# Speed of adaptation....



## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

And a related article by a researcher I knew personally (just one of many his works).



> ....although in the initial phase of adaptation to any new factor the organism is close to the limits of its capacities, the manner in which it solves the problem is far from perfect. However, if the person or animal concerned survives, and the causal agent of adaptation continues to be active, the possibilities open to the organism increase and the extreme or urgent stage is replaced by one of effective, stable adaptation.


https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-5079296/human-adaptation-to-extreme-conditions


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

.
As always Greg you are absolutely correct, and i have irrefutable proof of your concept.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

Took this cricket just 20 generations to evolve.

https://www.nature.com/news/evolution-sparks-silence-of-the-crickets-1.15323


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

The article says "To protect themselves from their new enemy, large numbers of male crickets on the Hawaiian island of Kauai quickly stopped chirping".

However that would be incorrect, and similar logic is often used in the beekeeping world.

What would have really happened would have been that at least one individual with a non chirping mutation already existed. And once all the chirping individuals started to get eaten by the introduced predator, the feild was left open for the non chirping one.

Had the predator not been introduced, the non chirping individual would have had little show of attracting a mate, and likely would have dissapeared from the population.

One thing we learn from this, is that wether a mutation is good or bad, can depend on circumstances at the time. Which is why we do not necessarily want to eliminate any bee genetics even that sometimes seen as bad, or weak. Because if classic TF beekeeping lingo was applied to those crickets, the chirping ones would be referred to as "weak" and the non chirping ones as "survivors". But change the circumstances, ie, not have the predator, the reverse would be the case, the non chirping unable to attract a mate cricket would have been the "weak", and the chirping ones would have been the "survivors".


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

GregV said:


> It postulated to take forever for the natural evolution to change anything.


By whom? Scientists have been measuring the speed of evolution for over a century and have a pretty good idea of how fast it goes. New traits can emerge (or old traits disappear) in a small handful of generations - e.g. a century if your talking about elephants, an afternoon if talking about bacteria...


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>What would have really happened would have been that at least one individual with a non chirping mutation already existed. And once all the chirping individuals started to get eaten by the introduced predator, the feild was left open for the non chirping one.

This is exactly right. It's just selection.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

Oldtimer said:


> What would have really happened would have been that at least one individual with a non chirping mutation already existed. And once all the chirping individuals started to get eaten by the introduced predator, the feild was left open for the non chirping one.


Right. The "weak" or "defective" cricket with mutated or improperly developed sounding spines perhaps saved the species. Whereas this cricket's lineage may have been bred out of existence over time due to their lack of ability to attract a mate, the environmental pressures radically changed, favoring the mutation. The favored trait of chirping became the weakness or the defect. 

This was not a learned adaptation by the cricket. The cricket now does not possess the hardware to actually make the sound. It was a physical trait that was brought forward through environmental pressures.


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

You cannot possibly generalise about adaptation in this way.

The 'switching-off' of something which previously existed can be achieved relatively quickly and relatively easily - perhaps requiring just a single genetic mutation amongst the many dozens which could be involved in the development or operation of a particular organ.

Contrast that with what would be required to create such an organ where nothing existed before: skeletal changes perhaps, certainly muscular and neuronal changes - all of which would take thousands of generations to accomplish, and during the process of which the organism must remain viable at each and every stage.

There's 'switching something off' - which is fast; the modification of something which essentially already exists (colour, shape etc) which takes some time; and the creation of something new or of significant difference - which does indeed "take forever".
LJ


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

little_john said:


> ....There's 'switching something off' - which is fast; ....LJ


Which in case of the bee very well may mean - switching OFF the recently and artificially selected in lack of defenses.
The lack of defensiveness is not a norm.
Sleepy and indifferent bees are not normal - they would normally get eaten by animals and preyed upon by multiple pests and parasites.

If left alone, the defensiveness should return to pretty normal level pretty quickly (on different and various levels - against pests and/or against large predictors and/or whatever).
Ideally, still manageable.

PS: anyone seen this yet? 
I hanged it up for a reason.. 
https://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?358001-Moving-around-the-hives&p=1756795#post1756795


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

little_john said:


> You cannot possibly generalise about adaptation in this way.


