# Our Gene Pool



## sqkcrk

Is our gene pool very wide amongst the queen producers? Is that, perhaps, part of the problem we have keeping bees alive and healthy?


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## wildbranch2007

sqkcrk said:


> Is our gene pool very wide amongst the queen producers? Is that, perhaps, part of the problem we have keeping bees alive and healthy?


my opinion is plenty wide in the USA. The queen producers may not take advantage of it. While the gates were open to Australia beeks in the USA were getting bees from around the world through friends in Australia. again in my opinion the queen producers(and this is the correct word) have to produce more queens than the droans that are available, causes all the droan layers, supercedures, lousy laying queens. I tried 7 different sources of queens in the last couple of years and only got good queens out of canada, then the producer stoped shipping. Time to start raising your own queens in s.c.


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## AstroBee

sqkcrk said:


> Is our gene pool very wide amongst the queen producers? Is that, perhaps, part of the problem we have keeping bees alive and healthy?


My mother is from Ireland and my father is a mutt. I'd say I've got some hybrid vigor


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## chillardbee

I'm glad you started this thread, I was thinking about posting something similar.

IMO, I believe there is not enough diversification in the genetics that we have here in North America. Hawaii and Australia and even New Zealand are probably in the same boat as well. What can be expected, since there was only a certian amount of bees brought to these countries from Europe. The first bees into america came in 1620's. These were the dark A. M. Mellifera bees. When the economic value of the italian were discovered in the 1850's, it soon made it's way into the americas, where it became the most commercially used bee. It's hard to determine just how many hives and queens were brought over from Europe including those of the carniolan and caucasion bees, but whether there was, or is, a big enough gene pool is questionable.

Through the 1900's, advancment in queen rearing has led to commercial mass production of queens. Lines of bees selected for their desired characteristics were even inbred to keep those lines going. These queens are sold to commercial and hobbiest beekeepers alike. 

We cannot rely on feral colonies either. One must consider that 1. where did they come from (an apairy?), 2. There will never be enough feral drones around to compete with drones from near by commercial apairies, and 3. the hive density in North America is not suffecient enough to prevent inbreeding or at least hadn't been, in which case there is a lot of inbreds out there.

Even if we consider the exchange between breeding stock with breeders (say 20 breeders) a form of playing musical queen, pass it down the line type thing. Out of every new breeder queen developed, half the genes are going to be lost at some point. A breeder could use the new queen as the breeder queen hybridizing those daughters to his current stock or after breeding daughter queens from her, select breeder queens to use and again being bred to his current stock, either way, as time goes on, the 20 different lines will at one point, many years down the road, eventually become homogenious.

Another consideration is if a breeder uses only one breeder or several even from the same line. A queen breeder can raise up to or more than 10,000 queens in a season flooding areas with 1 genotype where commercial beeks keep their bees. Now, for them, if there arises a need for them to become self sufficient by rearing their own queens, there will not be any diversifaction at all. In light of the recent events, this might come to pass now. The inbreeding problem for the americas is also made worse by bringing in inbred stock. The honeybee has only been in those countries (hawaii, australia, new zealand) since the 1820's, or later. There was never as good as diversification of genetics in any of those countries, as what there was in North America.

I would be nice if queens could be made available from the old world to bring in new genetics and I don't mean to only special groups or universities but to queen breeders and regular beeks like you and me. This would bring in a much needed influx of new blood. but do to the nature of politics and the greed of man, we may never see that happen.


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## deknow

...the queen is always greener on the other side of the pond.

deknow


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## chillardbee

In this case, the atlantic ocean.


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## fat/beeman

I would be interested in trading queens with other breeders with same interest.

Don

diversity is going to be the key to survival


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## wildbranch2007

I still think there is more than enough diversity so did some research

beeslave post here with queens he sells in packages:
Joe Latshaw (Ohio) Aurea Italian
Steve Parks (California) Italian
Glenn Apiaries (California) Carnolian VSH 


OWA Apiaries (Washington) wild stock & Russians
Canada (Ferguson Apiaries) Buckfast & Danish stock.
Glenn Apiaries (California) VSH x MN Hygienic.
Florida (Miksa) banded Italian
Joe Latshaw (Ohio) Karnica 

from bee-l and let us not forget the yugo but couldn't find any.

copied small part of each post below the link.

http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/...-L&9=A&I=-3&J=on&d=No+Match;Match;Matches&z=4


We have however used Australian queens ( along with U.S. and Hawaii sources) 
ever year since the import. One year we desperately needed 500 queens and 
Australia was our ONLY source. We called all U.S. producers and came up 
empty. All 500 arrived alive!

I have now in my yards bees which came from varroa tolerant queens from 
Italy sent in via Australia. Buckfast queens from the Abby via Australia. 
Queens from stock Dann Purvis inseminated in Australia.


regarding the above bees 

http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/...=A&I=-3&J=on&K=2&d=No+Match;Match;Matches&z=4


A survey of alleles in U.S. bees showed we needed genetics. Thanks to AHB,
Russian bee import and the Australian import the situation has improved.
Sue Cobey has said we still need genetics. A point I agree with. <---- guess we still need more for reaserch?

I did read somewhere that she did or was trying to import seamen a few years 
back?

http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/...=A&I=-3&J=on&K=2&d=No+Match;Match;Matches&z=4



>Since there is no varroa in Australia, I'd think it's hard for the
Australians to test mite resistance of their crosses 'over there.'

Testing was done in the U.S.


Dann Purvis is testing the Australian lines now. By adding
varroa load and frames of varroa infested brood he hopes to kill off at
least 50% of his hives each year! Each year its getting harder to do as the
lines are becoming very varroa tolerant.


so if the breeders need/want diversity it has been imported. Canada had 
austrailian imports for many years, Purvis may have added it to his lines, 
weaver sells austrailian bees and you have all the lines above including the 
Yugo(im sure ist somewhere?) I really was looking for a post that I remember 
from an austrialian that posts on bee-l about how long and how many different 
bees had been imported but couldn't find it.


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## Yuleluder

I'm not sure how many alleles if any the Australian imports actually added to our gene pool. I say this because honeybees are not a native species to Australia. Maybe Australia is able to import more honeybees from europe then the U.S., again I don't know. 

Do we even know how many alleles exist in the honeybee Genome, or are we still finding new alleles? I'm assuming that new alleles do show up from time to time do to mutations. I would guess that some mutations of alleles have occured here in the U.S.


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## delber

wildbranch2007 said:


> I tried 7 different sources of queens in the last couple of years and only got good queens out of canada, then the producer stoped shipping. Time to start raising your own queens in s.c.


From what info I've found the reason why they've stopped shipping is because some "government regulation" :doh: here has closed the border for canada to ship to us. I understand that there may be something with Australia as well but I'm not sure on that part.


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## wildbranch2007

delber said:


> From what info I've found the reason why they've stopped shipping is because some "government regulation" I understand that there may be something with Australia as well but I'm not sure on that part.


they can ship from canada but each shippment must be inspected and a payment made that makes it prohibitedly expensive to get small shippments.
Australia has been shut down totally due to the potential of unwanted
something that I can't remember off the top of my head.


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## wildbranch2007

Yuleluder said:


> I'm not sure how many alleles if any the Australian imports actually added to our gene pool. I say this because honeybees are not a native species to Australia. Maybe Australia is able to import more honeybees from europe then the U.S., again I don't know.


from what I have read they have been importing bees from other countries, including at some point from the U.s., I'm just not sure what countries. Im not sure if the Australian imports actually added to our gene pool either, but since they have imported from more countries than we have, if there gene pool is no different than ours, then where do these people expect to get these new alleles from?? I'm guessing that if people are going to the trouble to get bees into australia and then get them to the U.S. it must be for something? then again as someone said before, the grass is always greener


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## chillardbee

wildbranch2007 said:


> I still think there is more than enough diversity so did some research
> 
> beeslave post here with queens he sells in packages:
> Joe Latshaw (Ohio) Aurea Italian
> Steve Parks (California) Italian
> Glenn Apiaries (California) Carnolian VSH
> 
> 
> OWA Apiaries (Washington) wild stock & Russians
> Canada (Ferguson Apiaries) Buckfast & Danish stock.
> Glenn Apiaries (California) VSH x MN Hygienic.
> Florida (Miksa) banded Italian
> Joe Latshaw (Ohio) Karnica
> 
> from bee-l and let us not forget the yugo but couldn't find any.


 

I understand where you are coming from with that. We have several races of bees here but even for those breeders that are using these bees for breeding, they will need to bring in new genetic material, and that is not possible in the current situation. Also, how is it possible to keep the same line going without at least a little bit of inbreeding. 

The only new genetics that have really come in have been the russians, but once again there was only a limited amount that came in, were tested first, bred for their desired caracteristics then made available to the public. The AHB is also a contributer to new genetics but they certianly are not playing a roll in the overall breeding program of queen breeders or commercial beeks and hobbiests for obvious reasons. I'm not sure about the history of the yugo but if it was a strain recently brought from the old world it's at least a little help.

VSH means nothing in regards to new blood. These were bees found in our own back yard that could tolerate the mite. To make it worse that gene responsible for VSH is recessive which is hard to breed into other bees and is going to be the cause of massive inbreeding in order to keep those lines going. 

Sue Cobey brought in semen and eggs, (i believe that is correct), at the time when that was in the news I was excited because there might of been an oppertunity here to get some old world carniolan genes back into my bees. Hopefully they will be made available soon but this is where I'm getting at about the availability to special groups, It's doing neither you nor I any good simply because there not available to use.

Bees have only since 1860 ocuppied all of north america, 150 years ago, and that the first bees into New Zealand and Australia happened around 1840-50. I'm doubting that there was a large enough gene pool to allow the mass production of queens off even several selected lines, that at some point, we wouldn't see a bit of inbreeding going on and get worse with time. 

I think the bees and beeks would be further ahead if they could implement their own breeding programs that bring in new genes on an annual or bi-annual basis. Example: I've got 25 queens coming from New zealand, Carniolans bred from genetics that came from 
queen breeding institutes in Europe, namely Lunz, Austria; Kirchhain, Germany; and Mayen, Germany. they will provide a drone base as well for the queens the following year from which i will be getting from a friend here in BC. I love carniolan bees but they are limited on where one can get them with out going through miles of red tape.

What I'm trying to say is this: There should be no ban for allowing bees from Europe into North America, at least for providing breeding stock. Not all of us have the experience or the means or the funds to bring in semen or eggs. What has Europe got that we haven't? It would be so much easier to just perchase queens from a breeders over seas so we could actually put them to a practical use in our own bees and our breeding programs. It would introduce new genetics to keep a line going or to create hybrids that were once so popularly productive.

anyway, once again, thanks for letting me rant.


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## HVH

I have often wondered if someone could map out the USA and start a project collecting wild drone semen in areas defines as remote. I have seen honey bees in the high Sierra's and really doubt that they are from a commercial operations (at least not recent). The USA has a lot of land full of bees with a lot of potential genetic variability. If semen were collected from diverse locations and even a single gene sequenced to ascertain differing levels of divergence then a breeding program could be designed around this principle. Collecting drones from a bee tree would be easy enough and the semen could even be isolated on site, taken to the lab, and a single gene (or preferably more) PCR amplified and sequenced. Semen last pretty well at room temp so any II could be done based on sequence criteria.


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## Lost Bee

The problem with most people wanting lots of genetic variation is that they only want it for short-term normally.
Only a true conservationist who will keep all his genetic material unselected and present with all their variations 
for future generations to come and will have a good gene pool. Almost of every breeders out there are only after 
immediate production traits and will select the best of the best and get rid of the rest. This will work for a while 
until the breeder starts seeing that his plants or animals are not as productive anymore and possibly getting 
weaker with each passing generation. 

I really think that this queen rearing thing is fine in small amounts but in excess it can't do anything good 
for gene pools. Continously selecting the best for whatever trait you want will bottleneck the gene pool and 
lessen the species survival in the long run. Imagine one human male mating with every female in a small town.
You can see the impact that would have wouldn't you. I'm sure only using a few queens to populate lots of 
hives has the same effect over time.

I have read a book or two on breeding and natural genetic conservation and find that *Genetic Swamping* is 
another problem. This occurs when locally addapted populations get too small in terms of genes and introduced 
breeding individuals outnumber the breeders already present. This example is from a wild salmon stream but 
still holds true to any animal regardless. Imagine a stream that has 5000 mature wild salmon in it and someone 
releases 50 hatchery salmon and they all mate together. The hatchery genetic material is low quantity compared 
to the natural stock and not much will change the overall wild population too much. On other hand, if the same 
stream was overfished with only 100 wild salmon present with 2000 hatchery being released in it and they breed. 
You can see that the wild salmon stock would never be the same and the local adaption would be lost for a 
very long time from the dilution. 


The link below is about the one-migrant-per-generation rule which would allow some new genetic material 
to be added to a population. Genes introduced by even a single migrant per generation may swamp the effects 
of inbreeding, however, regardless of the size of the population but not enough to destroy the local adaptation 
present. I imagine one queen every year from another apiary would do the same. If you take time developping
a locally adapted stock of bees please don't destroy it with too much requeening from other apiaries as well.
Like most things in life a little is good too much always kills.

http://www.cfc.umt.edu/personnel/mills/Mills and Allendorf OMPG.pdf


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## Oldtimer

Varroa has been a big part in the loss of genetic diversity. Around the world and 100 years ago in the US there were many lines of bees, many alleles, and bees with some very good traits. As none of these bees had been exposed to varroa, they had no need to be resistant, but might have otherwise been excellent bees.

But now many people think they should not treat and allow any bees that succumb to varroa, to just die. In this way whole lines of bees have been wiped out, and much genetic diversity lost.

Much of the damage has already been done. However for whatever genetic material is left, in my humble opinion, bees should not be allowed to just die. But blending those beneficial and diverse genes, into lines of bees that include them all, plus varroa resistance, is a complex task and only a few are really working hard at it. I can think of one queen breeder in particular, who is also on this forum, doing a lot in this feild.


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## David LaFerney

AstroBee said:


> My mother is from Ireland and my father is a mutt. I'd say I've got some hybrid vigor


I'm pretty sure my fathers side is from Jewish folk who lost there religion, and Mom's family are Scotch/Irish who gave up drink. No wonder we're hard to get along with.


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## sqkcrk

Scotch/Irish? Not Scots/Irish? Scotch is the alcohol, isn't it? Or maybe you meant Scotch/Irish meaning Irish who drink Scotch?


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## David LaFerney

Can't answer that. It seems that I left my syntax checker on my other computer.


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## Lost Bee

I'm sure the way queen raising goes on today has probably caused more genetic 
diversity loss than any one single disease or parasite. I don't think taking one queen 
and mass producing 100 of more queens from her to be good for diversity when the 
others are not used. Stocks of reduced diversity are always hit harder when 
mayhem arrives. 

The same goes for monocultures of plants like corn,cotton,wheat, etc. The fields 
look great for a while till the pests multiply like crazy. Then farmers go crazy with 
pesticides and the cycles continues downward and we eat it all. 

Oh well, let the bee gods sort them out.


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## Oldtimer

Yes there have been, and probably are, queen breeders like that. Like I said, only a few are really working hard on this problem. Check out the work being done by the likes of Robert Russell, it may open wider horizons than that "book or two" you have read.



Lost Bee said:


> Only a true conservationist who will keep all his genetic material unselected and present with all their variations
> for future generations


Exactly. The treatment free "let 'em die if they can't tolerate mites" brigade are doing the precise opposite to keeping all genetic material for future generations. In fact they are doing exactly what your books said not to do, selecting for one trait only and eliminating the rest. Long term this is the worst thing for the bee gene pool. Who knows, in future bees may be threatened with different problems, and the ability to adapt to changing threats, built into their genes over millenia, may have been lost due to the short sighted selecting for varroa resistance and varroa resistance alone, that many are doing now.

Some of the literature on treatment free says you have to let 80 to 90 percent of your bees die, breed from the survivors, and do the whole thing again, for maybe three or more years, before you get reasonable varroa resistance. Personally I'm not sure it works that way, but if that's what people are being told to do, it's a lot of genetic material being flushed down the toilet.


