# How Much "Breeding Progress" Can Really Be Expected?



## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

It would not be as easy as with II, but remember Brother Adam's work at Buckfast Abby. He made progress without using II, since it was not in wide use before the late 1940s. I would say that what characteristics you are trying to improve in the bees would have a bearing on how well you succeed. Given a choice we all would opt for II, but if we had unlimited time and manpower we could show improvement.

I think the draw back of having few colonies to work with, as well as lack of training and experience in evaluating queens and colonies would limit most beekeepers.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Honestly, it's all about your selectiong criteria and knowing how to best cycle through your current stocks and with open matings.... and lastly, luck of the draw that the queens produced have the genetics you want. That being said, bees are a little unique in that you can create a queen, get her mated in about a month and in under 3 weeks produce daughters off her to select from as well.


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## beeware10 (Jul 25, 2010)

all breeding to make a super bee is temporary. roger morse said it best when he said the bees in the us were mongrels.


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## garusher (May 28, 2012)

I think mother nature has and does a wonderful job of keeping everything in balance. Human intervention is a recipe for disaster.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Answer to topic question:
According to German studies with Carniolan bees (several decades timespan) about the same as with pigs, 2%/ year.


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

Juhani Lunden said:


> ...According to German studies with Carniolan bees (several decades timespan) about the same as with pigs, 2%/ year.


So, just 50 years to reach your goals. (If they don't change along the way). That's promising.


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## ChuckReburn (Dec 17, 2013)

I had the pleasure of listening to Daniel Weaver of BeeWeaver Apiaries speak Monday night on queen breeding and selecting for specific traits.

Working towards varroa tolerance he started with 2,000 hives and lost all but 52. After 3 years of breeding and no real progress, he came to the realization that a good portion of the initial colonies had simply escaped infestation and had no tolerance. Leveraging that knowledge, he felt they gained traction at year 5. He did say that an early decision to use indicators like DWV as a proxy paid off. Scientists at the time told him he was attempting the equivalent of "breeding sheep to be tolerant of wolves." 20 years, thousands of hives and 4 generations of breeding knowledge.

For the wannabe queen breeders he offered some suggestions - in particular, focus on a single trait first, then add in additional traits. Texas bees are likely hotter than northern bees - We run a lot of BeeWeaver queens (and I know their reputation for sometimes being hot) and use them routinely to requeen feral bees that are unworkable. My wife talked about wanting to breed the "gentlest bees in town" - he suggested the importance of using a repeatable scientific method to select for the trait and offered using a metronome with a black swatch of cloth in front of a hive - rap the hive a few times with a hive tool and count the number of guards that attack within a time interval. 

I guess it depends on what your objective is but I don't think that the average back yard breeder is going to make quantum leaps.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> It seems like II is the only real way to make a closed population and actually make real progress.



I guess that assumes you're "going it alone". With selective importation of stock that has desirable traits, then I suspect that quantum leaps can be made without investing in II. But yes, starting with a given population and attempting to amplify certain traits will be a tough route. I'm sure some traits are more achievable from a given population than others, but any trait will require effort to develop and diligence to maintain.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

The main issues are people say bees are 'trait hoarders' which is somewhat true. Also, studies show that good hives are typically led by a queen that was well mated with a diversity of drones which makes sense, but that makes breeding true very difficult from a rigid 'breeding' system's perspective. So you need to find the balance of identifying and maintaining a few lines with the traits you want while getting their daughter's mated properly ending up with the trait stacking you need but there's a coefficient of 'chance' needed in that equation which makes things unpredictable and line maintenance of your breeders will always be something you have to address. People use the term muts, but I think it's more of just maintaining that diversity of matings in the queens produced to maintain desirable allele stacks in the hive populations as a whole.


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## j.kuder (Dec 5, 2010)

Here is a video i came across on you tube this morning 
Dr. Keith S. Delaplane of the University of Georgia on "Honey Bee Breeding: Fact or Fiction?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txZtQrMTeag


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

j.kuder said:


> Here is a video i came across on you tube this morning
> Dr. Keith S. Delaplane of the University of Georgia on "Honey Bee Breeding: Fact or Fiction?"
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txZtQrMTeag



Keith's talk is part of where my question comes from. He really questions how much breeding progress has been made over time, and talks about the bees needing to mate with many drones in order to produce the strongest colonies. It seems that using II is a much surer way to make real progress in a breeding program toward specific traits.