I wasn't; I was talking about evolution, of which adaptation is one small part.



little_john said:


> The 'switching-off' of something which previously existed can be achieved relatively quickly and relatively easily - perhaps requiring just a single genetic mutation amongst the many dozens which could be involved in the development or operation of a particular organ.
> 
> Contrast that with what would be required to create such an organ where nothing existed before: skeletal changes perhaps, certainly muscular and neuronal changes - all of which would take thousands of generations to accomplish, and during the process of which the organism must remain viable at each and every stage.


Picking a new organ as a goal post is an odd choice for "new" evolution. Lots of traits that require something new can evolve quickly - antibiotic resistance genes, for example, can appear very quickly (a few to a few dozen generations). 

As for organs, they can and have evolved very quickly, because evolution isn't "dumb enough"* to do it from scratch. Organs typically evolve by duplication and modification (or straight modification) of existing organs. They also tend to evolve by parallel evolution and exaptation - e.g. multiple aspects evolving simultaneously in multiple "family lines", which are then brought together via mating, plus functional shifts of existing features. As one example, wall lizards were introduced onto Pod Kopiste island in 1971. By 2006 they had evolved two additional rudiment-like stomachs, allowing them to digest the tougher plants of Pod Kopiste. That's two - not one - new organs (plus 3 new coeceal valves) in 15 or 20 generations.



little_john said:


> There's 'switching something off' - which is fast; the modification of something which essentially already exists (colour, shape etc) which takes some time; and the creation of something new or of significant difference - which does indeed "take forever".
> LJ


Except that it doesn't. Evolution goes at the speed it needs to, or the organism goes extinct.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

It doesn't require a mutation. There were always crickets that chirped more or less or not at all. The ones not chirping at all were reproductively disadvantaged because they were not as good at finding a mate, so they were small in number. When chirping became a survival disadvantage, the ones tha chirped were eaten and the ones that did not chirp had more opportuinities to survive and mate. This is simply a shift in the population demographics, not a new mutation. The concept of evolution would require something NEW to happen through a mutation. There is nothing gained here. No evoluation has taken place. No mutation has taken place. Just a shift in population. That only takes a generation or two.


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

GregV said:


> If left alone, the defensiveness should return to pretty normal level pretty quickly (on different and various levels - against pests and/or against large predictors and/or whatever).
> Ideally, still manageable.


In this, I think of my bees as normal. They don't attack in large numbers, but they still have stingers and they haven't forgotten how to use them. 

Alex


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

Michael Bush said:


> It doesn't require a mutation. There were always crickets that chirped more or less or not at all. The ones not chirping at all were reproductively disadvantaged because they were not as good at finding a mate, so they were small in number. When chirping became a survival disadvantage, the ones tha chirped were eaten and the ones that did not chirp had more opportuinities to survive and mate. This is simply a shift in the population demographics, not a new mutation. The concept of evolution would require something NEW to happen through a mutation. There is nothing gained here. No evoluation has taken place. No mutation has taken place. Just a shift in population. That only takes a generation or two.


Michael, I agree with you, but I don't see the significant distinction you are making between this cricket and a slow evolution of any other species, other than there was a short cut. 

Take a breed of horses that live on the Serengeti, which dries up a million years ago (making all this up BTW). The horses do not grow longer necks to reach the higher vegetation. The horses that happen to be born with slightly longer necks breed more than the ones that don't, because they have better nutrition, live longer and therefore breed more. So a million years later, we have a giraffe-like horse creature. Whether this happens over a million years or over 20 years, does not mean one is evolution and the other is not.

Also, we don't know that there was a cricket at the time of the arrival of the fly that was completely silent. Maybe some were merely quieter than others. As natural selection favored the quieter cricket, we now have a cricket that is physically different than the cricket that lived on the islands 20 years ago. That is evolution. Cornell University certainly described it as evolution.


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

SuiGeneris said:


> I wasn't; I was talking about evolution, of which adaptation is one small part.


But I was ('Speed of Adaptation' being the title of this thread). And my post wasn't directed at 'just you'.
LJ


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

In natural selection, selection is factored with heritability. Negative selection (most bees die off) is influenced by very low heritability among the "survivors". Queens mate with 20-30 random drones and "crossing over (the reassortment of alleles in meiosis)" is higher in honeybees than in any other studied organism.

Low heritability means the allele selected for is very unlikely to be present in the next generation, you can have decade after decade of selection and make no progress whatsoever. Low heritability conveys fitness to honey bees --- the bee is very slow to speciate, and doesn't specialize on a particular habitat or flower -- it remains a generalist.