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## Oldtimer

So just to add something positive, about what I'm doing myself about this, I don't let any hives die. In my now 80 or so hives I have a wide gene pool that I have sourced from all over my country and am working with some commercial honey producers to get good stock. 
Some hives are treated chemically, but if they don't need that they don't get it. But who knows what beneficial genes might be lurking in those bees who would have died of varroa if I let them.

I'm keeping those bees alive, and producing drones, so those genes will be gradually worked in to the other bees that need less treatment. The idea is to slowly reduce the treatment requirements of the entire population, but not actually lose any genetic material along the way.

Beekeepers who are "true conservationists" should adopt a similar approach.

Oh well that's my rant . But my country, for bees, is a closed genetic pool. And it's pretty much the same in the US. So genetic diversity and the preservation of it, in the face of threats like varroa, is one of my biggest concerns.


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## rweakley

From what I understand Russel who posts on here is doing queen breeding the right way. Take for example if a person orders like 50 queens from him. Russel makes sure that the 50 queens don't all come from the same queen mother, in fact I'm not sure, but it might be 50 queen mothers. He also has yards spread hither and yon to spread things out and even has an island he uses for complete isolation of the genes depending on what he is trying to accomplish. He also imports bees from around the world to add genetics to what he already has. Ok the russel Apiaries comercial is over you can now go back to your regularly scheduled program. 
Rod


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## Ted Kretschmann

Before Varroa, we had 180 matriarchail lineages. After Varroa, we had around 36 left in the USA. That is quite a genetic bottleneck. So when Aussie Queens became available. We purchased around 1000 and scattered them through out the outfit. WHY? Because the Breeder queens were two years out of Europe. Thus they are the purest European bees we now have. Both the Carniolians and Italians I got were excellent. I think it was shooting ourselves in the foot when the border closed. Now I am after Kiwi stock, even if I have to go through Canada to get them. I also plan on more queens from Russell. Especially his off shore stock where several of the old lineages that were wiped out on the mainland still exist. Roger Morse said of the AHB, that Dilution was the Solution. That same statement can be said of many of our problems which may be more genetically based than we realize. TED


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## Adam Foster Collins

Oldtimer,

Your point about breeding only survivor stock - or stock that survives varroa - and letting the rest die is an interesting one, and one that might deserve its own thread.

But I wonder just how many people are truly doing that - letting their bees die. Sure there are those that practice that approach, but I think that there are more that don't. 

Adam


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## Lost Bee

If your only worried about genetic variation and want more than ever before you could 
take every type of honey bee and crossbreed them willy nilly. Crossbreeding as many 
different races will create more variation than what you will ever know what to do 
with. Inbreeding has the opposite effect. Of course this introgression of honey bees
would mean you would lose their original variation. 

For example: 

If you like black bees you could make a reciprocal cross of a russian bee honey bee 
(Apis mellifera primorsky) with a carniolan bee (Apis mellifera carnica) and call the 
lines created A1 and A2. I couldn't find the scientific russian honey bee name so 
I made it up using the region where they come from. 

Then you could also make a reciprocal cross of a english black bee (Apis mellifera mellifera) 
with a caucasian honey bee (Apis mellifera caucasica) and call the lines now created 
B1 and B2. 

Reciprocal crosses for those who don't know is crossing one male from one group with a female 
another from group and the doing the opposite with the other cross. 

For this example: 

Crossing a male russian honey bee with a female carniolan honey bee. Then crossing a male 
carniolan honey bee with a female russian honey bee. These would be your first reciprocal
cross in this example. You would then have to do the same with the english black honey bee 
and the caucasian honey bee. 

This would give you 4 lines to breed from. Line A1, A2, B1 and B2. If you then placed these 
4 lines in one apiary and let them cross naturally for a few generations with only natural selection 
taking place you would have more types of black bees than probably anyone at this time. The 
more hives per line the more variation you would have. I bet a few hives would be very good, 
while other hives just normal and some hives worse than the original breeding stock. 

Who knows what you would end up with after all of this? Maybe you could call your 
super black honey bees (Apis mellifera *****). I also made up that name.  

You may need a kevlar bee suit as well to protect you from the wild (Aka Hot) 
lines produced along the way to your holy grail of black honey bee quest. 

Adding a yellow honey bees along the way would create even more variation. 

Of all the honey bees that I know of the Buckfast probably has most variation 
with all the bees used to create it. 

Taken from wikipedia: 

The Buckfast contains heritage from mainly A.m. ligurica (North Italian), A.m. mellifera (English), 
A.m. mellifera (French), A.m. anatolica (Turkish) and A.m. cecropia (Greek). The Buckfast bee 
of today also contains heritage from two African rare and docile African stocks A.m. sahariensis 
and the A.m. monticola, but not the "Africanized" A.m. Scutellata.

Good Luck.


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## deknow

...this kind of crossing (cross anything with anything else to see what happens) was done by the USDA in the 1940s....note that this was before Dr. Kerr imported the african bees to Brazil (and before the USDA imported those genetics to the U.S. and distributed them to queen breeders). The result? Bees that were so hot that the researchers were wearing double layer bee suits and still couldn't handle the bees.

...but the idea that genetic diversity must be maintained at all costs is, I think, the wrong idea. Culling is at least as important as introducing new stock.

This was a discussion we had over several talks (and a pannel discussion) at the Northeast Treatment Free Beekeeping Conference this year....Kirsten Ebbersten was talking about _not_ breeding from your best queens, but breeding from all your queens in order to maintain diversity and a healthy population.

I didn't disagree with what she was saying at all...if one has a population of bees that one thinks is well adapted that one wants to maintain.

...but what if one's bees aren't well adapted? (if those posting here thought their bees were well adapted, they would not be looking to bring in new genetics to solve problems).

With bees (at least from a breeders perspective), inbreeding should be a relative non-issue. The first sign of inbreeding is diploid drones/spotty brood...anyone paying attention to their bees will notice this, and even if the cause is misinterpreted (mites, EHB, chalk, sac, etc) the ultimate solution is to requeen....i such a problem persists despite requeening, then different stock is called for.

I think I've posted here on this subject before....imagine a population of bees over a wide area that are truly feral and unmanaged. These bees are happily buzzing along...until there is a challenge....a very harsh winter (or 3 in a row), scant flow, wildfire, new disease/parasite on the scene, massive flooding, etc. Let's say 90-99% of the population is wiped out....what happens next?

There is a wide open niche for honeybees, with few to fill the role. Plenty of forage, plenty of nest sites.

What bees are left? Certainly there is the element of luck....but there are also genetic traits at play here. The bees that are left are either in isolated groups of survivor hives (due to shared genetics, a shared microclimate, or shared traits without being close genetically). These bees swarm...taking advantage of the available resources....these small pockets of bees are likely to become somewhat "inbred"...in the same way a "breeder" might inbreed on purpose in order to "fix" a trait...in this case, we may or may not know what the beneficial traits are..but likely many (if not most) of the survivors have some of these. ...whatever allowed these bees to survive gets fixed in the resulting population....due to "inbreeding", and ultimately, due to culling the stock that does not have these traits.

Now, as the bees repopulate the area, these "inbred" subgroups eventually come into contact with one another...."hybrid vigor" is the result, and useful traits are exchanged as these groups meet and are mixed.

Nothing about such a system preserves diversity to the extent that is being discussed here....bees (through their rather unique mating system) maintain genes by their nature...but a genetic combination that can't fend for itself throughout the season well enough to overwinter itself isn't worth much to me...and nature would never allow such a colony to produce drones or swarm the season following a winter that would have killed them. It's kind of like building a sales force and never firing the poor salespeople...even worse, having both your good and poor salespeople train new hires...your salesforce will never "get better" in such a system.

So

In a situation where you are not satisfied with the bees you have...where they are not "fit", propagating everything doesn't get you anywhere. Of course, everyone wants to simply buy a "magic queen" that will solve the problems...since they have never seen a "magic queen", they think it needs to be imported from somewhere else.

But, if you (or nature) wants a bee that is "fit" for a particular area/purpose, you've got to start with something and sort it out...it is not simply an additive process, you've got to get rid of the junk...nature does this brutally if left to her own devices.

Yes, this is a "genetic bottleneck"....it is how breeders of all animals and plants reach a goal....it is how nature has persisted all of this time....it is how changing environments are adapted to by all manner of living things.

Did you know that all housecats can be traced back to one female ancestor...one "Eve" cat? Can you imagine the news stories if we were watching this happen in realtime? "Cats are doomed" "Genetic bottleneck stifles genetic diversity" "Cats are an endangered species" ....yet cats are doing fine...both on their own and as human companions. This is despite a very tight genetic bottleneck...because culling is at least as important as introducing new stock.

So, in our panel discussion, Kerstin and I agreed that in a stable, well adapted population you definitely want to be breeding from everyone (walk away splits like Dee or the Mraz operation does). But, if you are looking to improve your stock, you can't simply keep all the genetics around...you've got to select somehow who you are going to breed from. There are all kinds of criteria one can use to select, but if the end goal is bees that can survive with minimal intervention, then you are quite close to a "natural model" if your selection criteria is "who survived the winter without much intervention".

deknow


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## Lost Bee

Deknow, 

You said that "bees that were so hot that the researchers were wearing double layer 
bee suits and still couldn't handle the bees."

Well I did mention: You may need a kevlar bee suit as well to protect you from the wild (Aka Hot) 
lines produced along the way to your holy grail of black honey bee quest. 


I just thought that this thread was about saving genetic material and 
you sound like someone more into selective breeding when you say:

" but a genetic combination that can't fend for itself throughout the season 
well enough to overwinter itself isn't worth much to me..." 

and 

I do emphasize you say "me" and "worth". This all sounds like selective breeding. 
Especially your sale people example.

Would ordering 10 breeder queens from the best queen breeder in the world 
make all of our problems go away? After which we could nuke all the other 
bee hives and start all over.

I can't believe I said nuke the bee hives.


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## deknow

Lost Bee said:


> Deknow,
> 
> You said that "bees that were so hot that the researchers were wearing double layer
> bee suits and still couldn't handle the bees."
> 
> Well I did mention: You may need a kevlar bee suit as well to protect you from the wild (Aka Hot)
> lines produced along the way to your holy grail of black honey bee quest.


....forgive me if I misread your intent....I got the impression that you were referring to the hotness of the individual strains you were discussing...I'm talking about mixing strains in general, even those that are not considered "hot".


> I just thought that this thread was about saving genetic material and
> you sound like someone more into selective breeding weh you say:


well, the title of the thread is "our gene pool"...which is what I'm discussing.



> " but a genetic combination that can't fend for itself throughout the season
> well enough to overwinter itself isn't worth much to me..."
> 
> I do emphasize you say "me" and "worth". This all sounds
> like selective breeding. Especially your sale people example.


errr, you can selectively quote all you want, but it doesn't change what I said:
"...and nature would never allow such a colony to produce drones or swarm the season following a winter that would have killed them"
...what do you think happens in nature if not "selective breeding" for the most fit?



> Would ordering 10 breeder queens from the best queen breeder in the world
> make all of our problems go away? After which we could nuke the hives and start all over.
> I can't believ I said nuke the bee hives.


No, and I never suggested that. But a beekeeper that requeens all their hives with mated queens is essentially "nuking" their hives....at least as far as genetics are concerned.

deknow


----------



## Lost Bee

Deknow, 

You didn't mention anything about "Eve".
Did you watch the video? 

Actually "Natural Selection" and "Selective Breeding" are not the same thing.
With natural selection, mother nature helps the best make it to the next generation.
With selective breeding it's man deciding what he likes. And we know how man has 
been spinning his own demise with extictions around the world. What's next on the 
list?

Difference with natural and selective breeding is seen in the following link.

http://www.teacherweb.com/TX/Canyon...ction-vs-Selective-Breeding-Presentation1.pdf

Oh well such is life.


----------



## deknow

...what kind.d of breeding is it if you feed and medicate.your stock that wouldn't otherwise survive so that you can breed them next year?

Deknow


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## Lost Bee

deknow said:


> ...what kind.d of breeding is it if you feed and medicate.your stock that wouldn't otherwise survive so that you can breed them next year?
> 
> Deknow


That kind of breeding would be going against natural selection for one thing. That would allow the 
progressively weaker stock to live. I bet the bees in 1920 were better suited at surviving in the wild 
then the "Wheelchair" bees we have now. 

Selective breeding is like race car driving. All the drivers want is faster and better cars and sooner 
or later they can't handle the speed and they all crash. Sound familiar? If some bee keepers would have
it their way they would want honey bees that hand load the honey into the trucks and make the call to 
the suppliers as well. 

: :lpf: :lpf:


----------



## AstroBee

Adam Foster Collins said:


> Oldtimer,
> 
> Your point about breeding only survivor stock - or stock that survives varroa - and letting the rest die is an interesting one, and one that might deserve its own thread.
> 
> ...snip
> Adam


I read what Oldtimer wrote and believe he said basically the opposite. He advocated NOT "letting the rest die" and instead treating the weak ones for the purpose of keeping the genes alive with the ability to diversify the next generation.


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## Adam Foster Collins

I know that. But he was talking about the fact that people advocate doing it.

Adam


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## beeG

Bottlenecked species do not always survive the natural selection. 
As for breeding weaker beings to save genetic material. Sometimes this must be done . 
Cull breeding is great in developing goals, but is by no means a way to preserve genetic diversity. And too much cull breeding can cause great genetic loss. 

I do believe man has prevented extinctions of many species in modern times .


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## deknow

...well bottlenecks are what happens when a population is unfit for its environment. Extinction is one possible outcome. I can't off the top of my head think of any way (other than changing the environment) that a population that is unfit for its environment can adapt other than a bottleneck of some degree. Certainly propping everything up so as not to lose genetic combinations that need to be propped up in order not to die isn't going to get us there...but you can change the environment....you can keep bees in an environment where they are medicated routinely (maybe 2 or 3 different antibiotics every year in addition to mite treatments), where any dearth or drop in population is remedied with feed magically appearing in the hive.
deknow


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## beeG

Your points are well noted and proven deknow but there is always more then one way to skin a cat, and if you are not flexable that cat may turn back around on you. I see the point from the other breeder which is keeping diversity. I know a genetic breeder who saved a mutation, which is now hardy but almost dead when he got a hold of it. Due to heavy inbreeding because it was a simple recesive trait and very expensive. Why cant your ideas and his ideas survive in tandom? I think what you do is importnat same as the other guy and maybe in the furture a cross of your ideas may be genius.


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## deknow

inbreeding does not cause mutation...it causes inbreeding depression, which is only a combination of already existing alleles, not the creation of new alleles.

the concepts of saving everything and culling the unfit are mutually exclusive....you can't do both at the same time.

there are ways to aproach this while minimizing losses....Mike Palmer shares a lot of information in this area...listen to him...his advice comes from experience and is well considered (and does not "preserve" weak genetics). ...but in some circumstances (like at the beginning of a breeding program) there is a lot to be said for actually letting things sort themselves out...we've had hives survive the winter that I never would have guessed would do so...and I've had "trophy" hives crash all the way. I don't claim it is fast or cheap...but there are plenty of fast and cheap options out there for those that want to go that route.

deknow


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## Fusion_power

Keeping susceptible bees alive by treating with chemicals slows down the natural process that should be occurring. The best thing we as beekeepers could do to manage varroa and tracheal mites is to ignore them and let the susceptible bees die. We don't have enough diversity here in the U.S. to make a difference so there isn't any real reason to keep treating bees except that it is the only way some beekeepers can see to make a profit. If you are still treating your bees, shame on you.

I would like to import some carefully selected strains of bees into the U.S. for breeding work. There is a wide range of genetics that could be useful under the right conditions. I would not advocate importing indiscriminately, that just opens the door to any and every disease and pest on the planet. Bees I would like to see imported include a couple of strains from Greece, some from Turkey, some from Anatolia, some from Egypt, and some from North Africa. We as beekeepers should be pushing our government for some more controlled imports.

If you are really worried about diversity in the bee population, then you should consider the effect of a limited population of queen breeders using a limited population of breeder queens. We are breeding from about 1/1000th of the bee population. That is 1000 to 1 inbreeding year after year. The cumulative effect is ongoing reduction of genetic diversity. We can import genetics till we are blue in the face but that won't help until we do something about the ongoing artificial bottleneck at the queen production level.