That said, I'm not sure that I'm ready to do that myself.

There is something to be said for the bees doing their thing naturally. There's something to be said for the things beyond our control. There is something to be said for letting a creature fulfill it's life purposes and functions in their own way. 

Maybe letting the bees do things their own way - at least in part - may allow them the room they need to survive - and to survive us.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

AR Beekeeper said:


> It would not be as easy as with II, but remember Brother Adam's work at Buckfast Abby. He made progress without using II, since it was not in wide use before the late 1940s.


In fact, he did use an II device later in his career. I know who has the device.


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## SRatcliff (Mar 19, 2011)

Michael, you once posted(had to look up the exact wording) "Tarpy once said that man breeds by selecting from the best. Nature breeds by getting rid of the dogs." That clicked with me and I think of that line often. 

Even II to me just feels like a bandaid or temporary "fix", once you stop most of that progress is lost(open mating). Putting bees in boxes and encouraging them to grow to extremely large populations(preventing swarming) is already greatly disruptive to how they've naturally evolved/adapted. Anything we can let do on their own, or at least meet them half way, is probably for the best. Of course it depends on our goals.

Just my current opinion.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

AR Beekeeper said:


> It would not be as easy as with II, but remember Brother Adam's work at Buckfast Abby. He made progress without using II, since it was not in wide use before the late 1940s. .


Brother Adams breeding success happened because he was using an isolated mating station, Dartmoor. This station had one particular drone line, hives with sister queens. This resembles II.

Beekeeper knowing the exact location have told me that Dartmoor may have "leaked" a bit, the isolation distance may have been inadequate to 100% control. This might just be a good thing, making it something between II and free mating.


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## beekuk (Dec 31, 2008)

Juhani Lunden said:


> Beekeeper knowing the exact location have told me that Dartmoor may have "leaked" a bit, the isolation distance may have been inadequate to 100% control. This might just be a good thing, making it something between II and free mating.


 Leak a bit... a good way to describe it, but i have not yet found it to leak at all, even during very good mating conditions, mainly due to the topography i believe.

However BA did have a problem with a beekeeper moving hives into the area to get some queens mated, this would of caused problems no doubt, but was soon sorted.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i think it boils down to flooding the area with the genetics you like. to this end the beekeeper has the advantage because of the ability to churn out many mulitples more from his/her desired stock compared to what the bees can do naturally via heavy splitting and grafting. i am lucky that i have only ferals and other treatment free keepers in my immediate area. from my experience hybridization has been seen to lead to better bees.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

beekuk said:


> Leak a bit... a good way to describe it, but i have not yet found it to leak at all, even during very good mating conditions, mainly due to the topography i believe.
> 
> However BA did have a problem with a beekeeper moving hives into the area to get some queens mated, this would of caused problems no doubt, but was soon sorted.


Thanks Pete for the correction! BA did however himself describe that at least one time he noticed black bees carrying a heather crop from the moor. How big was the distance from Abbey to the mating nucs? There is probably some heather growing closer.


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## beekuk (Dec 31, 2008)

Juhani,
there is hardly any heather in the area anymore, there was more many years ago, now it is mainly scrub, sedge grass, gorse, and for ling heather honey other beekeepers would not move their hives to the moors until August, traditional date was always the 12th of August, when it starts to flower, and usually the best, and most reliable mating time regards weather conditions are generally during June, August often turns back to being cold and wet, it was last year as usual.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Pete,
Do you think it is possible that the drones from beehives in Abbey home yard flew the way to mating station? 

When reading that at least in some occasions worker bees from Abbey home yard flew the way to the moor to get a heather crop, makes me wonder was the distance too big for the drones?


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## beekuk (Dec 31, 2008)

I am sure that neither the drones or the workers flew as far as the mating station to gather honey, the distance and topography would hinder this, plus they would encounter heather way before ever reaching the mating station, where there is no heather anyway, Dartmoor covers 954 square kilometres, the opposite side of the moors has more heather, and there is a little more at the other mating station BA used, The Golden Dagger mating station, he did not use this place as often for mating queens though, it was not such a good place as Sherburton.