What we have (mostly) seen in honeybees is reversion to a feral form. As mortality has increased, the bees have optimized on a form that swarms more frequently (biased against the greater winter mortality of late swarms). Swarming tendency may simply mean selection of small nest sites, (a known genetic trait). We see bees that are more defensive ( *and* more likely to rob other hives) to reduce that cause of colony loss. In other words, the directed selection that made bees more domestic has been reversed in the promotion of "feral" traits. These crude advantages (swarmy, defensive bees) will overwhelm the highly fragile behaviors discovered by human breeders. Evolution is "lazy", and if there is a crude, ancestral trait (swarming to the limit of survival)-- the crude trait dominates in the genome selection, especially when heritabilty is low.

The current party-line of the Ur-TF gurus (Solomon Parker and his kin) is "let them die". This is nothing more than a "death cult" -- and runs counter to hard, exacting work of isolating and promoting hygienic traits. Of course, Solomon lost his entire home apiary last winter, and announced he was off "swarm trapping". Which means, of course, an entire decade of selection was thrown away like so much rubbish. You are far more likely to make genetic progress with a "closed population model" system where you find and select the most favorable morphs and preserve their genetics (by any intervention necessary) while you deliberately cross-breed the favorable lines.

The David Peck presentation at Apimondia found the survival traits in the "Arnot Forest" bees are less exactly expressed for VSH/brood removal than in deliberately (human managed) selection. The feral bees stopped short of the "human" selection (hypothetically due to 1) inability to maintain the trait in an open-mating environment, 2) excess culling by extreme VSH expression weakens the bees).

The popular accounts of TF apiaries is "crash, followed by redemption". This story, while making good propaganda, cannot be true. Unless you live on a desert island, you must have high levels of continuing selection (colony culling) or the bees simply revert to the "feral" form (as shown by the Arnot Forest data, where wild bees stopped short) because out-crossing is required, and heritabilty is low. Any one promoting the "crash, followed by redemption" narrative is immediately suspect, in my mind, for fraud. 

I note the Kirk Webster "redemption" tale was properly criticized by folks from his territory as incomplete.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Michael, I agree with you, but I don't see the significant distinction you are making between this cricket and a slow evolution of any other species, other than there was a short cut.

All the difference in the world. Subraction is not at all the same as addition. If I have a gene pool that sometimes has a a trait and sometimes not, it is a simple matter for the ones with that trait (or without that trait) to be removed if it is no longer helpful to them. If I have a gene pool that does not have a trait, I cannot breed for it nor select for it. I have to wait forever for a lucky mutation. And forever is how long it will take... There is a lot of difference between forever and a couple of generations... Subtraction does not explain the complex and diverse species on this planet. Evolution tries to explain it by addition that comes from mutation. A very unlikely thing to happen even once...

If I want horses with long necks I have to find horses with long necks first and then breed from them. I can't make horses have longer necks than is already in the gene pool.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

Michael Bush said:


> If I want horses with long necks I have to find horses with long necks first and then breed from them. I can't make horses have longer necks than is already in the gene pool.


So, in your view, giraffes did not mutate. Each generation simply selected the longest necks of that generation ('ones with that trait') to propagate, correct? This occurs generation after generation and after a million years, the species that once had a 1 meter neck, now has a 5 meter neck. I understand your push back on my use of the word "mutation" above. 

But are you also saying that this is also not "evolution" either?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

You can observe selection and it is ALWAYS subtraction. You are always removing the ones that either can't survive (natural selection) or don't meet your criteria (human selection). You can't add something that isn't there. That has never been observed so I think it is irrelevant to any practical discussion.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

For our purposes AND such short-terms - the word "evolution" is hardly relevant.

Yes - we always exist within the evolution context (or the Earth's geological time-frame, for that matter). What is the big deal there? This is very clear.

No - no, we don't care much of those useless time frames (for our purposes).

For our practical purposes, the time-frames are usually defined by *a single human life*.
For our purposes, the adaptations indeed occur fast.
Even a single organism adapts during its lifespan. 
I certainly have adapted and will continue (as a practicing athlete).
A line of few consecutive organisms generations definitely is capable of adaptation required to survive (within the limits of the organism's available tools).


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

But selection is the tool of evolution, no?


