peer reviewed way in the case of bees. But it could be looked at and the links made. 

There may be other factors as well, but this is the biggie.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

2017 was my 8th year keeping bees off treatments and my losses and production have been comparable to others in the area utilizing conventional managements (treatments/feeding).

i think it's fair to say that my stock is demonstrating a decent amount of resistance/tolerance.

i also think i've been somewhat fortunate in that most of my losses that appear to be varroa related have taken place in the cold of winter which prevented or at least limited horizontal transmission to other colonies.

i was less fortunate last fall when a colony at my outyard suffered collapse from varroa and was robbed out by the other colonies in that yard. the resulting domino effect ended up taking down 5 out of the 8 colonies there for a 62.5% loss in that yard.

the lesson learned was that even stock demonstrating resistance/tolerance has the potential to get overwhelmed and as long as we are keeping more than 1 hive per yard we have to be vigilant enough to avoid such a scenario, not only for our own sake but for others keeping bees nearby as well as any ferals living in the area.


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## mike bispham (May 23, 2009)

Cloverdale said:


> All this talk, treatment vs. non-treatment is much more complicated than we can figure out.


I disagree. It simply about gene husbandry. To the extent that that you keep beekeeper-dependent bees alive and free to spread their genes, you will get more of the same. The vulnerable genes have to go. That is basic population husbandry. You can't buck it.

Mike (UK)


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Square


> i was less fortunate last fall when a colony at my outyard suffered collapse from varroa and was robbed out by the other colonies in that yard. the resulting domino effect ended up taking down 5 out of the 8 colonies there for a 62.5% loss in that yard.
> 
> the lesson learned was that even stock demonstrating resistance/tolerance has the potential to get overwhelmed and as long as we are keeping more than 1 hive per yard we have to be vigilant enough to avoid such a scenario, not only for our own sake but for others keeping bees nearby as well as any ferals living in the area.


You know your hive got robbed because you pay attention and so it is easy to come to that conclution even on a one time event. I do wonder though about the new genetics you added to your bees last year. They were not over represented in that same yard were they?
Just asking.
Cheers
gww
Ps It just seems like a split taking only 30 percent of the mite load from a hive and the hive has a good chance of living but a hive split 8 ways plus any out side bees that might have participated in the robbing, is enough to take 5 hives down. The hives might always be close to the edge at that time of the year but it still seems from a numbers perspective to be giving a lot of credit to one bad hive. Did the robbing happen before most of the winter bees were made?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

a few colonies with new genetics were introduced in 2016, the collapses did not correlate to any queen line in particular.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Square


> a few colonies with new genetics were introduced in 2016, the collapses did not correlate to any queen line in particular.


Thanks for the answer.
gww


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

I must have been typing when mike posted



> That is of course the systematic removal of selective pressure via treatments. For as long as beekeepers think they - personally - can do better commercially through simple systematic treating, the problem will continue, and the vulnerable genetics artificially dominate the gene pool.
> 
> That's pretty much common knowledge now, yet it is also something of a taboo issue. It shouldn't be.


Very true, and it highlights why the reverse is needed, we need to artificially dominate the gene pool with better genetics to shift a stock. 




> In nature a large spring surplus is what makes a large spring colony ready to do business. In robbing winter-weakened colonies, in raising a large foraging force, and in reproductive terms. Whether that is swarming or just raising a large drone population, the means is the same: it is the surplus that powers the colony in preparation for the year ahead.


In the beeyard perhaps, but if a large overwintered surplus was being selected by nature bees would show a preference for a larger nest to accommodate it. Robbing winter weakened hives as you suggest is not overwintered surplus . 



> Well of course, nature selects, then we do some more, what's your point? I do the same. You only talk about the later and ignore the former


I don’t see alowing livestock to die under your care as natural selection. If a cow is sick or has a trait you don’t like, you treat it and sell it and don’t breed form it. 
That being said I am not ignoring the” natural selection” because its going to happen "naturally":lpf: I don’t have to worry about pinching a queen that died, infact I don't have to think about it at all, so its not a topic of discussion 

The problem here is the TF talking heads focus on negative selection form nature with very little fouse on positive selection…and that is were the change needs to be made. 