Sue Cobey used steady selection pressure to develop the NWC. There is a loss of diversity even with the methods she used but it was kept to a minimum by the methods used in the breeding work. If you are seriously interested in maintaining diversity in your bees, do some due diligence by studying selection methods that result in low but constant pressure to achieve a breeding goal.

DarJones


----------



## AstroBee

I’m certainly no geneticist, nor do I even claim to understand the intricacies of honey bee genetics, but the following scenario is plaguing my mind.

Let’s suppose that we have two strains of honey bee, let’s call them Strain X and Strain Y. Further, suppose we have two diseases, let’s call them Disease A and Disease B. We’re given that the untreated percent kill rate for Strain X when exposed to Disease A is 100% and that the untreated percent kill rate for Strain Y when exposed to Disease A is 1%. Similarly, the percent kill rate for Strain X when exposed to Disease B is 1% and that Strain Y when exposed to Disease B is 100%. 

Clearly Strain X is highly susceptible to Disease A, but highly resilient to Disease B, and Strain Y is resilient to Disease A, but highly susceptible to Disease B.

So, the obvious, and very likely simplistic, scenario is as follows: both populations are exposed (without treatment) to Disease A first, resulting in a total loss of Strain X. What remains after this exposure is only Strain Y. Sometime later the remaining Strain Y is exposed to Disease B resulting in its total elimination, with the end result of total loss of honey bees. Now, if Strain X was treated during to Disease A the end result would be much different. 

Not trying to take sides in this debate, but I’m curious as how the “no treatments ever crowd” responds to this simplistic scenario?


----------



## deknow

no way to respond...it's simplistic to the point of not representing anything in the real world.

deknow


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## Oldtimer

Simplistic? A little rich coming from a viewpoint saying just let nature take it's course and let all the "weak" die.

AstroBees analogy does have a very real world application. There are in fact 2 real world pests we could consider. To be consistant with the "let the weak die" argument, we could say, we do not do anything to kill varroa mites, just let the bees deal with them. And we do not do anything to kill hive beetles, just let the bees deal with them too. Any bees that cannot survive these die. Would the genetic material lost be worth it?

Varroa are not a natural predator of _apis melifera_, but were introduced by human intervention.

In nature, predators develop in tandem with the prey. That's natural selection that plays out over long periods of time. A bit different than line breeding a supposedly varroa resistant bee in a few generations.

Before varroa arrived, I worked for a few years for an outfit with around 4,000 hives. We had developed several lines of bees, which were robust and productive, nothing weak about them. But when varroa arrived, most of those bees had little defence. But were they worth saving? In my opinion there was much genetic material in those bees worth saving. It would take longer to achieve varroa resistance than the line breeding shortcut, as does evolution in nature. But the end result will be a better bee. Will it happen in my generation? Probably not. But it will happen.

Having said all that, I want to emphasise that I'm just expressing my own view on this matter. It's been a good thread and it's also good that there are different opinions. While I don't agree with all of the opinions it's probably a good thing we all don't think the same. We need opinion diversity, as much as we need genetic diversity.


----------



## deknow

Oldtimer said:


> Simplistic? A little rich coming from a viewpoint saying just let nature take it's course and let all the "weak" die.


...I'm not sure there is anything simplistic about my viewpoint...I have come to it after a great deal of research, experience, and consideration. I've taken some time to cover this background here.



> AstroBees analogy does have a very real world application.


Astrobee posited a hypothetical situation, not an analogy.



> There are in fact 2 real world pests we could consider.


Yes, there are 2 real world pests we could consider. Now, if we could come up with 2 "strains" of bees (presumably each strain is closely related within the colony...not much drone variation)...one which is 100% susceptable to varroa and 1% susceptable to SHB...and another one that is 1% susceptable to varroa and 100% suceptable to SHB....then we could talk.




> To be consistant with the "let the weak die" argument, we could say, we do not do anything to kill varroa mites, and we do not do anything to kill hive beetles. Any bees that cannot survive these die. Would the genetic material lost be worth it?


...it's worth it to me. it's worth it to our suppliers. it's worth it to our customers.



> Varroa are not a natural predator of _apis melifera_, but were introduced by human intervention.


Our interaction with nature is rife with nature rebounding "naturally" to unnatural changes humans make to the environment. 



> In nature, predators develop in tandem with the prey. That's natural selection that plays out over long periods of time. A bit different than line breeding a supposedly varroa resistant bee in a few generations.


Exactly...and this "tandem development" works because both parties are "developing". Bees that are medicated in order to survive a parasite or predator are not developing...which is why treatments lose their efficacy and are replaced with a "newer better treatment".



> Before varroa arrived, I worked for a few years for an outfit with around 4,000 hives. We had developed several lines of bees, which were robust and productive, nothing weak about them. But when varroa arrived, most of those bees had little defence. But were they worth saving? In my opinion there was much genetic material in those bees worth saving. It would take longer than the line breeding shortcut, as does evolution in nature. But the end result will be a better bee. Will it happen in my generation? Probably not. But it will happen.


This is the boom and bust nature of many critters...especially insects. But in the end, you are describing bees that are generally unfit for their environment (which now includes mites). "my bees are so robust that they need frequent mite treatments in order to survive" is a rather absurd statement...I understand your point...these were bees you liked except for the varroa problem. The problem is that the varroa problem isn't going away any time soon.

deknow


----------



## Oldtimer

In your last paragraph you made a "quote" appearing to be something I said, that I didn't even say, and then tell me it's an absurd statement. Didn't impress me very much.

Other than that, you might not think your view is simplistic, but it IS simplistic.

The thread is about the gene pool. I've expressed my view on the gene pool, being I'd like to see a less simplistic attitude to it's preservation. Some people have posted critical comments about how bee breeding has been done in the past. Let's not give future generations cause to talk about us the same way. I think your last post is more concerned with a fast track attempt at varroa resistance, than the topic of the thread. If all you are concerned about is getting varroa resistance as fast as possible, then your approach may have merit. 

But me, I'm concerned about other things also, hence the different approach.

Hope that makes sense.


----------



## rrussell6870

Bottom line is, our gene pool is very shallow... there are pockets of older lineages scattered throughout, but the problem is that these lineages are only able to survive due to the circumstances of their environment... the most basic of bee keeping practices, keeping multiple hives in one location, is enough to promote the explosive reproduction of pests to a scale that the next closest location could not withstand, and so on..

These pests shouldn't be here, shouldn't be plaguing Mellifera, but on the other hand, neither should Mellifera be here... they shouldn't be so close together, they shouldn't be feeding on solitary nutrient supplies, they shouldn't be in the full sun, shouldn't be reproducing by emergency methods, shouldn't be moved from climate to climate... but the truth is, we couldn't benefit from them if it were not for at least one of these perversions... 

So we find what works best for us, and hopefully what is the least intrusive for them, while still accomplishing the objective... but does that mean that they should be strong enough to withstand a virulent pest? Not really... it more so comes down to the circumstances of the attack than the strength of the resistances... I see old lines with very little varroa exposure live just fine without treatments, while pure vsh hives get decimated... the reason being is the location... one location does not have a "varroa highway", while the other does... 

Ever wonder why some hives will get filled with varroa while others don't? Here are several reasons...

1. Heavier laying queens means heavier varroa production...
2. Longer flight distances means easier transfer of varroa from other areas...
3. Larger field forces working vast areas of blooms means more rapid income of invading varroa...
4. Less or no swarming means a continuous brood development and thus a continuous mite development...

Not terrible traits are they? It was these traits that caused varroa to seem to take out the most productive lines first...

Ever wonder why some yards don't ever get varroa issues while others seem plagued? And why varroa come back after a very effective treatment in fall and another in spring, which should ultimately have left the hive varroa free?? Here is the main reason...

Yards that are far enough away from other colonies so that the foraging distances do not cross have very little chance of reinfestation... unless you bring them in, or the perimeter is breached by a swarm extending the reach from either direction and thus reconnecting the foraging areas...

Genetics do offer help to controlling varroa, but there has to be some variable at play to give it a chance to work...

For instance, (Dean, your going to have to help me out here because I do not know Dee's methods, and do not want to say that she does or does not do something if its incorrect)...

Dee has a situation where...

1. she is located in a remote area that honey bees would usually find very hard to reproduce in... thus the paths of her bees and those from other colonies would not usually cross... so the perimeter is set...

2. Her bees possess a level of genetic resistances be it strain and/or natural selection trait promotion practices...

3. She makes increases each season, which would replace losses while boasting resistance traits...

4. She uses small cell foundation to promote a shorter development period for the brood, which is also shortened by the high temp climate.

5. Her high temp environment is as harsh on mites as it is on bees, thus limiting their development even further...

6. She does not feed, thus the guttural systems of the bees are never compromised... leading to better digestive health thus less susceptible to secondary diseases that the mites can cause...

So these are the variables at play there...(correct me if I'm wrong please, I will edit anything about her operation that I have misunderstood)...

Even in the most natural of environments, there must still be variables at play... if Dee had never made split or nuc for increase from day one, how many hives would she have today? 20 years from now? The point is that we are not in a natural environment anymore... the feral bees are not in a natural environment anymore, this environment is too harsh for us to do the things that we once did to our bees, and still have them survive without treatments... Honey bees used to flourish in the US... it was so easy for them that you could take every brood frame but one from a hive and turn one hive into 20 in one season... then you could leave those 20 hives alone for three or four years and still have 20 when you returned... feral bees multiplied and there was plenty of great forage to sustain hundreds of colonies in one location without ever feeding a drop... but what we now have is an environment that is so harsh that no bees can survive without some form of variable... 

To add insult to injury, the practice of promoting very few lineages within the yard, the operation, the region, even the entire industry has become the common practice... leaving very little to select from in the first place...

So how do we get to a better future? By each one of us stepping up to the plate and doing our part to manage our variables in order to preserve what gene pool we have left, and practice healthy stock promotion with a deeper understanding of how to fight pests without HAVING to treat but without HAVING to let them die simply because mites do well in their colonies either... its not easy, make no mistake about that... it is terribly difficult and requires a ton of work and a ton of mistakes... but it is possible and the first step to getting there is getting out of the path of the bullet... don't look at you yard as the hives and the field, but rather as the center of an area that you need to defend... once you find the distances that your bees will travel, start to locate all colonies within a diameter a little more than twice that size... if you can get your hives to a location that is free of other colonies within that distance, then you need to turn your focus towards getting rid of the mites that you brought into the area with you, and helping your bees to defend their nests... be it by genetics and/or any other variables... the first thing that must be addressed is where the mites are coming from...

Hope this helps...


----------



## beeG

deknow said:


> inbreeding does not cause mutation...it causes inbreeding depression, which is only a combination of already existing alleles, not the creation of new alleles.
> 
> the concepts of saving everything and culling the unfit are mutually exclusive....you can't do both at the same time.
> 
> there are ways to aproach this while minimizing losses....Mike Palmer shares a lot of information in this area...listen to him...his advice comes from experience and is well considered (and does not "preserve" weak genetics). ...but in some circumstances (like at the beginning of a breeding program) there is a lot to be said for actually letting things sort themselves out...we've had hives survive the winter that I never would have guessed would do so...and I've had "trophy" hives crash all the way. I don't claim it is fast or cheap...but there are plenty of fast and cheap options out there for those that want to go that route.
> 
> deknow


 never said inbreeding cause mutations. The species was inbred due to working with a simple very expensive recessive gene which is an ingredient for excessive inbreeding which is the fastest way to control a recessive. But inbreeding sure helps to discover hidden recessives in lines, be they good or bad, or both

I still believe there is plenty of room for the different forms of breeders and I appreciate those who are going to try and save genetic material. Saving weaker genetic material is much more challenging and not as rewarding finically. 

And I am only talking hypothetically these breeding practices genetically are used for just about everything humans control the breeding of. Saving weaker lines of bees is synonymous to raising heritage livestock. Which many of them are practically useless finically, but are important to some regardless. I am sure many hearing tales of old bee lines would love playing with those genetics. And in the future one of those heritage lines could prove beneficial, what would the poultry industry be without giant Cornish X rocks.

Why not breed a weaker mite? they controlled mosquito populations and other vermin insects by producing sterol males, and releasing them or breeding dead end genetics when introduced killed off populations of the bad insects.


----------



## deknow

..I'm on the road and can't respond to.everything from my phone...but wet poultry....
I recently attended a talk on bee breeding....specifically on what the speaker thought was missing.
he pointed out that in most of agriculture, there is a.breed that changed everything...that the industry couldn't imagine doing without.
Not so.with bees.....nothing stands.out...


----------



## Barry

Speakers name please.


----------



## Daniel Y

AstroBee said:


> I’m certainly no geneticist, nor do I even claim to understand the intricacies of honey bee genetics, but the following scenario is plaguing my mind.
> 
> Let’s suppose that we have two strains of honey bee, let’s call them Strain X and Strain Y. Further, suppose we have two diseases, let’s call them Disease A and Disease B. We’re given that the untreated percent kill rate for Strain X when exposed to Disease A is 100% and that the untreated percent kill rate for Strain Y when exposed to Disease A is 1%. Similarly, the percent kill rate for Strain X when exposed to Disease B is 1% and that Strain Y when exposed to Disease B is 100%.
> 
> Clearly Strain X is highly susceptible to Disease A, but highly resilient to Disease B, and Strain Y is resilient to Disease A, but highly susceptible to Disease B.
> 
> So, the obvious, and very likely simplistic, scenario is as follows: both populations are exposed (without treatment) to Disease A first, resulting in a total loss of Strain X. What remains after this exposure is only Strain Y. Sometime later the remaining Strain Y is exposed to Disease B resulting in its total elimination, with the end result of total loss of honey bees. Now, if Strain X was treated during to Disease A the end result would be much different.
> 
> Not trying to take sides in this debate, but I’m curious as how the “no treatments ever crowd” responds to this simplistic scenario?


I agree that you thinking is far to simplistic, but will add that is because genetics and breeding are far more complicated than just adding X and Y to get Z. it simply does not work that way.

Your thinking would assume that breeding a black chicken to a white chicken would give you a grey one (also known as Blue). When in reality it does not. It actually requires breeding a black and white chicken to get a black and white one. then you breed the black and white one with a black and you get grey for one generation only. breed two greys and you get a nearly endless list of results. barred, multi colored, feathers that start out as one color and then change to another then back again. Yeah where the heck did that come from?

Not all genes are created equal. not all genes can live together on the same Allele. not all genes can leave within a certain distance of each other on an Allele. Some combinations of genes are actually fatal. And some combination can produce what appears to be outright mutations.

So lets say you have your x bees and your Y bees so you breed them together hoping that each colony will inherit the resistance to disease of the other. It is far more likely that one of the two traits will be recessive so as to never be expressed. remember for every trait there is one that does not show although the animal still posses that gene. IT is as likely to pas on that unknown gene rather than the one you see. It is possible that adding resistance to Disease A to resistance to disease B will in itself be fatal. It is very likely that breeding for resistance to disease A dn B will result in higher susceptibility to disease C. or a higher susceptibility in both colonies to both diseases A and B. breeding with the assumption that desirable traits will be increased is a big mistake, they are just as likely to be reduced. 

What you idea does show in extreme is the serious danger of a shallow gene pool. IT is excessive in that it would not even be survivable. You are going to need a lot more than just a colony X and Y in reality. Go through the alphabet a couple times over and you are still only in a lot of trouble. That is a simplistic explanation of the shallow gene pool comments. A shallow gene pool is comparable to me asking you to build a house with a pile of scraps and garbage. You simply have nothing to work with. When numbers like dozens of strains are used I think it sets people up with the wrong impression of what is required for a healthy genetic pool. it takes hundreds of strains. Relatively few beekeepers even own enough hives to have a healthy genetic diversity. Then you start selecting for a particular trait and you will bottle neck your diversity in a heart beat. literally you can reduce your diversity to one or two strains in just a hand full of selections.

There is a benefit in doing this but it is always at the expense of overall stamina. People must know how to go about selection. mother nature does it with life and death and it works. Mother nature also selects for all those nasty things man does not want like low productivity and really mean defensive bees and such. Nature is not to picky about what is selected for other than survivability. and survivability requires massive diversity. That is why nature has such a huge genetic pool. one works hand in hand with the other.

I see the problem is that beekeepers have to accept less than desirable traits in the interest of the bees health. Not likely to happen on large scale any time soon. they will just keep buying bees every year. Unless of course it gets so bad no bees are left to buy.