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

psm1212 said:


> But selection is the tool of evolution, no?


One tool (of many).
One input (of many).

Important tool in very short-term context as in - "did not get eaten TODAY - got selected to live another day".
There are lots and lots of events in a bug life (or any organism life) that will qualify as "selection-type" events.

Evolution is a VERY long-term and never ending process as applied to living organisms.
It is a log book of millions and billions of consecutive events, related and non-related (including millions events of "selection" type, "mutation" type, "hybridization" type, "terminal catastrophe" type, "Act of God" type; and many types of other events as well, not even defined and understood yet but effecting the state of a specimen (or a group of the specimens) in every point of time and space).


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

From the cricket article:

_"This evidence suggests that the mutations happened independently on both islands, making the Hawaiian silent crickets “an excellent example of *convergent evolution*”, says evolutionary biologist Richard Harrison of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York."_

This seems like a problem only with semantics. If selective pressures on an organism over time enhance some physical traits and diminish others in subsequent generations, I believe this is properly called "evolution" by any definition I can find.

I agree with MB that I improperly used the word "mutation" in my earlier post in this thread. Natural selection favored what was already there (a more silent cricket). There was no mutation (no "addition").


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

We could speculate that all organs are under positive selection so long as that organ does something necessary to survival. Now explain why humans have an appendix. Before you get too far with this, recall that we all have an appendix and it has been retained for millenia. It is doing something!

For more relevant information, look up Giraffe, Okapi, and Chalicothere.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

I have often wondered about the appendix. Is it a last vestige of something that had a more discernible function? Has modern medicine effectively stopped its ultimate elimination? I had mine removed when I was 14 years old. Without medical intervention, I might have died. Would I have died 10,000 years ago? Would my body have been able to survive the resulting infection at that time?

Medicine coddles "inferior" traits. I suppose this is the thrust of the tf philosophy.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

JWChesnut said:


> Unless you live on a desert island, you must have high levels of continuing selection (colony culling) or the bees simply revert to the "feral" form (as shown by the Arnot Forest data, where wild bees stopped short) because out-crossing is required, and heritabilty is low. Any one promoting the "crash, followed by redemption" narrative is immediately suspect, in my mind, for fraud.


The positive thing is that if you are on an island (Gotland, otherwise remote area or controlled matings) bees adapt to mites in about ten years. 

(Terje Reinertsen case has to be explained in some other way: no controlled matings, not a remote area and still scientifically proven varroa resistance in about 10 years. )


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

The appendix occupies the same area as the float bladder in fish. What it does today was only sussed out a few years ago. Basically, it stores microbiota that reboot the gut in the event of some types of illness. We can live just fine without it in the modern world, but would often have needed it in the past.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>We can live just fine without it in the modern world, but would often have needed it in the past.

Now we need it to reboot the microbiota after a round of antibiotics...


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Michael Bush said:


> >We can live just fine without it in the modern world, but would often have needed it in the past.
> 
> Now we need it to reboot the microbiota after a round of antibiotics...


OR after three days of brutal flushing prior to the colonoscopy.
I need my appendix in me!


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

This thread has gone in an...odd direction. FWIW, I'm a medical researcher whose research includes evolution of the immune system and some microbiota stuff, so this is somewhat my "wheelhouse".

For the record, evolution is formally defined as "the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations", which means that changes in gene frequency (e.g. selection) over a single generation are, indeed, evolution. As are bigger physiological changes taking place over eons. There is no "line" below or above which change isn't evolution - if gene frequencies change, or a new mutation is introduced, or an existing gene variant eliminated, or a new species formed, its all evolution.



Fusion_power said:


> We could speculate that all organs are under positive selection so long as that organ does something necessary to survival. Now explain why humans have an appendix. Before you get too far with this, recall that we all have an appendix and it has been retained for millenia. It is doing something!


The appendix has not been retained for millenia; its been continually shrinking for several million years, and a small portion of humans are born completely without one. The appendix has a very well understood job in other closely related primates, which is the "culture" of cellulose-digesting bacteria to aid in the consumption of woody plants. We have not needed this feature for ~4 million years, and have experienced a concordant reduction in the size of our appendix. Whether the residual appendix has a function in humans is unclear, but most of the data is consistent with it being vestigial - most of the proposed purposes (immune site, culture of other microbiota components) have not stood up to scrutiny.