The test for the station is to take around ten virgins there to mate... with no drone providers, or drones in any nucs, the virgins do not mate, or none that i have ever taken there.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

beekuk said:


> ... plus they would encounter heather way before ever reaching the mating station, where there is no heather anyway, ...
> 
> The test for the station is to take around ten virgins there to mate... with no drone providers, or drones in any nucs, the virgins do not mate, or none that i have ever taken there.


Thanks Pete!
Testing mating stations is so easy, I have done it with 5 mating nucs. So you have tested Dartmoor, cool man!


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Breeding better bees is more hype than anything. I can remember lovely hives from years ago that I wish I could resurrect. Back when I first started in bees there was plenty talked about breeder selection etc and any beekeeper worth his salt could give a decent description of his method and theories on the matter.

But that was 46 years ago so has all this resulted in any improvement in our bees? Frankly in my opinion, no. Bees around here now pretty much as they were then. Other than that over that time one of our breeds has been pretty much eliminated and a new breed has been introduced here. But if we look at the breed that we have always had, Italians, despite all the care, breeder selection etc that has been done, I would challenge anyone to show they are any better at all than the ones we had 46 years ago.

there is another matter, that of a typical beekeeper in the US who has say, 20 hives and wants to go treatment free. So he applies the bond method, loses the "weak", and after a few years of winnowing ends up with a bee that has a lower level of death than he origionally had. So in his mind, he has "bred" resistant bees. But what has really happened, his original 20 hives included many genetic lines like most US bees do. Some of these have low varroa tolerance and some have better varroa tolerance. Using bond, he allowed the less resistant bees that may have included ones with generally low resistance such as Italians, to die. Others such as ones with French AMM genetics may have had a better chance to survive. So after several years when he is claiming he has bred bees with better mite resistance, it may really be that he has simply purified the strains towards the more resistant strains that already existed, rather than breeding anything new.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

if in the dna of bees there exists a primordial 'bag of traits' as randy oliver alludes to in his papers, then one would expect more expression of those traits which favor survival in a given location depending on the particular demands of that location. there is probably less than a fraction of a fraction a percent difference in the genome among any of the strains of honeybee. interestingly the ferals here have taken on a much darker appearance than the typical yellow coloring associated with italians.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Oldtimer said:


> So after several years when he is claiming he has bred bees with better mite resistance, it may really be that he has simply purified the strains towards the more resistant strains that already existed, rather than breeding anything new.


 Nearly all gene alleles are there already, we cannot make new ones. Mutations are rare, and mostly harmfull.

Selecting from what already exists is what breeders mostly do. In all breeding. Who is claiming anything else?

We can widen what we have, that is get more variation/ more different alleles, by crossing different strains. But the basic thing is that we are selecting from what already is.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Oldtimer said:


> But that was 46 years ago so has all this resulted in any improvement in our bees? Frankly in my opinion, no.


Curious. Are you saying that man has little to no ability to improve traits in our bees? Perhaps I'm missing your point.


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

AstroBee said:


> Curious. Are you saying that man has little to no ability to improve traits in our bees? Perhaps I'm missing your point.


Exactly in line with my original question.

In one state, Person X is bringing a truckload of packages in from Georgia. Person Y is excited about trying new II Queens from Virginia. Person Z is importing some Buckfast from Ferguson's in Ontario. Person B is trying some new queens from BWeaver. Person A is breeding from local survivors.

There's a ton going on in terms of stock from all over. And I don't think I remember ever seeing quite the rate of traffic on the the Queen and Bee Breeding section of this site, as we've seen recently. This is all likely great for the genetic diversity, and perhaps for the long-term health of the bee itself.

But I don't know what it does for specific breeding efforts. Unless you can find isolation or use II - it seems like a long shot for breeding for specific traits. Doesn't it?


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> But I don't know what it does for specific breeding efforts. Unless you can find isolation or use II - it seems like a long shot for breeding for specific traits. Doesn't it?


Breeding without the control of mating is useless. As Oldtimer said, no advance in his beekeeping carrier. Someone once said that the only progress has been made in queens egg laying capacity. My findings with German Carniolans are in line with that. Peter Lorin Borsts thread "Are we barking the wrong tree?" had just about the same topic. He doesn´t believe it is even possible with II unless thousands of individuals are used for evaluation. He might be right.


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

So it seems that much of what breeders have been doing for the last 100 years is in question.