“splitting everything left alive” is a huge offender of the main TF complaint of the area being flooded with poor genetics. Your polluting you own airspace with weak gentnicks by allowing average drones out there. 
People are kidding them selfs that just because a split overwintered once, and is now 9-10 mounths old its got “good” genetics and should be split and or its drones be allowed out. But that not the case. And the trend of the TF types to go foundationless only exabrastis the problem 

If people really and truly want to make a change… and not just your bees its time to shift the message to all the back yard beekeepers…

Buy local restiacant queens , IPM and protect your stock, install robbing screens, use drone culling on all queens that haven’t spent 2 winters TF. If you have a hive that have stayed sub 5% mites for a year, make and distribute cells in the spring, and instead of culling move the drone frames to other hives 

If the majority did the simple steps above we could enact change. 

Mabey its time to relook at something like the Ally drone excluder 
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c0/8d/49/c08d4923518809ecccf569c833cab7ab--drupal-beekeeping.jpg 




> It simply about gene husbandry. To the extent that that you keep beekeeper-dependent bees alive and free to spread their genes, you will get more of the same. The vulnerable genes have to go. That is basic population husbandry. You can't buck it.


It is, but it needs to be done on a order of magnitude beyond what nature will usaly do. If you don’t, you still get too many hives dependent bees 

The sheer fact we are “keeping” bees (as lharder points out in post 27) lowers our losses vs wild….that lowers the selection pressure….

We need to simulate a mass die off of around 96% as Kefuss did in Argentinian, or as he suggests in soft bond. Graft, pinch, place. 

If as some suggest we let the 96% just die we don’t have the resources for the needed positive selection, and if like most of us we are not isolated and not on a scale of hundreds of hives by the time we build our numbers back up we have lost the traits in outcross and suffer another major die back do to peeing in the ocean… 

Ie we go from 10 hives to one, by the time we split the 1 and split the splits to get back to 10 we are looking at 75% of the genes coming form the back ground drones, and we are not contributing any from our slect stock , we are reinforcing the background, not making change, this gets us no were! 
The above is another example of how permoting splits over grafting (by that I mean cell building with select stock in general.. be it grafts, comb strips/cell punch, foundtionless frame and cutting cells etc) and slection…is very hurtful to the end goals of TF…

Far better to save the resources, graft form the 1 and turn the 10 in to 20-30 strong F-1 hives pumping out drones form selected stock, rinse and repeat and had out as many cells as you can to locals. Even better to make up some drone holding colonies from drones from the breeder queen.. something your not going to do if your low on resources and trying to recover from losses.. 

Now I have no issue with splits as an easy way to get your numbers up to provide resources for positive selection down the road, just like I have no issue with using treatments to protect those resources. I have done both…. They are resources, not the end product and if I don’t let them swarm, and cull the drones there is little to no harm in it.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Msl
I understand the points you make as you make them. But your points are only good when the reasons you are making them on it good and that is subjective. You make lots of points like it is the treatment free guys thats hives are dieing and they keep having to replace them with packages. You base it on 96 percent have to die. Or even if 96 percent have to die does not happen that it is negative selection. Now I don't denigh that people have had those results. It is not what everyone is seeing and so would not pertain in every situation.

To lharders point on energy use and the bees doing the min to accomplish a goal. A bigger way to meet that gaol might be negative breeding rather then positive breeding. More pressure giving more speed. What I got from the artical that clayton just published is that natural selection was faster then artificial insimination.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0005772X.2018.1430999

Maby it is all that seperating the wheat from the chaff too quickly is leaving things out that we do not reconize as immportant. Maby creating a situation that is artificial, (like removing or treating the hives with high mite levels from the apary) is actually not finding what is best and just breeding from those that live keeps the gene pool wider over all and is good.

There is the study out there that JWchestnut has posted a few times that shows that bees with pressure (feral) but yet few genetic alies (spelled wrong) did better then managed bees with more genetic aleis and feral bees with more alies did even better. Maby negative breeding with pressure on what you are breeding is really the best as far as theroys go. It seems to be what is working best with all the small guys that live in the areas it is working in. There is always somebody out there calling for the end of days and putting a date to it. There are those out there that have lived with big bust after doing really well. The problim is that that same bust has happened to those treating in some places and may not corralate to being an actaul mite problim (though they are part too). Talking pure speed of getting from point A to point B, bond and negative breeding has seemed to work faster then all those working on vhs and artifical insimination. Now every one points at the proof that it was faster and says but we wouldn't want to keep those bee or those bees would not work were they kept bees. Yet, people are keeping them and happy and not losing or buying hives every year though some are not able to do this also.