----------



## deknow

Barry said:


> Speakers name please.


...is the speakers.name.really relevant? The merits of this observation certainly don't rely upon who made them.
deknow


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## Fusion_power

Responding to some of the above, I don't look to see if other beekeepers are nearby. I don't check to see if I am on a major highway used in bee transport. I don't treat my bees with any miticides. In short, I don't care. What matters is that my bees are tolerant to varroa and to hive beetles and that I maintain a large enough population (meaning enough colonies!) to keep them relatively pure breeding. I have deliberately induced swarming in my colonies for the sole purpose of saturating this area with mite tolerant genetics. As a result, I can let queens open mate and 90% of them will be mite tolerant. It is adequate to maintain my bees in this area.

DarJones


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## Oldtimer

Just a comment on the term "weaker" genetics, as it's been used in this thread. 

Those using it are usually using it in reference to varroa resistance and varroa resistance alone. In fact some of those bees that are not varroa resistant contain some very good other genetics, if we can get past the idea that varroa resistance is the only thing that matters.

I could equally use the term "weaker" genetics, to describe a bee that has some other fault.

However on the topic of varroa resistance, as mentioned by other posters, there are bees that appear varroa resistant, but there are many other factors involved. Almost any small stationary bee yard could eventually get to what may look like varroa resistance. But Fusion power, send a few of your queens to something like a large scale migratory beekeeping operation, and see what happens. Under the different circumstances they will likely succumb to varroa if not treated, same as the "weak" bees. Be interesting for you to do the same Deknow. If these bees were truely varroa resistant, I'm sure you could make a small fortune selling the queens to commercial beekeepers, who would eagerly buy them. Why would they want to spend all that time and money treating their bees, when they don't need too?

In fact the answer to that question, is that varroa resistance is not as simplistic as it's often made out in some chat sites and books. There are also large numbers of people who have followed the treatment free advice of "survivor" line breeding, and ended up leaving the hobby in discouragement because for them it didn't work. But we don't hear from them, they're gone. Also why are most treatment free people constantly making splits? Because it's partly about management. If the bees were truely varroa resistant there would be no need to be making splits to maintain numbers.


----------



## Barry

deknow said:


> ...is the speakers.name.really relevant?


Is withholding the speakers name relevant? You quoted them. What's to hide?


----------



## beeG

Daniel Y said:


> I agree that you thinking is far to simplistic, but will add that is because genetics and breeding are far more complicated than just adding X and Y to get Z. it simply does not work that way.
> 
> What you idea does show in extreme is the serious danger of a shallow gene pool. IT is excessive in that it would not even be survivable. You are going to need a lot more than just a colony X and Y in reality..


maybe this is turning into a heated discussion, which it need not be. But I do not think the poster said X and Y were the last remaining bees.. he said strains. 

Which to answer his question you must first determine how the genetics are carried in bees x and Y and I am assuming you would want to mix them together to make a bee that can withstand both negative influences. Yes recessives, sex linked, Dom all can be mixed to create something new. Something that represents a desired aspect that each bee carries at the same time. But you can not form successful breeding situation until you determine how the desired traits are carried. From there you can form a breeding program where your outcome will be a bee that expresses both traits. As for simple, the idea is. Actually doing it is not.
Determining how the traits are carried can take time , and because inbreeding again can bring out other hidden bombs, and bringing in outside genetic can also bring in who knows? It can be a real mission. Not trying would be the more negative approach in my book. If you did have two bees of that type. 

http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/principles.html 
this web site explains simple genetics for those not familiar

this additive trait is something new for me


----------



## rrussell6870

Fusion_power said:


> What matters is that my bees are tolerant to varroa and to hive beetles and that I maintain a large enough population (meaning enough colonies!) to keep them relatively pure breeding. I have deliberately induced swarming in my colonies for the sole purpose of saturating this area with mite tolerant genetics. As a result, I can let queens open mate and 90% of them will be mite tolerant. It is adequate to maintain my bees in this area.
> 
> DarJones


That's a very good practice... I do the same as a means to overwhelm outer genetics around my areas... the point is that there are still variables... 

1. Resistant genetics...
2. Promotion of those genetics to establish a perimeter and thus lessen the development of mites within the perimeter...
3. Making increases to replace losses and further boost the level of those genetics within the stock...

Without any of these variables, the stock would have been completely at the mercy of the environment... like most of the truly wild bees when mites first hit...


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## beeG

Oldtimer said:


> I could equally use the term "weaker" genetics, to describe a bee that has some other fault.


I agree bad choice of words I should have used less desirable.


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## WLC

Don't forget Maori's discovery that Honeybees can become transgenic, and therefore resistant to pathogens, when under stress from pathogens in the environment.

In other words, they can evolve by acquiring totally new genes from environmental pathogens.

So, on the one hand, you can say that environmental stressors can cause the bees to acquire new genes and therefore increase the gene pool.

On the other hand, since these bees have become transgenic due to retransposition of foreign DNA into the Honeybee genome, you can characterize this as contamination of the existing gene pool.

So the gene pool is either increasing, or it's decreasing, depending on your perspective. Are you a Biologist, or are you a Breeder?


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## Adam Foster Collins

From what I'm getting, this thread seems to point very strongly to the merits of rearing your own queens and working to maintain consistent bee populations which work for you in your area...

If, as WLC suggests the bees are evolving new genes in response to environmental pathogens, and as Fusion Power and Mr. Russell suggest, one can 'overpower' a locality with a consistent management of a local population of bees, then it seems that a large number of beekeepers, raising bees suited to their locality over a period of many years, would both deepen the gene pool, and move toward bees which survive.

Adam


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## rrussell6870

That is correct. I have said it many times before, all bees are developing resistances by exposure and reproduction... simply put, we have already lost a huge portion of our gene pool since the mites arrived, what we have now are those that have been exposed and were reproduced... sure, the majority of them have had great assistance in survival by means of treatments, but even those are being subjected to the stresses of mites and thus communicate those stresses to the next generation promoting resistances to develop more and more with each new cycle... 

however, there are factors that slow the adaptation process such as poor internal health and a never ending wave of new pathogens and threats that weaken the developmental health... for example, if you take someone who has spent a life time living on mommas couch having cheese burgers and tab cola brought to them while they watched tv, and suddenly force them out into the world to get a physically demanding job and pay their own bills, the adaptation period will take much longer and be much more stressful to them than it would be for a physically active person that has been working a job and helping to pay their share of the bills for many years...

So by taking treatments away from the hives that do not need it and using less and less treatments for hives that do need it, you are keeping them alive while they learn to cope with the stresses, which in this case can be many generations... that does not need to be done for anything other than exceptionally productive hives... if the hive is not outstanding, you would simply requeen it with a queen from a good performer that has not needed treatment, use only the necessary level of treatment to clear up the infections that started under the former queens rule, and continue on from there... 

There are many things that lead to a hive failing to varroa, and most are not genetically related at all... resistant genetics are a help, but non-resistant genetics are not the cause... the same lines that have been used selected for productivity can become resistant stocks in time... but as we have all seen with the primorsky bees that have the highest level of resistances but fell quickly to varroa infestations when used in operations that that had experienced the same level of losses before turning to resistant stocks, its not all about genetics, its more about management and stopping the excessive amounts of incoming varroa that can overcome most any hive... 

If you take a small group of elite soldiers... let's say 20... they may be able to defeat an invading force of 250 lower level soldiers... but if the invading force of 250 lower level soldiers were just the first wave in a ten day offensive, in which they attacked in waves of 250 at a time for ten days, the 20 elite soldiers would fall to the consistent waves of assaults... even though the 20 elite soldiers can indeed defend against 250, the other variables start coming into play with a consistent assault... fatigue, poor physical health from rationing food, wounds and casualties that would not have effected the outcome of the first assault begin to take their toll as the invasions continue to come...

But if there were helpful variables that could come into play as well, the outcome may be different... say air support or artillery arrive on the third and seventh days... these breaks can allow enough time for the 20 to mend wounds, rest and reassess their strategy to fit their current situation... making the rest of the invasions take less of a toll on the defenders...

The air support or artillery in the case if bees can be treatments, or it can be something more simple such as higher temps in the hives, drone brood culling, dusting, etc... other variables such as..
1. making increase (compare to replacing fallen soldiers with fresh soldiers that have been briefed about the strategy of the invading forces, thus are more prepared)..
2. Resistant genetics (compare to incoming intel providing the specific location of each incoming invasion and pointing out weaknesses in the assault pattern, allowing the efforts of the defenders to be more effective and efficient)...
3. Established perimeter (compare to knowledge of a bottleneck path or major obstacle such as a river that the invaders must pass through before regrouping for each assault)...
4. Creating a bloodless period during the mite buildup, ie swarming, splitting, etc..(compare to receiving intel of the location of the next invasion forces camp or the enemy force's food supply and coordinating air support to eliminate that wave during the night before the attack would occur or the food supply for the entire enemy force crippling their future offensives greatly)...

Each variable that comes as a benefit will have some positive effect on the outcome... while each variable that comes as a hindrance will have some negative effect on the outcome...

So getting a strategy together and remaining flexible enough to make the necessary adjustments along the way can make the difference between success and failure...


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## WLC

What about gene flow?

You know, how favorable traits can spread throughout a population.

Honeybees have the highest recombination rate of the higher eukaryotes.

They're gene flow 'speed demons'.

Maybe setting up perimeters isn't playing to the Honybee's strengths?


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## rrussell6870

It is with the intent that its not a permanent boundary, but more a temporary protection from overwhelming reinfestation... once the location is secure and successful at both defenses and production, the boundary is extended allowing more cross genetic influence... 

Their adaptation abilities are indeed great, but the scope of the invasion of pests out performs even their ability to address the stresses... thus the once flourishing wild and managed populations alike were devastated quite quickly... the greatest benefit that the managed populations had was the constant reproduction by means of splits and other increases... the wild population did not have that luxury because they naturally spread themselves out reproducing then robbing the weaker side of the split which lessened their effective reproduction to about 10%... 

I try not to get to advanced with it, the point is to teach everyone from beginner to pro how to look at their situation a bit differently than they have been and hopefully to start them on a path to successfully controlling varroa by starting with variables and lite treatment as necessary and as their understanding grows, so does their ability to succeed without the treatments...


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## WLC

Doc:

You're a breeder. You have to take those kinds of precautions.

What about the rest of us? I can't isolate myself from the neighbors.

Maybe those of us in urban/suburban settings are the ones with the greatest genetic diversity in our bees?

If we actually started selling a hive or two every year to each other (as a replacements or starter), it might not take too long for those good genes to get flowing.

Hmmm...


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## deknow

Oldtimer said:


> In your last paragraph you made a "quote" appearing to be something I said, that I didn't even say, and then tell me it's an absurd statement. Didn't impress me very much.


First of all, I'm not out to "impress" you...so I apologize if you got the wrong impression as to my motivations.
Secondly, the "quote" was a paraphrase of your statement (a statement that I also quoted in full in the same post)... (is there a better way to denote a paraphrase...I'm not aware of what the official way to cite a paraphrase...but if there is one, I'd be happy to use it).....but it also appears to be how you have been denoting a paraphrase...so I'm doubtful you have a better suggestion:
From post 21:


> The treatment free "let 'em die if they can't tolerate mites"


...did anyone actually use that phrase? ..not on Beesource they didn't (i did a search on all the forums).

With that said, I think my paraphrase was accurate (even if you didn't like it).


> We had developed several lines of bees, which were robust and productive, nothing weak about them. But when varroa arrived, most of those bees had little defence.


...how is this substantively different than:


> "my bees are so robust that they need frequent mite treatments in order to survive"


...you claimed to have robust bees that had little defense against mites (and presumably required treatment). 



> I think your last post is more concerned with a fast track attempt at varroa resistance, than the topic of the thread. If all you are concerned about is getting varroa resistance as fast as possible, then your approach may have merit.


...now you are putting words into my mouth. I don't think I even mentioned varroa until you brought it up....but I can cite many examples...tracheal mites, AFB, and nosema...issues cleared up in various operations when they stopped treating for them. 
We can also cite every organism that ever existed with a predator, parasite, disease that didn't become immediately extinct. 
I was discussing varroa in the previous post because you brought it up, not because this is my only (or main) concern.

deknow


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## rrussell6870

Lol. WLC, You may already have a perimeter up and not realize it... the perimeter does not merely have to include your hives alone... if you look at the topography of your location, with your hives in the center, how far will you have to go to find a void of bees? You may be surprised to find that its a lot shorter of a distance than you originally thought... 

This type of situation is common in nature of course... that where different strains are created... but we do not have to limit all access or pose total control on the surrounding colonies... just enough to be able to identify the threats as they come so you can be effective at limiting the exposure... that's important to note, its not about completely eliminating exposure, just limiting it to a controllable measure so that your genetics can continue to pass on all of the experience that has been gained through the exposure period...


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## Oldtimer

deknow said:


> ...how is this substantively different than:...you claimed to have robust bees that had little defense against mites (and presumably required treatment). deknow


Surprised you cannot spot the difference. The difference is what I said was not in quote marks and looking like a particular person had actually said that. My first remark, that was in quote marks, was clearly not attributed to any individual as I clearly attributed it to the "brigade."

Your paraphrase had some elements of accuracy, but was also twisted to make it sound absurd. Next time you want to quote me, instead of paraphrasing to make it look stupid, just say what I actually said.

Also, you are wrong. I never put any words in your mouth.

Now Deknow, your comments were personal so I've answered them personally. But hey, howsabout discussing the gene pool, rather than what I did / didn't / mighta said. Other people have asked questions of you that have gone unanswered.


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## WLC

Doc:

There are dozens of hives in midtown where I'm located. They come from all over the map.
Realistically, I don't have a perimeter. If their hives 'sneeze', mine say 'bless you'.


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## Ted Kretschmann

WLC, how do explain the honey bee's incomplete immune system??? This was discovered doing the honeybee genome..Since I am not a geneticist but do have an inquiring mind--Inquiring minds want to know. TED


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## rrussell6870

WLC, I think in my long winded explanations, I may have not been clear enough about the definition and/or examples of the term that I used "perimeter"... we need a digital chalk board on beesource! I would be kicking up some major digital dust with that baby! Lol. Give me just a minute and I will try to explain it further...


----------



## Fusion_power

Oldtimer, I split my bees for 2 nucs this past spring. One so I could give a queenright nuc to a man who lives about 40 miles east of me and one so I could add another colony here at my house. The splits were made just before swarm season when the bees were strong enough to start queen cells on their own. Both splits have built up into powerhouse colonies. Both queens were mated here at my home where I know there are plenty of drones from mite tolerant queens. Otherwise, I caught 2 swarms which are happily going into winter as healthy queenright colonies.

I have a few colonies in 3 apiaries. That gives me some redundancy and allows me to swap genetics from time to time. The queens I am using are descendants of one exceptional queen I caught in a swarm 6 years ago, an exceptional Carniolan queen I purchased the same year, and the rest are descendants of queens from Dan Purvis. The genetics are diverse enough that I don't have to worry about inbreeding.

I understand how to introgress genes into a breeding population. My background is more in plant genetics than honeybee, but the overall principles are similar. I agree with you that keeping a population alive with treatments can be very important because you can retain genetic gains. My point is that we have had varroa since 1990 and they have been nationwide since 1994. That is 21 years in which we could and should have totally eliminated the need to treat bees for varroa.

RRussell, I don't know for sure if my bees tolerant genetics could be overwhelmed if the mite pressure were increased. What I know and have proven is that I don't have to treat these bees and I have not treated them in 6 years. Sure I lost a few over that time, but the best I could tell, none were lost because of varroa. Next spring I'm thinking about splitting out 20 or 30 nucs into colonies that I can sell. It would be a convenient way to get more mite tolerant genetics into this area and sell off some older hive bodies for cash. With the right timing, I can get outstandingly good queens with little effort and still keep my established colonies producing honey.

TedK, That is an excellent observation re honeybees immune system. I read about it in a commentary on the honeybee genome a year or so ago. What would be an outstanding accomplishment in my opinion would be if we could take a much stronger immune system from another insect and add it to the honeybee genome. How do you feel about transgenic bees?

DarJones


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## deknow

rrussell6870 said:


> ... the most basic of bee keeping practices, keeping multiple hives in one location, is enough to promote the explosive reproduction of pests to a scale that the next closest location could not withstand, and so on..