Isolating bees is hard to do. Instrumental Insemination programs would have to work with very large genetic pools in order to avoid weakening stocks.

So where does this leave us? What does the "best" breeding program look like? How can we work toward traits such as production, varroa tolerance, and temperament - while at the same time allowing for a wide gene pool?

Dr. Keith S. Delaplane's talk basically points out the polyandrous nature of the bee as being "the key" to the bee's strength and adaptability. 

So how do we both narrow and remain wide when it comes to genetics?

*Do we have to consider for selecting for fewer traits? Should we be reducing the number of traits we demand in our bees, and relax in others in order to allow for a broader pool of acceptable genes in our breeding programs?*


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> So it seems that much of what breeders have been doing for the last 100 years is in question.
> 
> Isolating bees is hard to do. Instrumental Insemination programs would have to work with very large genetic pools in order to avoid weakening stocks.
> 
> ...


I think that searching for the silver bullet bee may well be a bit misguided; How much should we change anyway? Do we need unconditional tolerance to varroa mites? I say no, especially if we are going to lose other valuable traits while trying to eliminate a nuisance that may be managed with few drawbacks. I think there may be need for better guidance to select strains of bees that are most suited geographically and specialized for population growth for specific pollination duties. Looking for the solve all superbee would be a disservice to the individual strengths we have now in our bees.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

If I had to choose between the queens offered for sale 35 years ago or the queens offered today, I would not hesitate to choose todays queens. The problem I see today is not in their heredity but in the care in raising and mating them.

I think it was pointed out in another post that we don't create anything when we breed queens, we just select characteristics and combine and reproduce those we desire. What would we give up in our queens? Honey production, mild temper, VSH/Virus tolerance, disease resistance? In my area beekeepers use anyone's Italians, New World Carniolans, Russian, Canadian Buckfast, Weaver Buckfast/Italian/Africanized, Minnesota Hygienics and every cross mating between them. We all have opinions, but I think worries about shallow gene pools are over blown.


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## hilreal (Aug 16, 2005)

Being a commercial plant breeder as my day job, I can tell you from experience, modifying traits is very difficult and takes many generations, even when you can control both the male and female parents. Many factors weigh in, is the trait simply inherited (one or two genes) or quantitatively inherited (controlled by many genes)? How intense a selection pressure can you place on the population (challenge with disease, varroa, etc. to get a high infestation level), remember you can't select for what you cannot measure. How large a population size can you start with? Is there actually variability within your population for the trait of interest? How accurately can you measure the trait? Are you willing to cull all that do not meet your selection criteria? For example in corn, we have hundreds of commercial corn breeders working around the world looking at hundreds of thousands of new genetic combinations each year with an average 10% selection intensity and over the last 30 years improvement averages about 1-1.5% per year for yield (primary trait of interest) a highly quantitative trait. With simply inherited traits like disease resistance more rapid progress can be made with heavy disease pressure.


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## beeware10 (Jul 25, 2010)

the fact that the queen mates with many drones a considerable distance away makes for many variables. look back in bee advertising back in the 70's and 80's. there were many super bees that got lost in time. Its just the way nature designed their breeding for their survival. any improvements we think we make are just temporary.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

AstroBee said:


> Curious. Are you saying that man has little to no ability to improve traits in our bees? Perhaps I'm missing your point.


No not saying that. Just, from my observations only, with bees, it's hard to get past a certain point and then maintain it.

I'm no scientist so will always bow to somebody with an understanding of genetics etc. But just from my own observations in the field, I think what has happened in my life, is that for around maybe 50 years before I got started in bees people had been seriously attempting to select and improve bees, although II was not used here. So by the time I came along there were some pretty good bees. But then, since I started, it seems like one has to select pretty carefully, both breeder queens and mating areas, just to maintain the bees, and any slackness can result in bees going backwards, which can be detected in traits such as aggression, untidy hives, swarming, and other easily identifiable traits that we try to breed away from.

But I believe that with persistence and perhaps the use of II, further gains may be consistently made, especially if those few rare mutations that happen to be good get included. Maybe Hilreals 1% to 1.5% per year is a more realistic goal than anything drastic although I guess with wheat it is easy to measure an extra 1% but with bees some things are less quantifiable.

