# Selection



## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

good morning, msl 

My 15 years tf co-worker tried to contact and cooperate with the institutes but they were not interested in his bees, even if he keeps them tf in a not isolated location.

If you want to use a mating station here you must have pure bred races. Hybrids or local mutts are not allowed.

So how can people take part? Most have mutts, most are not isolated. This breeding strategy will not work for us.

To the vid:
Amazing! Such a high threshold, higher than Kefuss said, 5-8%! 
And I don´t see propolis in the hives! Never I had so propolis free frames and could just take off the boxes without having them stick to the bottom one.
If it comes to drone raising as a sign for vitality, I now must have resistant colonies. Even the dink had up to 50% drones raised and it does not seem a drone layer ( but have to check in a week if this is true).


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

That is a fairly good introduction to breeding honeybees. The only thing I would add is that stronger selection pressure results in faster selection results.


p.s. "collaboration" is probably the word you wanted instead of "corroboration".


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Interesting video. Thanks for posting.
Cheers
gww


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

I hope to take part in something like this sometimes which is not about one trait but about adaptation.
Taken out of:
https://www.imkerforum.de/attachment/5595-roots-pdf/

>>>
Breeding project "ROOTS"
Author: Josef Koller, D-92699 Irchenrieth, [email protected]
Definition of the project
The breeding project "roots" aims to take account of the evolutionary genetic diversity of a bee colony in order to
• on changed environmental conditions (agriculture) and • diseases
to be able to react with robust and stable colonies.
Explanations of the genetic structure of a bee colony
The female offspring (female workers, queens) are equipped with a double set of chromosomes (diploid). The male offspring with a simple set of chromosomes (haploid).
In eggs, which develop into female beings, during cell division, only part of the diploid cell is randomly merged with the seed of a drone to form a diploid entity.
Eggs that are released without fertilization have only a simple set of chromosomes and develop into male beings.
In order to compensate for the variability on the male side (only a simple set of chromosomes) in the offspring, the bee relies on multiple mating (queens are mated by up to 20 drones).
In summary:
The female genome stabilizes future generations. The male genome ensures through the various drones, which are involved in the copulation, for a future range of variation in the genome.
In connection with Varooa destructor, it should be noted that well-adapted bee colonies survive with this parasite (TD Seeley: Honey bees of the Arnot Forest: a population of feral colonies persisting with Varroa destructor in the northeastern United States (1), I. Illies, Primorskibienen (2), I. Fries, ea, Servival of mite infested (Varroa destructor) honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies in a Nordic climate (3) A review on Varroa research is by Richard Odemer, 2010. Varroa Research News (4) published.
In addition, there are reports that untreated colonies not only survival, but also can be used economically (Keyfuss, Lusby, Lunden, Schneider, ect.).
Previous breeding practice
Breeding genetically means narrowing down to a desired trait. This narrowing takes place in the current practice both maternal (queens), as paternal (drones of daughters of a colony) instead.

The range of variation that a bee colony naturally needs must inevitably be lost.
Definition "genetically stable" colony.
In a bee colony, the variability of the gene pool should be as large as possible, so that information is not lost that is necessary for the maintenance of a bee colony under different conditions. In addition, it can no longer respond to emerging diseases if the genetic basis for this no longer exists in the respective population.
breeding goal
A bee that, due to its great genetic variation, adapts to both landscape changes and health challenges and can be keep economically.
The implementation
Selected so concentrated to the breeding goal, is in the spring the the time the colony thriving. From each bee colony it is traced that the cherry blossom is ready to be picked up and at the beginning of May colonizes the first honey room should be colonized. So it must have survived and evolved according to the season.
From each of these colonies, a nuc is formed (a brood-comb with a sufficient number of bees).
The bees raise themselves a queen of the used brood comb. 2 days after the creation of these nucs, the split is checked for emergency cells. Queen cells, which contain too large maggots for this period, are removed.
This ensures that only youngest maggots can be maintained and fully grown queens grow up.
These splits rotate in the respective places of the apiary. Nucs of site A are set up at site B. Nucs from Site B are set up at Site C, etc.
At the time of colony formation, only those hives which have mature drones at this time can participate in the reproduction.
Worse hives are thus eliminated as drone suppliers.
The selection of the desired characteristics is thus carried out without human intervention. This ensures that
• pass on all inherited genetic information to all queens
• pass on all hereditary information to all relevant drones.
Probably the greater proportion of male genetic information in the mating of queens in the splits is probably due to the drones of each site.
The rotation of the young colonies ensures that no one-sided selection can be carried out.