The studies I like best are the ones that did bond and did it while in breeding range of commercial treated hives and still had enough success to see a differrence in the bees or at least the possibilities.

This is not to say that all the work on positive breeding will hold no fruit. It is just to say there is some clues out there that it has not been proven to work any better then just open breeding local and ending up with what you end up with.

There is as much proof on one side as there is on the other.
I believe I might have a lot of bees die one year compared to the rest of the years. I have seen treating bee keepers report that also. The only survey numbers out there to go from in a wide way and not case by case does not show that there is that much differrence in the big picture on bee health using chemicals of not using them.

The only place proving really hard to get resistance is with queen breeders and coming up with something that can be transferred nation wide and is not local. Maybe this has to do with better resistance but lower virus tollerance to what is around locally. 

New stuff coming in does put bees or calves at a dissadvantage. A mother will feed her calve milk that helps with stuff a cow has been exposed to but probly also would not help with something the mother had never been exposed to. I could see bee movement making it harder for bees to handle it but they can probly do pretty good with what they get used to.
Cheers
gww


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> What I got from the artical that clayton just published is that natural selection was faster then artificial insimination.


Another opion paper holding Kefuss up as the gold standard for "natural selection"..... yet when I suggest people follow his methods as he has out lined them, there is push back :scratch:

Kefuss was not natrual slection....
Gotland was natural selection, Avignon was natural selection, sort of, as they unnaturally constrated the the stock. Place 52 proven TF hives in one spot good spot you create a mite black hole and threw the volume of hives and swarming start to dominate the local DCAs
"_We however think that environment and apicultural methods could have played a part.The areas where the experiments were doneare outside France’s major agricultural zone and very favorable to the development of honey bee colonies. The colonies were ma-nipulated only when necessary and were not moved or managed as professional beekeeping would recommend, and the lack of beekeeping and environmental stress might have favored bee survival._ 
Honey bee colonies that have survived... (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/public...colonies_that_have_survived_Varroa_destructor 

We see this trend emerge again in _The influence of genetic origin and its interaction with environmental effects on the survival of Apis mellifera L. colonies in Europe_ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3896/IBRA.1.53.2.03
commercial stock moved to Avignon and left untreated lived an advrage of 711 days, the highest in the 20 locations used in the study. But Avignon TF stock move to outer locations lived and advantage of 481, coming in 12th place out of 16... treated bees commercial bees did better going TF then the Avignon TF line when moved...


Any way as for the paper... the intro says it all 


> " beekeeping without queen breeding and without cultivation of breeds"


https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0005772X.2018.1430999
Any one who suggests that modern beekeeping can survive with out queen breeding and cultivation has lost before they have started


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## mike bispham (May 23, 2009)

msl said:


> Any one who suggests that modern beekeeping can survive with out queen breeding and cultivation has lost before they have started


You keep on with this msl. Who is advocating it? Who is your target here? Or is it just a straw man? Your former self?

I don't know anybody who says anything other than: 'make increase only from your best'. That of course means making the less than best strains impotent.

That copies natural selection. But it isn't natural selection, its beekeeper selection.

Many people also advocate starting with ferals (if you can them) because natural selection will (if there are any flourishing ferals) have already done most of your work for you - since nature 'breeds' proportionately more from the strongest, and also makes the rest impotent (kills them). 

It is basic to husbandry that you never allow the weak to enter the bloodline of the next generation. Those beekeepers who understand this tend to succeed.

Now:

In a situation like that which beekeepers faced when varroa first arrived (very little resistance at all) there could be different approaches to raising resistance. You could go bond (if you could afford I) and let nature take out the weak - which many, including Kefuss did (in the early days). Into that effort you could try to seek out resistant genes - and the first place you would look is to survivors and ferals. After a little time it would become clear where the beginnings of resistance lay, and you would breed from there. As Kefuss did.

If you had access only to commercial bees you would be in the same position. And that too (if you could afford it) would be an option. (If you could afford to you could esablish an isolated breeding apiary too, apart from your commercal stock)

You could, and can, also do what Kefuss describes as soft bond, what Marla Spivak teaches, in order to improve resistance in a bloodlike that is lacking. 

If you wanted to - most commercial beekeepers appear to be happy to simply treat.

All of this _husbandry_ ....

...relies on an ability to control mating! That means that unless you are free of artificially maintained stock, or have sufficient numbers to out-mate them, you will be swimming against the tide. Solitary beekeepers will find it hard get anywhere. that's why breeding clubs are a recommended way forward.