The other thing is what is a "good" bee. Bees have already been getting selected to be good for thousands of years by nature. In the comparatively short amount of time humans have been intervening in the process we cannot improve on much, other than to select for traits that matter to us, such as for example gentleness. And a good bee here, may not be a good bee there. For example a thrifty bee may do better in a harsh environment whereas in another place we want a bee that throws caution to the wind and builds strongly in spring even if there is no flow because a good strong flow is coming and we want a strong hive to take advantage of it. But that same bee somewhere else may build strongly then starve because they should have waited. We will therefore never get the ultimate, all purpose bee. But we can select for various traits we prefer.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Oldtimer said:


> No not saying that. Just, from my observations only, with bees, it's hard to get past a certain point and then maintain it.


Thanks OT. I appreciate your insight and experience.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I think the main differences you see between African (and Africanized) bees and European bees is due to selection. People selected for what nature did not, which was gentleness, productivity, less absconding, less swarming, less drones, less propolis. And they succeeded very well. Then after years of breeding FOR runniness, they quickly changed with movable combs and bred for lack of runniness (clamness on the combs). We have not always picked the right things to breed for. We put our EHB at a reproductive disadvantage and they would be healthier with more propolis, but we certainly made a difference and some of those traits were very beneficial for beekeepers. All of this was done with no II.


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## hilreal (Aug 16, 2005)

As we do in corn breeding, what works in one area does not work in others. In Indiana, disease resistance is of prime importance whereas a corn breeder in Nebraska is only concerned about yield. The same is true in bees, what works in one area may be maladapted to other areas. Thus local / regional breeding is certainly the way to go, but we would be much more successful if we could somehow do it as a group to improve the odds. One guy with 20 hives is likely not going to have much of an impact, especially if his neighbor is flooding the area with drones from the Georgia queens that came in all those packages he bought.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

SRatcliff said:


> ...Even II to me just feels like a bandaid or temporary "fix", once you stop most of that progress is lost(open mating)...


Not all progress is necessarily lost - once a trait is present, nature must "de-select" it entirely for it to be lost. Recessive traits may seem to disappear, until that red-haired child shows up a few (or maybe a lot of) generations later.

Behaviors depending on multiple recessive traits may require lots of I.I. at first, but once nature is heavily favoring a combination of traits, and a substantial quantity of colonies with those traits are enjoying that favorable condition, that progress may be around for a while.

Another thing to keep in mind - genetic "progress" toward a goal is measured how? => present genetic materials flying in formation, minus those de-selected. There are few "new" genetic traits, unless you count imported genetics or (gong bash) GMO's using, say traits from outside the species, or purely synthetic traits. For the most part, beekeepers are not making "new" traits, just filtering out bad ones by way of de-selection, which is know to work very well, especially with high populations and rigorous de-selection. Sometimes a mutation occurs, this is a "new" trait.

Adam's original question is answered two-fold: large numbers of bee colonies and thoroughly focused "de-selection" of non-compliant traits = either 100% progress if it works or 0% progress if it doesn't work.


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## Random Dude (Feb 25, 2015)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> Keith's talk is part of where my question comes from. He really questions how much breeding progress has been made over time, and talks about the bees needing to mate with many drones in order to produce the strongest colonies. It seems that using II is a much surer way to make real progress in a breeding program toward specific traits.
> 
> That said, I'm not sure that I'm ready to do that myself.
> 
> ...


IMO the bee breeder can certainly make "progress" due to the fact that human beings can be some wily individuals capable of achieving incredible things when they put their minds to a problem.

What happens AFTER though?

Does it really matter if "breeder X" starts an awesome line of bees when "breeders y, z, a, p" don't take the same amount of care in follow on "breeding projects"? All we have to do is look at dogs to get that answer.

Regardless, IMO the issue certainly warrants federal AG research and development budgeting as the availability of bees capable of pollinating all of our food products is just a wee bit important.



"It don't make sense sending Italian bees to do the job American bees ought be doing." - Lyndon Bee Johnson 1965


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

In one state, Person X is bringing a truckload of packages in from Georgia. Person Y is excited about trying new II Queens from Virginia. Person Z is importing some Buckfast from Ferguson's in Ontario. Person B is trying some new queens from BWeaver. Person A is breeding from local survivors. From post above

I would like to add to this by saying with all of this movement of bees come the Drones with VSH traits also, which could spread this trait to neighboring apiaries.


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