..I offer the following account of very high hive feral hive density in the Arizona desert. This is Dr. Erik Erikson in 1989 (3 years before AHB was in Arizona):




 



> Ever wonder why some hives will get filled with varroa while others don't? Here are several reasons...
> .....
> Not terrible traits are they? It was these traits that caused varroa to seem to take out the most productive lines first...


Well, here's an analogy. In our society (the human one), there is great reward for accumulating a lot of capital with few resources....this is "the american dream", and someone like the recently deceased Steve Jobs exlemplifies this ideal. On the other hand, from this simplistic criteria, someone like Bernie Madoff should be the most respected of all...but the devil is in the details, and not all paths of accumulating wealth are created equal. There is a substantive difference between producing popular goods and services and running a Ponzi scheme, even though the engine that drives both is accumulating cash. The traits that you cite (and those you don't) that contribute to high varroa susceptibility aren't good or bad...they simply "are", and they help or hinder depending on circumstance.



> Dee has a situation where...
> 
> 1. she is located in a remote area that honey bees would usually find very hard to reproduce in... thus the paths of her bees and those from other colonies would not usually cross... so the perimeter is set...


...the only resource "provided" for these bees is water (they are located near cattle watering tanks)...the video by dr. erikson shows that the area supports more bees than one would expect at first glance, and most of her bees are in foraging distance to other bees...migratory, treated, fed, almond pollinating bees.



> 2. Her bees possess a level of genetic resistances be it strain and/or natural selection trait promotion practices...


I'm not sure what you are saying here....are you saying that she is "lucky" that she has resistant bees....or would you consider the idea that her practices have helped to promote genetic resistance?


> 3. She makes increases each season, which would replace losses while boasting resistance traits...


well, she makes up deadouts. In a good year (less than 10% loss) she might increase her total number of colonies a little, but she mostly tries to stay steady with her numbers...she stopped grafting years ago, and all increases are walk away splits...usually a deep full of bees, with no effort made to find the queen.


> 4. She uses small cell foundation to promote a shorter development period for the brood, which is also shortened by the high temp climate.


I think there are probably more things than development period that change with cell size, also, her altitude is fairly high...it isn't as hot as you might think.



> 5. Her high temp environment is as harsh on mites as it is on bees, thus limiting their development even further...


The videos I have made of working with Dees bees that are online are very low quality...give me a couple of days, and I will upload much higher resoultion versions...it's hard to think of the environment being harsh on the bees. I have seen mites on her bees (I have seen 2...one is in a photograph I sometimes use in presentations), so they are not mite free. ...and as I said, most of her yards are within foraging distance of migratory bees. Her winter losses are generally around 10% as far as I can tell.


> 6. She does not feed, thus the guttural systems of the bees are never compromised... leading to better digestive health thus less susceptible to secondary diseases that the mites can cause...


I am in complete agreement with this, but I'd be curious to hear what observation or data informs your opinion.



> ... if Dee had never made split or nuc for increase from day one, how many hives would she have today? 20 years from now?


I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what this means....if bees never swarmed they would go extinct in 20 years? So what...the colony superorganism reproduces...and the beekeeper splits......life doesn't merely persist, it tries to grow.


> The point is that we are not in a natural environment anymore... the feral bees are not in a natural environment anymore, this environment is too harsh for us to do the things that we once did to our bees, and still have them survive without treatments...


I don't disagree with this. What I don't agree is that we have to keep doing what we used to do to our bees....or at least I don't have to. 


> Honey bees used to flourish in the US... ... but what we now have is an environment that is so harsh that no bees can survive without some form of variable...


In some areas that is true...but certainly not in others.



> the practice of promoting very few lineages within the yard, the operation, the region, even the entire industry has become the common practice... leaving very little to select from in the first place...


Well, if among what we had, we had a "perfect" bee, no one would be complaining about the narrowness of the gene pool (and no, I don't think there is a perfect bee). Very few kept bees are allowed to experience a dearth without feeding...certainly not in most large breeding operations. The "soft" treatments are harder on the bees in many ways than the synthetics beekeepers are trying to get away from...."trying" not to treat and then treating aggressively to save the bees is hard on the bees. I don't think we even know what bees we have or what they can do....virtually no one is willing to take losses as part of the process. I think a bottleneck followed by intensive breeding within the apiary _before_ looking to outcross is an important process in the natural cycle, and something that is missing from most breeding programs, and from the methods being discussed here.

This is an interesting study about long term survival rates of swarms in Louisiana between 1990 and 2000 (or 2004, depending how you figure it) as varroa became a factor:
http://www.honeybeeworld.com/diary/articles/villaferal2008.pdf 



> So how do we get to a better future?


I don't agree with your prescription. I should also say that I wouldn't prescribe what I'm advocating as a universal solution either. I think we get to a better future by not agreeing. Nothing was ever solved among people with the same viewpoint. This isn't to say that I'm arguing for the sake of arguing....everything I'm talking about I'm actually doing. I think the world could be a much better place, but I don't think it would be a better place if everyone agreed with me.

deknow


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## deknow

Ted Kretschmann said:


> WLC, how do explain the honey bee's incomplete immune system???


The "incomplete" immune system has been perfectly function for how long? The social nature of bees (and the close association with a vast microbial culture within the bee and within the social superorganism) is a large part of the immune system of the honeybee.

deknow


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## deknow

Barry said:


> Is withholding the speakers name relevant? You quoted them. What's to hide?


...nothing to hide. To be honest, when I made the post Ramona was just getting in the car, and I spaced the persons name for the moment.

I'm interested in what people think of the idea, not the speaker...could be joe the plumber, could be E.O. Wilson (it is not either)...it was an idea that was relevent to the discussion....but no one seems interested. I expect to make the talk available online soon, and will certainly post it to beesource when I do (have to clear it with the speaker first).

deknow


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## deknow

rrussell6870 said:


> That is correct. I have said it many times before, all bees are developing resistances by exposure and reproduction...


I'm curious if there is a mechanism (proven or hypothetical) at play to explain how bees develop resistance to pests by exposure when the population is treated?

Also, is there an example other than bees where we can see this in action?

deknow


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## deknow

Oldtimer said:


> The difference is what I said was not in quote marks...


yes...what you said _was_ in quote marks. I've already _pasted_ it above exactly as it appears on the forum, with the quote marks...here is the link:
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?249603-Our-Gene-Pool&p=719590#post719590


> My first remark, that was in quote marks, was clearly not attributed to any individual as I clearly attributed it to the "brigade."


OK, I must have missed this in my education....when a paraphrase isn't attributed to a specific individual, you put it in quotes...but _not_ when it is a paraphrase of what a single person said...got it.



> Your paraphrase had some elements of accuracy, but was also twisted to make it sound absurd. Next time you want to quote me, instead of paraphrasing to make it look stupid, just say what I actually said.


I quoted you exactly and completely in addition to paraphrasing you. My paraphrase (in your words before you edited them) was "reasonably accurate"...I'd say it was 100% accurate.



> Now Deknow, your comments were personal so I've answered them personally. But hey, howsabout discussing the gene pool, rather than what I did / didn't / mighta said. Other people have asked questions of you that have gone unanswered.


...what you did/didn't/mighta said is hard to figure out. from here, it looks like you just added this via editing:
***THIS WAS AN ERRONEOUS ACCUSATION....MY APOLOGIES....MORE EXPLAINED LATER IN THE THREAD***


> Having said all that, I want to emphasise that I'm just expressing my own view on this matter. It's been a good thread and it's also good that there are different opinions. While I don't agree with all of the opinions it's probably a good thing we all don't think the same. We need opinion diversity, as much as we need genetic diversity.


...to post 42...something you wrote about 24 hours ago. It's hard not to see this as a response to what I wrote at the end of post 70 just a few minutes ago...made to look like it was your idea because it was posted yesterday? It's hard for me to imagine why anyone would do that on purpose...but it's hard to see how it could have happened by accident.

In any case, I have been discussing the gene pool...quite a bit. The poster that presented the "disease x and disease y" hypothetical situation knew it was simplistic (or at least they said they did)....I was pointintg out that it was so simplistic that it wasn't very useful....which it isn't (even though you seemed to think it was).

In any case, it isn't even really a discussion when you go around editing posts...I don't have time to keep up with your edits.

deknow


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## Oldtimer

Deknow that accusation you've made about my edit of post 42 is completely false. Have a look at the TIME i edited it, you'll see it was a few minutes after I made the post. Not after your later post. Not sure how or why you think up all this stuff.

Might be hard for you to see, but it's a fact.

Do you read the posts properly? please refer to this one.



Oldtimer said:


> Now Deknow, your comments were personal so I've answered them personally. But hey, howsabout discussing the gene pool, rather than what I did / didn't / mighta said. Other people have asked questions of you that have gone unanswered.


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## Lost Bee

I wonder if anyone has ever considered that all the bee hives that are moved across the 
United States for pollination purposes could be helping the spread of some of the plagues 
affecting honey bees at this time. If must be hard for local bee keepers to deal with this.

If the local virgin queens treat moving bee hives like navy sailors coming to port. I bet 
there is lots of crossbreeding going on. All to the dismay of local queen breeders. 

This could be the cause of MAD BEE DISEASE.


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## Oldtimer

Double post


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## deknow

Oldtimer...my sincere apologies....my mistake I read your post on my phone as email, and although your edit was posted soon after, I didn't notice until I just glanced at it again, and I assumed it was a new edit.

FWIW, where you quote yourself above:


> Other people have asked questions of you that have gone unanswered.


...was also an edit you made after making the original post. All might note that when you post to a thread it does get sent out to those subscribing to (usually those participating in) a thread...edits don't. Editing your posts is bound to lead to misunderstandings and/or crossed wires from time to time.
...but I've spent a fair amount of time after coming home from working all day answering a number of questions on this thread...what questions are still unanswered?

deknow


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## Oldtimer

NOW they are answered. But when I made that post, they were not.

Apology will be accepted if you get of my back and focus on the topic.


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## Oldtimer

OK well I see you went back and corrected some stuff. I doubt we'll ever be friends but you've gone up a bit in my opinion. Thanks.


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## deknow

Oldtimer said:


> NOW they are answered. But when I made that post, they were not.


...and 15 minutes ago when you reposted it they were also answered.



> Apology will be accepted if you get of my back and focus on the topic.


My apology was honest and sincere...I don't really give a hoot if you "accept" it or not...that's your business. Again, you are telling me to get back on a topic that I have spent considerable time discussing. I will discuss whatever topic you like at your pleasure...should I send you a fee schedule? ...oh wait...I don't work for you.

deknow


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## Oldtimer

So, to the gene pool......


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## Lost Bee

deknow said:


> I'm curious if there is a mechanism (proven or hypothetical) at play to explain how bees develop resistance to pests by exposure when the population is treated?
> 
> Also, is there an example other than bees where we can see this in action?
> 
> deknow


I thought you were all for treating bees deknow? 
Something I read about in post#36, where you say 
you can keep them medicated,etc.


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## Lost Bee

2 points for Barry.   on post #72.


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## WLC

'...how do explain the honey bee's incomplete immune system???'

Ted:

Don't forget that they have a type of 'social immunity'. Glucose oxidase in honey is an example.

So, bees may be missing some proteins found in other insects, but there's obviously something else going on.

Perhaps the Honeybee's very high rate of genetic recombination, and polyandry, are part of that?

It will probably take years to characterize the acquisition of new genes by retrotransposition in the Honeybee. It is obviously a form of 'molecular immunity' (RNAi), and may be a key way that the Honeybee is compensating for its 'incomplete immune system'.

They are discovering that the Honeybee has components of the RNAi system that are like our own! Honeybees do have some striking genetic differences when compared to other insects. So, maybe the term 'incomplete' is just relative to them.


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## deknow

Lost Bee said:


> I thought you were all for treating bees deknow?
> Something I read about in post#36, where you say
> you can keep them medicated,etc.


you are not understanding....I am advocating a no treatment approach.
Deknow


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## Fusion_power

> 1. Heavier laying queens means heavier varroa production...
> 2. Longer flight distances means easier transfer of varroa from other areas...
> 3. Larger field forces working vast areas of blooms means more rapid income of invading varroa...
> 4. Less or no swarming means a continuous brood development and thus a continuous mite development...


Just a general comment that isolating bees from varroa does not mean they are varroa tolerant. That is just varroa escaping. The only way to develop varroa tolerant bees is to deliberately infest large numbers of colonies with an overload of varroa and then breed from the survivors.

I've seen colonies survive just because they swarmed repeatedly. I've also seen a single colony survive because it was located 100 yards away from a heavily infested bee yard. As the colonies in the apiary got progressively weaker, bees drifted colony to colony until every one of them was overloaded with mites. The isolated colony developed a heavy mite load but it did not get the turbocharged effect of drifting bees. The isolated colony was not tolerant, they just escaped the mites a bit longer.

DarJones


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## Oldtimer

I think we can agree then that if the approach used to breed for varroa resistance is to let all the hives die that cannot withstand varroa, that will result in the loss of the genetics from the hives that died.

Be interesting to know what effect this process would have on the robustness of the remaining bees, in terms of such things as honey production.


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## megank

So just what do the ARS people advocate? Anybody know?


----------



## Fusion_power

Oldtimer, my honey production is generally as good as or better than most strains of bees available. The only caveat I would give is that the Buckfast queens I got back in 1990 and 1991 were distinctly less likely to swarm and made huge colonies that outproduced the best of my mite tolerant queens. Please note that those queens were raised from stock that came direct from Buckfast Abbey to Weavers in TX. It was a rare importation and was allowed because tracheal mites were decimating colonies. Brother Adam hand selected the queens for that importation.

If I could point out, your approach of gradually increasing mite tolerance is unlikely to be successful. A better approach would be to divide colonies into two groups, one that is treated to maintain the proven genetics and another that is untreated. Out of 100 untreated colonies, typically about 4 or 5 percent will be mite tolerant. This infers that the genetic background is diverse to start with and that some mite tolerance is present. You can only select for a trait if it is present in the population.

DarJones


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## WLC

'You can only select for a trait if it is present in the population.'

Just a note: resistance to the pathogenic viruses carried by varroa can be acquired. Maori et al., 2007. It's true.


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## Lost Bee

Fusion_power said:


> If I could point out, your approach of gradually increasing mite tolerance is unlikely to be successful. A better approach would be to divide colonies into two groups, one that is treated to maintain the proven genetics and another that is untreated. Out of 100 untreated colonies, typically about 4 or 5 percent will be mite tolerant. This infers that the genetic background is diverse to start with and that some mite tolerance is present. You can only select for a trait if it is present in the population.
> 
> DarJones


Finally, someone who thinks like me. Splitting each line in two (genetic divergence) and treating one only 
while keeping one lines genetics as whole as possible with treatment. While building resistance in the other 
via natural selection. Then crossing the lines back together after a few generations while bringing back the 
intial variation as much as possible. With some form of resistance being put into the whole population as 
a whole. 

I think another thing that most people don't understand or underestimate is *Local Adaptation*. All living things 
that are adapted to a certain environment will normally do much better in that environment than one that is 
non-native. There are exceptions of course. Even if this non-native is more productive in it's own environment. 

For example: Take the very good greenhouse tomato grown in Mexico and try to get the same results with it 
outdoors in Canada. The first couple of generations will no doubt be less than productive and may even be 
total failures if grown outdoors. Mind you a heirloom tomato grown outdoors in Canada for the past 50 years 
will most likely dwarf in production that Mexican tomato. I believe that's why it's very important for farmers 
and/or livestock owners to try and raise some of their own stock. Whether animal or plant. Preferably in 
cooperation with others within a few hundred miles or so to create these locally adapted stocks. 

Importing is fine for short term goals (bringing some new genetic material) but not for long term ones.
I'm sure 99.9% + of the people will agree with following old saying:

"If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime." 

I believe creating locally adadpted stocks is learning how to fish as this saying implies.

Good Luck 2 U ALL


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## Oldtimer

EDIT - In the time it took me to write this post there's been a few other posts. It's a reply to post 90.

I'd like to see some actual numbers on the honey production. It's rare for a treatment free beekeeper to say what their honey production is, but when they have, it's been a fair bit less than I would consider normal.