The hives, which are not only capable of reproduction, stay placed. It may happen that they develop better in the following year and are available for breeding again, so strong enough to be a split and strong enough to produce mature drones at the mating season of the queens in the splits.
Only the genetic information is lost or is pushed back, which is not suitable for the breeding goal.

honey production
The economic aspect (honey performance) of this breeding method is taken into account by the fact that the old hives after the 2nd year of business are shifted to queens with the best honey yields (artificial swarms).

Varroa tolerance and / or resistance
The only safe criteria for selection for varro tolerance and / or resistance is currently the survival test.
In order to narrow down this characteristic in the breeding project "ROOTS", a central location without chemical or ecological treatment agents is managed.
The surviving colonies will be divided in early May. Both parts of the colony remain in the same place. The dislodged colony part should contain the queens. The drifting of the bees of the dislodged hive part is reduced. Possibly make the dislodged part a little stronger.
The part without queen raise from the existing brood a new queen. Two days after the splitting, the reproduction cells are checked. Aftermath cells, which contain too large maggots for this period, are removed.
A central location for these colonies is therefore chosen so that genetic information of these surviving colonei scatters as evenly as possible over the other location.
Only when a survival rate of over 80% is reached, the best of these hives are moved to a new location and integrated into the business.

With the growth of treatment-free hives, the number of normally hived bees can be reduced.
This step-by-step method can never lead to economically-threatening situations.
The survival rate is arbitrary. One should keep in mind the survival rate, that in the normal evolutionary evolutionary history, the survival of a species is already guaranteed at over 50%. Only when the birth rate is permanently below the mortality rate will this species become extinct.
This type of selection inevitably prevents the transmission of genes that are unsuitable for survival.
For bees in human custody, this protection mechanism is disabled. Targeted and mostly achieved, will have a survival rate of 100%. Inevitably, no survival selection is possible.
A treatment-free apiary would therefore be a success even if the survival rate is over 50% and the survivors are vital and robust enough to multiply.
Presentation of different breeding models
The nature:
The genetic material of all surviving mothers and surviving fathers is available for future generations. Selection takes place only after survival.
The opposite:
Only the best mother is mated with the daughters of a best father.
Roots method
All mothers capable of reproduction at a defined time will be paired with all sexually mature drones at a defined time

Beekeeping with different locations. All drones of the different locations form a "total drone cloud" for this area (large circle). Given sufficient drone density at the individual locations, it is to be assumed that the drones of the respective location are disproportionately represented when mating the queens of the splits.

The bee colonies of the locations, the rotation of the splits and the drone density are represented by different color points.
references
(1) Seeley, T.D. 2007. Honey bees of the Arnot Forest: a population of feral colonies persisting with Varroa destructor in the northeastern United States. Apidology 38: 19-29.
(2) Ingrid Illies 2005. Annual Report of the Bee Institute Kirchhain 2005, page 5-6
(3) Ingmar Ingmar, Anton Imdorf, Peter Rosenkranz 2006. Servival of mite infested (Varroa destructor) honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies in a Nordic climate, Apudology 37
(4) Richard Odemer, 2010. News from the Varroa Research, https: //bienenkunde.uni- hohenheim.de/uploads/media/odemer_kirchheim_2010.pdf
Praagh, J.P. van (2004); Mating biology - many drones. Switzerland Bee Gazette 127 (8): 23-24.
AghPraagh J.P. v. (2009) Queen Bee - mother and father at the same time! The Buckfastimker 3/2009: 26-28.
Praagh J.P. v. (2010). Restrictions by Breeding. German bee journal. 1/2010, 14-15.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> "collaboration" is probably the word you wanted instead of "corroboration"


 I couldn't get the spellchecker to give me collaboration so I settled :lpf:



> So how can people take part? Most have mutts, most are not isolated. This breeding strategy will not work for us.


This is selection 101, all can take part. 
In the TF world much blame is layed at the feet of uncontrolled open mating. But the problem for many is the lack of sample size and lack of selection pressure, if you don't address those you won't move forward, even if your isolated.

What needs to happen is select the best(for most of us thats 1-2 queens), cell-build and requeen most of the rest, shifting the stocks bellcurve as shown in the video. But what is happing is people are just splitting what they have and are filling there yard with average, putting out poor drones.
Now after you get to gen 2/3 doing the above thats about as far as a small time solo act can go, but if a group of 10 beekeepers with 10 hives each got together and used objective measurements to determine the best hive in each yard and then made and swapped 9 cells/queens so every one has one of every ones best and requeend or pulled 9 nucs, now your yard is filled with the genetics of the 10 best of 100 (instead of just good enough to live) and your putting off better and more deverice drones.


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