This is, again, all straightforward hundandry. It isn't theory, its how you manage bloodlines to get the results you want, with the slightly unsual feature that you may be enlisting wild blood at times.

Again: who is arguing otherwise? Who is the target of your ire? Or are you just frustrated because you don't have enough hives or the location to succeed yourself?

Mike (UK)


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## mike bispham (May 23, 2009)

msl said:


> Another opion paper holding Kefuss up as the gold standard for "natural selection"..... Any way as for the paper... the intro says it all
> [...]
> https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0005772X.2018.1430999
> Any one who suggests that modern beekeeping can survive with out queen breeding and cultivation has lost before they have started


I think the source of your confusion is this: _the word 'breeding' has a wide application._

To do husbandry is to 'breed', but it is not really 'breeding' in the sense of the word as it is employed to describe the work queen breeders do.

That almost doesn't make sense. But it does. Try thinking about that for a while.

Mike (UK)

PS The paper suggested as further reading in that (excellent) piece above can be found at: 

https://www.researchgate.net/public...atural_selection_and_managed_honey_bee_health

It is superb. Both papers professionally develop the arguments made for years by many amateurs, myself included. From the conclusion:

"It is obvious that taking into account natural selection will not solve all of the various problems for apiculture, but instead we consider it to be a main issue in itself at the moment. As natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype, future efforts to enhance managed honeybee health should take into account the central role of apiculture in limiting natural selection and compromising colony health via adjusted keeping and breeding of local bees. Here lies a great opportunity for beekeeping in several countries, where economic constraints are no longer leading as beekeeping has become a hobby sector, with dispersed and small apiaries being the rule. Sustainable solutions for the apicultural sector can only be achieved by taking advantage of natural selection and not by attempting to limit it. "


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> But it isn't natural selection, its beekeeper selection.





> Into that effort you could try to seek out resistant genes - and the first place you would look is to survivors and ferals. After a little time it would become clear where the beginnings of resistance lay, and you would breed from there. As Kefuss did.





> Solitary beekeepers will find it hard get anywhere. that's why breeding clubs are a recommended way forward.





> You could, and can, also do what Kefuss describes as soft bond, what Marla Spivak teaches, in order to improve resistance in a bloodlike that is lacking.





> This is, again, all straightforward hundandry. It isn't theory, its how you manage bloodlines to get the results you want, with the slightly unsual feature that you may be enlisting wild blood at times.


agreed on all points

Thanks for the link, its a good read
I guess were I am coming form is in the intro
_Domestication always interferes by definition with natural selection_


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## mike bispham (May 23, 2009)

msl said:


> agreed on all points
> 
> Thanks for the link, its a good read
> I guess were I am coming form is in the intro
> _Domestication always interferes by definition with natural selection_


I would agree, but with this qualification: 'Domestication' in the honeybee is not really absolute in the way it is in other livestock. And it's ill-defined. We might take it to mean, for the purposes of definition 'couldn't survive without help'. But would that apply only to the bulk of a first generation released into the wild? if there were survivors they soon be something we wouldn't call 'domesticated'. (It happens quite often with pigs I understand)

The point to remember is that domestication (achieved through selective breeding) is an identical process to natural selection. Both are change in the bloodline due to the 'selection' of parents - one way or another. 

Mike (UK)


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> The point to remember is that domestication (achieved through selective breeding) is an identical process to natural selection


I disagree, if it was identical it would have the same outcome.
Do to the basic function of selection, types are going to have a lot in common, but they are not the same

The point on pigs is spot on, apples would be another good one (F-1 is feral) but most people certainty consider them both to be domesticated stock
You come from an area were wild bees are(or were) native, I come from one were there roots are escaped livestock its not surprising our view on the subject differs.


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## mike bispham (May 23, 2009)

msl said:


> I disagree, if it was identical it would have the same outcome.
> Do to the basic function of selection, types are going to have a lot in common, but they are not the same


The process is the same in that one or other forms of 'selection' of parents determine the outcome - the characteristics of the offspring.

The process is the same across all sorts of husbandry and into dedicated breeding - the outcomes in terms of characteristics are always different.

Mike (UK)


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

mike bispham said:


> The point to remember is that domestication (achieved through selective breeding) is an identical process to natural selection. Both are change in the bloodline due to the 'selection' of parents - one way or another.
> 
> Mike (UK)


Darwin had a chapter in his book "the origin of species" about domestication of species and selective breeding as an argument for his theory.


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