Re your breeding approach, IMHO i'd qualify your first sentence of the second paragraph, with unlikely to be successful _in the short term_. That I could agree with, as line breeding is usually the fastest way to achieve a result. However to say it's unlikely to be successful at all, has been demonstrated to not be the case, by the like of Robert Russell.

Re the idea of dividing into two groups etc, the idea has merit. 
In my country the 5% thing is not the case. Wether that's due to the strain of bees, the strain of mites, the environment or management, I don't know.

What I do know is it doesn't look like full genetic mite resistance has been fully achieved in the US either. Dee Lusby believes if she didn't follow certain management practises, such as for example restricting bees to 4.9 mm comb foundation, her bees would succumb to varroa. Also when supposedly varroa resistant bees are transfered to other beekeepers in other areas, the varroa resistance often does not work. This is an experiment you might like to try yourself. Something to ponder. Take some prominent treatment free beekeepers such as M Bush, Dee Lusby, and Deknow. How many of them are selling varroa resistant queens to random other beekeepers and getting full success?


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## deknow

> I'd like to see some actual numbers on the honey production. It's rare for a treatment free beekeeper to say what their honey production is, but when they have, it's been a fair bit less than I would consider normal.


Normal? Normally when I hear beekeepers talk about average honey production, they don't account for the sugar and/or HFCS they are inputting into the system. Of one feeds 80lbs of manufactured, refined, sugar between spring and fall and harvests 100lbs of honey, how much honey was "produced? (Note that the 100lbs of honey has 10 to 20lbs of water)
If I invest $100 and my return is $100....how much money have I made?

Deknow


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## Fusion_power

I am using shallow 5 11/16 supers because that is best in my area. We have relatively short but intense flows with a strong spring flow followed by dearth for 2 months and then a lighter fall flow mostly from goldenrod and aster.

My average production was 2.5 supers of honey per colony or about 105 pounds per. I don't weigh it, though I do jar and sell it so I am basing this statement on the number of quart jars of honey I have sold so far. I still have about half of this years crop in a settling tank waiting to be sold. This compares with up to 5 shallow supers of honey that I got back in 1991 and 1992 using the high quality Buckfast queens. This compares with about 2 supers which is the official state average for Alabama. So my statement that these bees produce as much as most strains available today stands as is. My best colony made 5 supers and happens to also be the colony that made up a superb 3 frame nuc back in the spring. As previously stated, these bees have not been treated in any way for mites of any sort in 6 years.

As for feeding, I have not fed my bees in more years than I care to think about. Lets see, I bought 20 pounds of sugar back in 2001 so I could build up some nucs in early spring. Other than that, I keep a few supers of dark honey sitting on colonies so that I can swap them with supers of better quality lite colored honey. I gave one of those supers that was half full to a nuc I made back in the spring. It isn't necessary to feed, just leave them enough to make it through the next year. If they are not thrifty, then I get rid of that colony or let it die. I don't want sugar addicted bees and I don't want bees that I have to put a lot of effort into feeding. This is why I don't run Italian queens, they are profligate wastrels. 

Please note that I do not make a living from my bees, they are strictly a sideline and have been a sideline for 42 years now. I try to maintain between 5 and 15 colonies of bees. I've had up to 20 colonies and it was more work than I have time to put into them in the spring and fall.

Lost, Using tomatoes as an example for local adaptation is not a good example. Tomatoes are inbreeders that normally cross about 5% of the time. The only way you can select for local adaptation is if there is variation in the gene pool which for most open pollinated varieties of tomatoes does not exist. You are correct that tomatoes can be selected for local adaptation, but it is necessary to start with enough diverse breeding lines that there is something to select for. I have about 500 varieties of tomato seed and in a normal year grow about 200 of them. I am currently working on stabilizing several breeding lines that have high tolerance to Early Blight and Late Blight. 

Corn would be a much better example of a plant crop that can be locally adapted. It is a natural outbreeder and normally carries 30% or more diverse genetics at the chromosome level in a given breeding line. This makes breeding for local adaptation relatively easy and rewarding.

http://www.kdcomm.net/~tomato/
http://www.selectedplants.com/

WLC, your statement that bees can acquire resistance to pathogenic viruses is simplistic. IIRC, it is done by absorbing part of the dna of the pathogen into the genome of the infected organism. The pathogen then detects the dna fragments and does not re-infect a cell that it perceives as being already infected. A good example of this can be found in the chimpanzee which over the years absorbed over 100 fragments of a virus that only infected chimpanzees. The funny thing is that the virus is thought to be extinct but it lives on in the chimp genome because there are so many fragments scattered around. Some scientists spent a bit of time a couple of years ago reconstructing the virus genome from the chimp genome fragments.

DarJones


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## Oldtimer

deknow said:


> If I invest $100 and my return is $100....how much money have I made?Deknow


None I guess.

So, what's a normal average harvest for you?


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## Ted Kretschmann

WLC, so in layman's terms, the honey bee has the ability to incorporate into her genetic dna code parts of viruses-RNA types- that can cause disease in the bee population....Thus giving the bee some immunity against those viral diseases. So the Israeli bee virus given enough time will be incorporated into the genetic code of the bee, thus rendering the disease mute. That is the right understanding on how the bee's "incomplete" immune system works? It is almost like a ongoing computer program that keeps writing and adding to itself. TED


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## Ted Kretschmann

Deknow the question should be if you loose fifty percent of your bees and that loss is also a fifty percent reduction in your honey production. You replace the fifty percent loss by buying more bees.OR If you split the remaining fifty percent, then you are reducing the honey production also of those bees. That is not counting the time that was used in managing the original fifty percent that was lost, along with the time to get the replacement fifty percent up and growing. How much money Deknow, have you then made??? Sounds like it is time for a change in management, as NO business can survive the above scenerio. TED


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## WLC

'your statement that bees can acquire resistance to pathogenic viruses is simplistic.'

DJ:

The discovery by Maori of 'naturally transgenic' bees, and their subsequent immunity to IAPV by RNAi is an incredible discovery.

The very same scientists then formed a biotechnology company that was recently sold to Monsanto. There's obviously something of value there.

Just so you know, I've found many examples of active retrotransposition (R2) in Honeybees.

So, it's a very, very interesting field of study.


'It is almost like a ongoing computer program that keeps writing and adding to itself.'

Ted:

You've hit the nail on the head. I've always said that there's something special about Honeybee Genetics. 

There's another little note. The program can also be erased. I'm of the opinion that the Honeybee could do this all along.

It's probably at the core of what's behind the whole treatment free approach.


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## josethayil

Some interesting research on the gene pool in United States. Both of them are pretty recent

http://comp.uark.edu/~aszalan/magnus_jas_2011.pdf

http://comp.uark.edu/~aszalan/szalanski.pdf


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## Oldtimer

Good research, the first article I felt was the best, in that it was more specific and a better basis laid for the conclusions reached.

Be great if a similar project could be done in NZ but I doubt it will happen.


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## rrussell6870

Fusion_power said:


> Just a general comment that isolating bees from varroa does not mean they are varroa tolerant. That is just varroa escaping. The only way to develop varroa tolerant bees is to deliberately infest large numbers of colonies with an overload of varroa and then breed from the survivors.


The point of isolating the colonies is not to remove them from varroa completely, but to allow them to be exposed to varroa on a small enough level that they can manage them and survive to pass on the stress to the next generation so that the next generation will be that much more prepared to resist varroa...

Letting all bees that are not already resistant enough to survive heavy infestations simply die off so that you can breed from whatever is left is selecting for a single trait (varroa resistances), and is most likely not even giving you that trait in its true form as there are many other variables that could have kept those few remaining colonies alive long enough for you to make increases from them and start the process all over...

I think that another aspect that may be leading to the confusion is the number of colonies involved... you may never see the results of long term exposure in an operation of 5-20 colonies... there is just no way to use such a small scale... on that same note, such a small number of colonies poses no threat of outbreeding to the surrounding areas and even if they were requeened every year with sisters from the same lineage, there would still be external influence in every queen produced in that yard... its just not enough colonies to overwhelm the mating competition within the distance that a mating can occur... so again, the varroa resistance traits are not truly being identified for the purpose of reproducing the traits in the subsequent colonies...

Promoting the traits of the surviving colonies is a different story, but you get the whole plate, not just the steak... through carefully identifying specific mechanics (only within highly productive colonies) that assist colonies to resist varroa and splitting them into groups, we then are able to amplify those mechanics by multiplying the generations that are successfully exposed to varroa... then the colonies from each group that possess the highest levels of their specific mechanic and retain the highest levels of productivity among other long selected traits, are brought back together and crossed in multiple patterns to begin the process of identifying the crosses that have successfully inherited the highest levels of all of the wanted mechanics, as well as continued to retain the traits that they have long been selected for... the process can go through thousands of queens and the end product leave you with 50-80 colonies that have met the criteria and can thus be selected from and used to start breeding the specific line as well as crossing this line into other stocks... this is how you develop resistances in stocks without losing large portions of the gene pool... 

Without allowing mass losses to do the selecting for us, we have developed resistant stocks that still produce an average of 200#+ each season without feeding and after splitting... first year colonies producing 5 walk-away splits that each build to doubles in one season, and each produce an average of two supers during that time... Yes, these colonies can still fall to varroa, especially due to the heavy brood development, however, if they are quite capable of managing varroa at levels that exceed what a common stock can... and as they continue to survive for more generations, they continue to become more and more resistant...

Diversity is essential to honey bee health and productivity... without diversity, honey bees will become weaker and weaker and will eventually fall victim to almost any pests or pathogens, or even to their own excessive mechanics... I do not stand alone when I say that, almost every expert in this field will say the same thing word for word... Tom Seeley, Dave Tarpy, Marla Spivak, Sue Cobey, etc, to name a few... 

The scope of the two methods (allowing natural selection and selecting for naturally developed resistances) are quite different and because the amount of colonies in the first method is so low, its not so much of a threat to the gene pool, but not something that could be done in large scope on a national level without substantially hurting the gene pool... such is what happened already when mites first arrived... and aside from small pockets of wilds that were saved by variables and continued increases to keep colony levels in managed colonies from dropping too low, we have already seen a great devastation to the gene pool...


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## rrussell6870

Fusion_power said:


> If I could point out, your approach of gradually increasing mite tolerance is unlikely to be successful. A better approach would be to divide colonies into two groups, one that is treated to maintain the proven genetics and another that is untreated. Out of 100 untreated colonies, typically about 4 or 5 percent will be mite tolerant. This infers that the genetic background is diverse to start with and that some mite tolerance is present. You can only select for a trait if it is present in the population.


"""""""If I could point out, your approach of gradually increasing mite tolerance is unlikely to be successful. A better approach would be to divide colonies into two groups, one that is treated to maintain the proven genetics and another that is untreated.""""""""

Thats pretty much the way that it is and has always been done... but not by only allowing the selections to be made by survival alone... there are reasons why a colony survives while the one next to it does not, if we could not identify what those reasons are, we would have to rely on one to die and hope that the survivor did not just get lucky due to some variables, but we can identify what mechanics cause the one colony to survive as well as why the other colony would die... Thus the selection is not made by one single trait, but rather by selecting colonies that possess high productivity AND the particular mechanic(s) that we are looking to advance...

"""""""""Out of 100 untreated colonies, typically about 4 or 5 percent will be mite tolerant. This infers that the genetic background is diverse to start with and that some mite tolerance is present. You can only select for a trait if it is present in the population."""""""""""

Actually almost every colony in the US has some level of resistance... these levels can be quite small as some can come in the form of one mechanic, but they are there and are the main reason that selecting from survivors works so quickly as you are compressing the colonies within your operation that possess the highest amounts of these mechanics by removing all of the ones with less... in a large operation, the loss would put them out of business... smaller operations do not face the same extremes, so the loss rates are much lower... 4-5% survival rate is actually quite low, most operations of 50-100 colonies that are headed by common commercially produced genetics are only seeing losses of 30-40% when they quit treating... This is more due to the promotion of these mechanics even in the treated colonies of the commercial operations... The key factor there is that even though the colonies are treated, they are still exposed to varroa and they are continuosly adding lineages from different producers that have been selected for resistances along with production...


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## Fusion_power

Which brings on the queston, How do you identify varroa tolerant colonies?

My way is simple, they are alive.

Re the genepool, it was not very broad to start with, and not to say that I want it to be any smaller.

Re magnifying a trait in a population, yes, over time that will achieve the desired results. But have you calculated the selection efficiency? Any good text on maize breeding will give you 3 or 4 more efficient selection methods. You can easily cut the number of generations in half for a given level of genetic gain while still maintaining diversity. I would stipulate that most advanced selection methods are more labor intensive.

My way:
Year 1:Select colonies that show suppressed mite populations under controlled conditions and raise daughter queens from them that mate only with drones from similar colonies. Daughter queens should be in a ratio of at least 5 to 1, so if 20 colonies are tolerant, raise 100 or more daughter queens for the next years selection.
Year 2: Repeat the basic selection steps from Year 1.
Year 3: repeat again but this time monitor for production and raise more queens from the most productive colonies.
Year 4: repeat step 3
Year 5: repeat step 3
After 5 years you will have a strain of bees that are highly varroa tolerant and can survive entirely on their own and if the production traits are carefully selected, they will produce as well as the susceptible but highly productive bees you started with. You can then introgress these highly tolerant genetics back into the main genepool to recover the desired genetic base.


Using your method, you would select colonies that suppress mites in the first year, raise queens, and mate them back to drones from the best producing colones, then repeat this process as many generations as required to stabilize the traits. This would take 2 to 4 times as many generations to achieve the same level of genetic gain.

Here is just one example of an advanced selection method adapted for bees. It should require no more than 5 generations to yield a significantly varroa tolerant line of bees that are still highly productive. Keep in mind that this is NOT the most efficient selection method you could use, in fact, it was one of the earliest effective methods used in maize breeding. There are much better methods if you care to dig around.
1. Divide colonies into two groups, group V shows varroa tolerance, group P shows exceptional production traits. Lets use an example that there are 20 colonies in each group.
2. Separate the colonies into groups of 4 with 2 V colonies and 2 P colonies. This will give 10 groups of 4 colonies. 
3. Raise 10 queens from each of the 4 colonies in each group. AI the queens with composited drone semen collected from drones in the next group of 4 colonies. So group 1 queens get AI'd with semen from group 2. Group 2 queens get AI'd with semen from group 3, .... group 10 queens get AI'd with semen from group 1.
4. Maintain the 40 parent colonies as long as possible so you can collect further performance data and apply further selection.
5. From the roughly 400 new queens produced in step 3, carefully select the best 20 mite tolerant colonies and the best 20 productive colonies. Refer back to the parental line pedigree as needed to ensure you are selecting the best tolerance genetics and the best production genetics.
6. Repeat steps 2, 3, and 4.

Another thought worth mentioning is that there are a LOT of seriously bad traits that just happen to increase tolerance to varroa.
1. Low levels of egg laying, less brood means less varroa.
2. excessive swarming, the break in brood production limits varroa.
3. A long break from brood rearing in mid-summer, no brood means varroa does not multiply.
4. absconding, the swarm leaves most of the varroa in the abandoned brood.

Because honeybees produce multiple generations very fast, they are adapted to selection processes developed for plant breeding. Just keep in mind the effects of parthenogenesis.

Here is something worth reading just to get an idea of the logistics.
http://web.mac.com/dannpurvis/Purvis_Brothers_Bees.com/Breeding_Philosophy.html

DarJones


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## Oldtimer

If all this works as well as claimed, then why do the treatment free beeks tend to get lower honey yeilds per hive?

My suspicion is that from a genetic diversity perspective, the methods used tend to produce a less robust bee. Albeit line bred for varroa tolerance. (maybe)

I'm saying that based on the numbers I have been able to get, some folks won't give the numbers.


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## Oldtimer

rrussell6870 said:


> I think that another aspect that may be leading to the confusion is the number of colonies involved... you may never see the results of long term exposure in an operation of 5-20 colonies... there is just no way to use such a small scale... on that same note, such a small number of colonies poses no threat of outbreeding to the surrounding areas and even if they were requeened every year with sisters from the same lineage, there would still be external influence in every queen produced in that yard... its just not enough colonies to overwhelm the mating competition within the distance that a mating can occur... so again, the varroa resistance traits are not truly being identified for the purpose of reproducing the traits in the subsequent colonies.


Dee Lusby, as I read her anyway, says that you need 500 colonies to be able to produce and then maintain a particular strain.

I've seen in quite a few posts, people with 5 or 10 hives talking about producing their varroa tolerant strain, and swamping out the surrounding area with their drones. Not just talking about you FP, there's quite a few people believe that. I have a theory about how people, based on the evidence, could come to believe that. A typical type of scenario that I've seen in beesource posts, is that a guy with say, less than 10 hives wants to go treatment free. So he stops treating and looses, say, 6 of his hives. He then breeds from the survivors by doing walkaway splits. Next year he again looses a few hives, but again makes up the numbers by doing walkaway splits. The following year he looses a lower number of hives and feels he is on the way to success, he has produced a varroa tolerant strain and must be swamping the other bees in the area. But even after a few more years he still keeps loosing a few hives.

What I think might be happening, is in his first year, he looses the hives that have the most virulent mites. He splits the others which propogates the less virulent mites. He does this for several years and achieves a better survival of his bees. This would explain why although he claims to have varroa resistant bees, his losses never actually stop, he'll still lose 2 or 3 hives every year, because they pick up some of the more virulent mites from somewhere. It would also explain why when he gives one of his queens to somebody else, the varroa resistance is often not transferred.

Now I'm not saying I'm right, it's just a theory. But it does explain some of the grey areas small treatment free beeks experience.


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## rrussell6870

FP, You have just basically detailed the process that the usda used to develop the russian x lines that are promoted today... and you have listed the problems that were not noticed to begin with because of the small number of colonies in the study, but later when they became apparent in field tests, were hoped to be addressed by crossing with the common stock of the apiaries that were to be using them...

In the earlier SMR developments, they asked for operations to send them survivors and crossed the ones that they received to combine and intensify the traits that had led to the survival, again, lost the production aspect by being single focussed...

Instead of simply identifying a group as "resistant" or "productive", we took the approach of seeking the most productive queens from large operations and specifically looking at each for the mechanic(s) that could lead it to be resistant... So the whole process begins with the utmost productivity... then once the stocks that possess these mechanics are identified and sorted into groups, the process of excellerating the generations begins... we can produce many generations in one season... the trait is present from the beginning, so re-identifying it at each generation is not necessary, only the level of increase acheived at 1 year intervals... daughters head small nucs and are replaced by their own daughters as soon as they get the nuc laid up enough to proceed... in just a few years we may have advanced as many as 150 generations... at each generation a few queens from each batch are placed in their own full sized colonies to monitor their performance, and at each testing interval the lines that have progessed the least and/or lost any of the production or other qualities that we wish to keep promoting are ended... it gets rather complicated, but the short version is that we race to produce as many generations as possible while the stresses from the exposure to varroa are still causing a response... 

How do we identify varroa resistant colonies? Not simply by their ability to survive, as I mentioned earlier, there are many factors that can be misleading there by having colonies that survive, but not so much because of any group of traits, but rather by a combination of variables and lower level resistances... In so many cases, the ones that die were no less resistant than the ones that survived, they just fell to the combination of variables that were not in their favor and lack of variables that were in their favor... We identify the specific mechanic, such as mite grooming, vsh, or even temp shut-down...(not discussed much but is the queen shutting down for short periods if the colony falls under heavy mite stress, causing a break in the brood cycle which allows the other traits to clean out the mites instead of have them multiply, but does not leave the colony awaiting a new queen, the length of the shut down seems to be determined by how heavy the infestation, no supersedures, she just starts back up heavily after the stress levels drop)... the candidates must first be all from highly productive colonies, then only the highest levels of the selected mechanic are kept...

(we are getting pretty far off subject with this though, maybe we should get a different thread going? Actually, I think I have gone over all of this before here at beesource... If anyone can point us to that thread, maybe we can bump it back up or at least link it here for more indepth information... thanks in advance to any who try remember...)


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## rrussell6870

Oldtimer, actually you are quite correct... I have always assumed that was what most implied when they use the term "Mite Tolerant"... not so much that they can coexist with varroa, but that they are somewhat resistant and the varroa is less virulent... it has been my experience that those who are just starting to become treatment free, seem to loose most of their colonies during the winter... of course the colonies were doomed before winter ever arrived, but the last of bees die off during winter itself... along with the virulent mites... leaving a weaker mite in the yard to be spread while spreading a stronger bee...

And yes, it takes some 140 generations of consistent mating within a group before the effects of the crosses are able to be seen in the full colony and able to be passed on with every drone or egg... It would take a very long time to develop a creature with notable consistent qualities with any less than 500 colonies and/or a vast understanding and extensive record keeping...


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## rrussell6870

megank said:


> So just what do the ARS people advocate? Anybody know?


As far as treatment goes... they recommend testing and treating at threatening thresholds...

As far as diversity goes... they recommend seeking as much stock diversity as possible while testing for and boasting resistant and productive traits...


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## Fusion_power

Oldtimer, I don't know what other beekeepers are getting in terms of production. I know that my bees have maintained very acceptable levels of production. I had some problems with colonies being hotter than I like but that was because I used a very hot but productive queen to raise queens from a few years ago. I suspect that many of the beekeepers with mite tolerant genetics are running lower producing strains derived from the Russians that were brought in several years ago. The only thing I have done different is to deliberately trigger swarming in my colonies 3 years ago which produced something between 30 and 50 swarms in that one season. Presuming that just half of those swarms made it, there would by now be several hundred feral colonies in the area that have mite tolerance. That is the buffer zone that helps keep my queens relatively pure.

I think there is one thing missing in this conversation. It is NOT necessary that every bee in a colony have varroa tolerance genetics. If you can get just 20% of the bees to have a high level of varroa removal behavior then the entire colony will be highly resistant.

RRussell, just curious, but do you have a background of training in genetics? The reason I ask is because varroa tolerance breeding can be done with single trait mass selection. That is the method Brother Adam used to stabilize tracheal mite tolerance in Buckfast bees. It is also the method Dann Purvis used to develop his mite tolerant bees. It is not necessary to get fancy. Just produce a very large number of colonies, apply a very high level of selection pressure, and produce new queens from the survivors.

DarJones


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## Ted Kretschmann

Oldtimer, it has been shown time and time again that too much VHS varroa resistance will cause a drop in honey production. While weather has had an influencing factor on the USA's honey production on the big picture, more is at play. VHS may also be a contributing factor on the decrease of honey production on a national level. Just sit back and watch, as VHS increases even more in our bees, honey production in a few more years will be half of what it was before mites. Then the big stink is "I got to call the inspector, I think I have VHS bees, what do I do about it." Too much of a good thing is not good. Moderation in everything is the answer. TED


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## Lost Bee

deknow said:


> Normal? Normally when I hear beekeepers talk about average honey production, they don't account for the sugar and/or HFCS they are inputting into the system. Of one feeds 80lbs of manufactured, refined, sugar between spring and fall and harvests 100lbs of honey, how much honey was "produced? (Note that the 100lbs of honey has 10 to 20lbs of water)
> If I invest $100 and my return is $100....how much money have I made?
> 
> Deknow


I think they made none. I'm glad *I* went to school.
Maybe if you can't make money or enjoy what your 
doing wouldn't it be a wise decision to quit doing it?

Let's have all make a vote.


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## Lost Bee

Ted Kretschmann said:


> Oldtimer, it has been shown time and time again that too much VHS varroa resistance will cause a drop in honey production. While weather has had an influencing factor on the USA's honey production on the big picture, more is at play. VHS may also be a contributing factor on the decrease of honey production on a national level. Just sit back and watch, as VHS increases even more in our bees, honey production in a few more years will be half of what it was before mites. Then the big stink is "I got to call the inspector, I think I have VHS bees, what do I do about it." Too much of a good thing is not good. Moderation in everything is the answer. TED


Is this is because bees that work too hard to be hygenic do 
less outside the hive gathering nectar,pollen,water,etc. Ted?


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## Oldtimer

Good point Ted, and Lost Bee.

I'll accept that, and another factor may be that treatment free bees will often, by definition, be struggling with mites, while treated bees may have most of the mites killed by the treatment. Then there are the struggling hives that aren't dead yet, but eventually will be.

However I'm still not sure this will be the whole explanation, in my experience, any line bred bee, that has been bred without proper other controls that would have been used by a skilled bee breeder, tend to be less productive. I have seen this on many occasions and now avoid certain bees, that may have great qualities such as for example, gentleness, because I know they have been line bred.

From a practicle perspective, I know that some commercial treatment free beekeepers are still able to make a living, because despite their low production, they push the fact that their honey is organic, and sell it at markets and similar, for a much higher price than the larger producing beekeeper who treats would get, for his bulk honey.


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## Ted Kretschmann

Lost bee, it is as you have written. Too much house cleaning and not enough foraging. TED


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## hoodswoods

If we take the human element out of the equation, how much diversity was or could have been occuring previously? Pangea splitting apart? Riding drifwood to foreign lands? I don't disagree with a limited gene pool, but they were not riding 747's between continents either.


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## Oldtimer

It's thought, although not known for sure, that some breeds such as carniolan, were able to come about in a seperated area, after having been taken there by humans, thousands of years ago.

In more recent times it looks like that might be what happened with Russians, they were taken there by humans & then adapted to local conditions. But as breeding was not controlled, the resultant bees do have some traits we might wish they didn't.


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## adamf

Oh boy.

Simply, there's plenty of genetic potential to produce excellent, healthy, productive, hardy queens in the USA. 

The "pool" or population is not the issue in breeding. The issue is POOR SELECTION.


Adam Finkelstein
www.vpqueenbees.com


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## Ted Kretschmann

There is plenty of genetic potential but NOT AS MUCH as years past. Thus limiting what you can select from. And if the stock that is selected from is inferior to start with-oh boy, you got problems. You can not turn a Kia into a Cadillac. It "aint" happening. Gone are the days when we breeders used to swap queens around between operations to maintain genetic diversity. The Normans used to get queens from Myself and I used to get queens from Rossman and so on.......Now the Normans are out of business, I raise only nucs for sale. And that is the history of Queenbreeding in the United States-fewer breeders lacking broader genetics. So now when you order queens, you might as well say you are getting "cookie cutter queens". They are all from the same commercial genetics. I commend any breeder out there that is able to bring in legally any new genetics in the form of drone semen for A.I. purposes from overseas. TED


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## adamf

Ted Kretschmann said:


> There is plenty of genetic potential but NOT AS MUCH as years past. Thus limiting what you can select from. And if the stock that is selected from is inferior to start with-oh boy, you got problems. You can not turn a Kia into a Cadillac. It "aint" happening. Gone are the days when we breeders used to swap queens around between operations to maintain genetic diversity. The Normans used to get queens from Myself and I used to get queens from Rossman and so on.......Now the Normans are out of business, I raise only nucs for sale. And that is the history of Queenbreeding in the United States-fewer breeders lacking broader genetics. So now when you order queens, you might as well say you are getting "cookie cutter queens". They are all from the same commercial genetics. I commend any breeder out there that is able to bring in legally any new genetics in the form of drone semen for A.I. purposes from overseas. TED


I beg to differ.

*Point one:* What you write above Ted, assumes that all the folks you mention
and others, are exhausting any potential to select from the honey bee
population to produce quality queens. If one makes this assumption, one must state
that:

1. Queens produced in the USA are declining in quality.
2. The reason for this is the queen producers have reached a bottleneck in
their breeding populations.

_Is this true? Are all queens produced in the USA less good then they were?
Are all queen producers producing queens that are inferior because they are
too homogeneous in genotype?_

If one takes a look at breeding programs around the world involving animals
that are bred for agricultural production, one may find many examples where
there is actually a closed population (that is where no "new" gene flow
occurs due to selection rules based on strict standards). These programs
continue to produce quality animals while maintaining a breeding population
that is genetically sustainable.

Stating that there's not enough genetic diversity in the honey bee breeding
population to produce good quality queens is pretty hard to substantiate.
Breeding populations do not decay in quality, unless poor selection has
occurred._ Is the breeding population of Holstein Cattle decaying? Do
Holstein cattle breeders have to adhere to a strict selection regime and
have to cooperate in their selection?_

I'd mildly propose then, that some of the "problems with diversity" in the
USA honey bee population are based not on a poor gene pool, but on poor
selection: an important point to remember in breeding is selection can influence a
population in any way not necessarily for the good of breeders.

*Point two: *To remedy a population that seems to be "spent" and "lacks
genetic potential", one would augment the existing population with "fresh"
genotypes (bring in new blood). Ted, you state above that you commend any breeder to
bring in "new genetics" from other populations. And then what? In three or
four short generations, the "new genetics" will become part of the "gene
pool" and we'll be back to where you say we are now.

This philosophy ignores the inherent resiliency that populations have naturally and
avoids the main reason why there's a problem with "cookie cutter queens"
being produced. That problem is* Poor Selection.*

How many queen producers use out-crossing to avoid a load-up on the sex
allele expression? It works for awhile. Eventually however, a producer will notice a reduction in vigor and greater
susceptibility to environmental stress. That's to be expected in any breeding scenario where short-term gains are favored over a
more conservative outlook. Searching for _new_ stock to _SAVE _the breeding population isn't the answer to
"cookie cutter queens". It may help, but is a short-term solution.

The key to quality queens over the long haul is practicing selection in a
fashion that promotes quality* and* preserves the breeding population.
This is done around the world with other animal species in varying degrees
of success based primarily on the breeding program.

We need to take a hard look at how we choose breeding stock and how we turn it into queens for use.
Following proven fundamentals AND utilizing new breeding resources will ensure we're successful.


Adam Finkelstein
www.vpqueenbees.com


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## Oldtimer

What happened to dogs then?

Most buyers of a pure bred puppy now, need to have fat wallets to cover all the vet bills that will come later to remedy things such as hip displacea.


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## Fusion_power

While I will generally agree with AdamF, that queen breeders are introducing a huge genetic bottleneck, I'd like to point out that the genetic diversity in the U.S. is incredibly limited by comparison to the diversity available in Europe and Africa. This does not mean we can't do some serious selection work here in the U.S.

I see a huge problem that we don't have people in Europe and Africa scouring the countryside to find variations that would be useful here. What happened to the idea of going to the remote regions of the world and finding and importing such queens?

As an aside, I found an online reference that Sue Cobey went to turkey in 2008 and hoped to bring back pure Caucasian semen. Does anyone know if she succeeded?

DarJones


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## rrussell6870

AdamF, in your first point, YES queen quality "overall" in the US has been declining... but its not simply a queen quality issue, and I think we are in agreement as to the issues... I agree fully that the problem is in selection... maybe a better way to describe it is that the average selection process is too single trait oriented or simply there are too few colonies being selected and promoted...

If a breeder with thousands of colonies to select from only selects three to five colonies to graft from, then produces hundreds of thousands of queens from those colonies, they are creating a bottle neck type situation for the future of their customers... when an operation purchases 1,000 queens from said breeder and requeens 75% of its colonies with these queens, they now have many large yards that are completely compiled of colonies headed by sisters, then the operation selects from a few of these sisters and produces their own queens from one or two of them and uses these queens for requeening and increases... now the operation that had 1,300+/- colonies headed by many different queens from different lineages, now has 1,500+/- colonies all headed by one line of queens with limited variation... the other lines that were developing within their operation are lost... average breeder operations in the US are showing somewhere around 35-45 different lines in their total operation, yet produce queens from only one or two of them... the buying operations that I describe above are averaging 1-4 different lines... so quite quickly the bottle neck is formed... and when that operation begins to produce queens for other large operations, it gets even tighter... so yes, selection is the greatest issue... instead of selecting so few colonies and producing so many queens from them, more colonies need to be selected from different lines and less queens produced from each one... its not an issue with ALL producers, but has a significant effect still...

This is more common than most know and is equal to or possibly even greater than the losses of lines during the initial damages of varroa... 

There are many things that are continually reducing our gene pool, but very little that is assisting the promotion of it... thus the concern is more about what we will be able to select from in the near future...


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## Fusion_power

A very conservative estimate is that 96 to 99 percent of all feral colonies in the U.S. died out as a result of the first wave of Varroa which started in 1990 and peaked in 1994. Instead of capturing survivor colonies and breeding from them in an effort to produce varroa tolerant queens, beekeepers began treating their bees with miticides to keep them alive. This had a huge detrimental effect because beekeepers began maintaining susceptible bees that produced overwhelming populations of drones that mated with feral queens that had some level of varroa resistance. The result was to wipe out the feral genetics anywhere within range of managed colonies or of their derivative swarm populations. 

Now you add in queen breeders producing typically 1500+ queens from each breeder queen in their operation and you can see why we have genetic bottlenecks. I saw an article on the net a few days ago where one queen breeder bragged of producing 20,000 queens from one highly selected breeder. Wish Sue Cobey could weigh in on this issue, bet she could say some choice things.

If you want to eliminate the bottlenecks, there is an opposite strategy that would work, but granted it would take a LOT of time. Instead of selecting the best of the best (for example, picking the best 10 colonies out of 1000), start culling only the worst of the worst. In other words, out of each 1000 colonies, cull 300 and raise queens from each of the remaining 700 colonies. The genetic gain will be slow, but it will be consistent over time and it will maintain diversity. Now try to convince queen breeders to do this and see what arguments get offered. 

There is a response about Holstein cattle which also should be considered. With the highly selected bulls in the milk industry today and widespread use of AI to produce calves, a typical bull has between 500 and 5000 calves. If you dig around on the net, you can find where an inbreeding study was done to figure just how much this is limiting the genetics over the long term. You will be surprised at the answer. It is much lower than the genetic bottleneck honeybees are being pushed through, yet for Holsteins, at one point 30% of the cattle in Denmark and Japan were CVM carriers, all derived from a single AI bull. Now if you want to find out just how detrimental this can be, read the wiki article below. Please note that this was traced back to a SINGLE bull that was very widely used for AI!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_vertebral_malformation

Darjones


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## rrussell6870

FP, its a bit grander than you would think... the average large breeder produces somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 queens per season... as you have noted about the breeder that said they produced 20,000 queens from the one mother, it is common for purchased breeder queens to be used produce tens of thousands of daughters from each one, and sadly, the purchased breeder queens are usually sisters that are mated using ii from the drones of only two colonies, and sometimes drones from the sane colony that the breeder queen herself was produced from...

Culling the less than exceptional stock and producing queens from the mass of exceptionals is exactly what we do, so I second your promotion of this practice.


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## Ted Kretschmann

As someone that has been around before mites, Adam, you should know that queens are not the quality that they used to be. That there were more matriarchial lines to select from, many hundreds more. Thus genetic bottlenecks do not have a chance to occur in a more broad based population. And yes, Sue Cobey, along with Dr. Shepard were successfull in recovering Mnt Gray Caucasian drone semen from the isolated mountains in Turkey. Hopefully in the near future these bees will be available to some select breeders for reproduction. I beg to differ, any new genetics that are from quality stock lines such as the Mnt Grays added to the overall gene pool can only broaden and improve a wimpy gene pool, such as exist here in the USA. I have worked bees overseas in Ukraine. I can say that their bees even with the mites are healthier. I can only state what I observed, the vigor of the bees is in the genetics-which is broad based Carpathian stock. Adam, you may be for closed population genetics to back cross for a "pure" line. This is O.K. if it works for you. The Russian bee that people love or hate is a natural closed population that backcrossed on itself for 180 years. I can not endorse that inbred bee or any inbred bee. TED


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## Solomon Parker

Here's a thought experiment. History and sociology shows us that while people believe that society is getting worse and worse, it is actually getting better and better. Is beekeeping the same or are the crotchety aged gentlemen correct? :shhhh:


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## Adam Foster Collins

rrussell6870 said:


> ... the average large breeder produces somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 queens per season...


Just a quick interjection - how many breeders of that size are there that you know of?

Thanks,

Adam


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## rrussell6870

Eleven


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## Adam Foster Collins

rrussell6870 said:


> Eleven


Holy Sheep Dip.


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## Ted Kretschmann

Sol, if you had been around long enough, you might be crotchety your self. Then you would realize beekeeping is not the same as it was 25 years ago. I hope you keep bees long enough to get "crotchety". But then wisdom does come with age. TED


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## rrussell6870

Lol. Sheep dip? That's a good one, I'm going to add that to the creative vocabulary that my wife and I must use when the kids are near.

"Crotchety"? I wouldn't call it that... there is a level of aggravation that one feels when they see something that they have worked their entire lives for start to go down hill... the wisdom that the seasoned guys share comes mostly from having learned the hard way, meaning they have lost bees, equipment, and/or money in order to earn that knowledge... then when they see someone else about to take those same paths, they speak up in the hopes of saving these people from making those same mistakes... but then get an argument and called old instead of being able to help... it takes some getting used to, but I think that even though some may reject the help that the "old" guys offer, there are many others who are reading and gratefully accepting their help, but just not posting about it...


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## josethayil

rrussell6870 said:


> but I think that even though some may reject the help that the "old" guys offer, there are many others who are reading and gratefully accepting their help, but just not posting about it...


You are 100 percent right about it.


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## Oldtimer

I've seen some younger guys get pretty steamed up when their beliefs get challenged too LOL!!

In fact I fear for what some of them will be like on a chat site, by the time they are "old".

One thing about bees, you can spend a lifetime learning about them but there's always something new.

But I THINK Sol's remark was more aimed at people complaining about the world getting worse, which by definition has to be crotchety old guys because they've been around long enough to see, or imagine, it's getting worse.


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## Solomon Parker

Only Oldtimer hit the nail on the head.

I didn't even use the word "old", yet it appeared in quotations. I haven't even met anyone on here (whose age I know) older than my father.


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## Ted Kretschmann

Solomon has finally ventured out of the treatment free world and into mainstream beekeeping. He has been "assimilated". TED


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## Oldtimer

True! 

When he's saying things like "Oldtimer hit the nail on the head" He's definately part of the Borg!!


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## valleyman

Sol, 
Your only hope may be Jean-Luc. LOL


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## Solomon Parker

Just goes to show how wrong you've been about me.


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## jim lyon

We'll do our best to protect you Sol but I fear even the powers of the Borg may not be enough. They will find you....find you and bring you back.


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## Solomon Parker

Back where?


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## jim lyon

I don't know I have only heard rumors, come on its Halloween get in the spirit.


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## Solomon Parker

What sort of rumors? Are you going to start calling me Locutus next? We are Borg. We will add your technological and biological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile. Have I proven my nerditude yet?


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## MARBIS

Solomon Parker said:


> Have I proven my nerditude yet?


Long time ago


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## Ted Kretschmann

Locutus Parker, that has a ring to it.  TED


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## Solomon Parker

Alright enough of that nonsense. Back to the gene pool. So are things actually getting worse, or do we just think they are?

In my experience, in 15 years, I've gone from every hive dying of massive mite problems the first winter to just a couple hives dying the first winter of things like failed supersedures and cold starvation. Seems like it's getting a little better to me.


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## Oldtimer

Well if you are talking about your own bees survival rates Sol, sounds like going from zero, to the greater percentage, it's improving.

But if we are talking about the thread topic, the gene pool, those studies linked earlier indicate it's getting narrower. 

To some people that's not worse, to some people it is.

However got to say, after 15 years experience, and only having to look after a handful of hives, i wouldn't be expecting any losses at all every year, if mites were not a factor. (if we have to keep talking about mites).


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## deknow

....and I daresay that over those 15 years, despite probably bringing in some stock from time to time (on purpose or through matings) , that your genepool is.likely narrower than it was in the past.
deknow


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## Oldtimer

Just a word about "failed supersedure" there really isn't any such thing. Supersedure is when the bees decide to replace their queen, so breed a new one. After the new queen is mated and laying eggs, they will then eventually dispose of the old one. If the new queen fails to mate (rare with a supesedure cell), they'll just continue with the old queen and try again.

What you've described as "failed supersedure" was not supersedure. If the death of the hive was queen related, it would have been some emergency situation with the queen where the queen died or stopped laying, before a replacement could be raised successfully. Been a lot more of that since mites.

"Cold starvation", I'm assuming you mean the bees died over winter even with honey in the hive? Almost unknown in my country, due to just cold, so I can't speak with first hand experience. But some of the commercial beeks on this forum told me it's been a lot more common since mites.


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## Solomon Parker

You are correct Oldtimer, it was failed emergency queen replacement.

When I talk about cold starvation, it doesn't happen "over winter" as you put it, it happens "over a week in November.". Last year, of my losses, two happened in November, one queen, one cold starvation, and the other one happened in Februrary when the hive dwindled to such low numbers they froze solid.

I so much wish I had kept better records and paid better attention back when I first started so I had better data on why they died. But that was back when I was losing most everything to varroa. Not so anymore.

I honestly don't understand where you've come up with he idea that I shouldn't be losing hives any more or that anyone shouldn't. That doesn't even make sense. It's a near statistical impossibility no matter the mitigating circumstances. You lose hives, Ted loses hives, everybody loses hives. If I undertake a philosophy that loses a few more than you, what is that to you? I'm still succeeding in meeting the goals I set forth in my operation. And most of my bees are still alive. Why do you get to decide because of a few percent here and there?


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## Oldtimer

Solomon Parker said:


> You lose hives, Ted loses hives, everybody loses hives.


Interesting you would assume that, it says something about what you think is normal.

Since I got back into the hobby, around 4 years ago, I haven't lost a hive. But then, I'll deal with mites if they need it. Course if I had as many hives as Ted, I would lose some. I have the luxury of owning so few hives I just about know every bee personally LOL!



Solomon Parker said:


> If I undertake a philosophy that loses a few more than you, what is that to you? I'm still succeeding in meeting the goals I set forth in my operation. And most of my bees are still alive. Why do you get to decide because of a few percent here and there?


I don't get to decide. You do. If you are meeting your goals, that's fine. 

I think perhaps I did not express my meaning properly in the previous post. It was not a critisism of you. It was trying to express that although deaths may be ascribed to various causes, or no cause at all they "just died", mites are probably involved. IE, in the world as it was before mites, with your 15 years experience, it is unlikely (IMHO), that you would have ever lost a hive, or if so, rarely. But now, you do. My theory is it's to do with mites. All those three causes of death you've mentioned, mites can be a factor. Mites help exacerbate stresses that can make whatever else is wrong more likely to be fatal.


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## Solomon Parker

Actually I have about 8.5 years experience but I've been on the forum for nine. I'm one of those newbees everybody talks about who starts out treatment free and fails... 

Only I didn't fail. I started with the idea that I would develop mite resistant genetics and to that end, I started with 20 hives instead of the typical one or two. Right now, I'm developing a plan for newbees that will be more inexpensive than the current typical and will introduce increase and breeding at the beginning when it can do the most good.

Finding productive gentle mite resistant colonies can be done. But they're still a bit rare. In my experience, cross country hybrids are a possible good place to start.


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## Oldtimer

Oh, sorry, I took what you said in post 146 to mean you had 15 years experience.

A plan would be good.


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## Ted Kretschmann

Before mites hit, if you lost more than 10 percent of you bees in a year you were considered a very bad beekeeper. Normal was around 3-5 percent. The 30 percent loss that has been occuring over the past four years is not sustainable. The idea now is not to loose so many. Yes, Solomon ,we do loose bees. Last year it was around fifteen percent. This year maybe a little less. We loose more bees over summer than in winter due to stress caused by heat, drought, beetles, queenlessness and the fact that as commercial operators-we are hard on bees, because as much production as possible is squeezed out of the colonies. In the end, what survives the stress is a little genetically stronger than what proceeded before and a better bee is the end result. I have one advantage that all people with large numbers of colonies have-DEPTH. Depth in numbers and genetics. That fifteen percent loss can be replaced in the course of a week's work in the very early spring through splitting and making nucs. For any good plan as Solomon is proposing to work, the newbee he is assuming has a deep knowledge of honeybee biology and a grasp of beekeeping. That knowledge is only acquired with experience and working more than just a few colonies. Most commercial beekeepers that have worked bees for decades can walk up to a colony of honey bees, look at the activity at the entrance, and tell you exactly the health of the colony and what it needs management wise. TED


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## rrussell6870

That's true. The greatest issue with a newbie trying to get to a treatment free management is that they haven't even learned how to manage bees in a low stress environment yet, so the high stress environment is far too advanced for them and causes great losses... which usually leads to discouragement and giving up on bee keeping completely... 

Developing a line of resistant bees with 20 basic colonies is impossible... it takes serious resources to be able to identify traits and promote them successfully within a stock, while continually selecting for production...

I think that I mentioned it earlier, but the key to developing a serious strain (and by serious, I mean NOT one that is merely able to survive varroa and otherwise a horrible bee, but rather a bee that is productive, gentle, and responsive to simple management practices that allow it to fight varroa), is to take it one step at a time and identify the specific traits that you wish to promote from a pool of ALL productive and gentle stocks...20 colonies is just not enough to provide the necessary pool to select from, while also needing to have bee resources to be able to effectively produce multiple crosses and generations, and study colonies in order to see what each new line is becoming...

However, as Ted has pointed out, losses can be made up easily each spring... THAT is how one can make advancements in their stocks without being devastated by losses... rapid increase... new colonies are less effected by mites unless the local mite population is very high and during summer the drift from losses can cause booming mite populations even in new colonies... so if the person is experienced enough to know how to minimize spread and get the area mite population under control, simply increasing rapidly will be a great benefit to their stocks and their ability to withstand a treatment free environment... 

If someone starts with 20 hives and jumps to 40 in spring, then to 60 in fall, surely they should come out of wither with at least 40 hives... then jump to 80 in spring and then if they wish to stop expanding, start selling off the older generations by way of producing nucs, thus continuing to make further increase even if they do not raise their colony numbers... in short, the genetics of this generation may not be able to survive mites, so you need to get daughters to take their places... by raising queens from your most productive, and resistant stocks, then using them to replace the last generation, you are advancing your number of generations that the stock has been allowed to survive while being exposed to mites... BUT as was pointed out, having the experience to know what the actual reasons for failure and reasons for success are is absolutely imperative... in many cases, people simply test their colonies for mite counts and breed from the ones that are lower... this is a mistake as the ones that are lower are usually only lower because they were slow to build up, do not travel as far to forage, and/or have swarmed excessively... some queens are "bee thieves" meaning that they are just too irresistible to other bees in the yard and thus draw in drift... these colonies may seem like they have too many bees, too many mites, and not enough production, while in reality, the bees are chewing mites in half and bringing in loads of forage per capita, but the high number of bees drifting in from other colonies are bringing in high mite loads and no forage... so someone without the experience to understand how to notice these things would assume they are poor bees, and select the colony with the low mite count nearby to breed from, but that colony is not resistant at all, but rather has lost its bees (and mites) to the pheromones of the first hive, which also leaves it appearing to have heavy stores and be gentle, due to the few bees that are left...


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## Solomon Parker

Oldtimer said:


> Oh, sorry, I took what you said in post 146 to mean you had 15


My apologies, about 15 years ago, we were given a hive and we caught a swarm. But both died
That winter. I didn't have bees again for a number of years, I don't consider it part of my contiguous experience.


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## Daniel Y

I would think that a narrowing of the genetic pool should be of great concern considering the condition of bees in the past few decades. But I also have several other things that have sent up red flags for me.

1. The common practice of feeding bees sugar water. I am not making any claims but this one stands out as a possible problem in general nutrition.

2. Queen Rearing practices. I suspected and have now read at least one source that supports that possibly current practices may be producing only marginally adequate queens rather than robust queens that posses their full genetic potential.

3. The frequency at which queens / colonies are replaced. This seriously limiting the ability to monitor specific colonies for traits that would not show up for two years or more.

Along with other concerns that cross my mind as I browse these forums.

Leading my list of concerns as to the general health of bees today are the practices of feeding and queen rearing.Both simply strike me as having the potential for the greatest impact. Just my gut feeling and the first most obvious stones to turn over.

Genetics may very well be one of the pieces of the puzzle. it complicates recognizing the role of genes if other methods are not allowing the genetics to even be seen.


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## Lost Bee

Requeening every second year instead of every year would reduce the
inbreeding by half. Although, from what I see most beekeepers do it every
year.


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## rweakley

Requeening???? What's that? I never requeen my hives unless she disappears and they aren't making another one. Next year if my allows I plan on getting some queens from russel. I will make up nucs from existing hives and put them in there. Most of my queens have come from cutouts or swarms and survive pretty good unless I mess things up.


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