You're also making a common mistake in your thinking of evolution - you are assuming that something without a function will be eliminated. This is often not the case - selection is in constant competition with other evolutionary forces such as genetic drift, which tends to retain features. To be eliminated, a "useless" feature must carry a survival cost (e.g. be harmful) that incures a selective force greater than the "equalising" force of drift. Meaning, if there is no meaningful evolutionary cost to keeping a useless trait, that trait will tend to persist, with whatever change that occurs, occuring slowly and without direction.

Here's a humbling thought - drift, not selection, is the major evolutionary force that separated us from chimps. Only about 5% of our genes - and mostly immune system genes at that - show evidence of selection.



Fusion_power said:


> The appendix occupies the same area as the float bladder in fish. What it does today was only sussed out a few years ago. Basically, it stores microbiota that reboot the gut in the event of some types of illness. We can live just fine without it in the modern world, but would often have needed it in the past.


None of this is correct. Appendices have evolved over 30 times in vertebrates, usually out of the need to generate a "fermenter" to breakdown difficult to digest foods. The appendix evolves as an outpocket as the gut - which is also where swim bladders and lungs come from - which may be where your confusion comes from. It did not evolve from the swim bladder - our lungs evolved from swim bladders. The idea that the appendix acts as a reservoir for our microbiotia was never more than supposition, based on the observation of biofilms in it. There isn't really any data beyond that to support that idea - in fact, people without an appendix appear to have a more stable microbiota than those without one.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

SuiGeneris said:


> This thread has gone in an...odd direction. FWIW, I'm a medical researcher whose research includes evolution of the immune system and some microbiota stuff, so this is somewhat my "wheelhouse".


Bravo for your commentary.

The larger lesson to be learned here: Amateur armchair theorizing should be avoided. 

This appears to be a particular problem within this forum's "TF" community, promoted by the Aristotelian deduction based on syllogisms that is heart of much "TF" theory.

Test your theories with controlled science, please. 

The consistent failure of TF community to "test" their theories or even collect data ("No, I won't test for mite density") consigns TF to a semi-religious belief system.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

JWChesnut said:


> Bravo for your commentary.
> 
> The larger lesson to be learned here: Amateur armchair theorizing should be avoided.
> 
> ...


Hmm JWC ok,, here is some solid data which it seems you are searching for . How many bees were TF from 3000 BC to 1600 Ad, Yep you guessed it 100% of them.,, and how many Bees are TF today? well,,,, all the feral ones and some of the ones TF keepers have. To Say TF is is semi religious, is odd, and somewhat history denying, as if you look at only the last 5000 Years there have been way more TF bees than the "treated" bees. And if humanity were to say "perish" We would soon have 100% TF bees again. If we had bees..... I submit 5000+ years of TF to be "data" Back in the day, the tree got cut down the Skep got chopped open, they were treated all right to Sulfur smoke, Nighty Night bees, or shook into the snow if that is "treatment" 
Controlled science, ha, Ok ok, On an island with no trees um where would bees swarm?/ no no block that chimney they must choose my choices, ok now where? there are ONLY man made boxes of various sizes. Ok write a paper, you mean that kind of controlled science....... Or we can look in a forest clear cut 75 years ago and conclude "bees prefer small tree cavities" 
So I have 4 TF hives, exactually what double blind, peer reviewed study do you think I can do for the 35 Bucks I have to spend on study's this year??
I have a "Grant" let me buy 100 packages and do study XXXX No Matter how you slice it a "Scientific Study " is done with the best intentions. yes learning takes place, but it relates to today, not yester year or the next decade. AND it is not gospel. I recall "Scholars" once thought the world was flat and Jailed the dude who said it was a sphere. In 500 years today's Scientific study will look a bit the same to humans in the year 2500
GG
the more I learn about bees the less I realize I know.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

GG, by the same logic one could claim that the native Americans were treatment free for small pox until the European settlers introduced it here and caused the deaths of millions. Your argument based on 5000 years TF is, in my opinion, flawed.
Actually, your logic is anti-TF. If 5000 years of evolution hasn't made the bees resistant, how do you expect to get resistant bees in one's lifetime? Just trying to provoke thought, no real agenda.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

jw
Bees breed fast enough that they don't have to be immune. They just have to be resistant enough. For management practices, enough comes down to labor compared to return. Many ways to skin a cat for the person doing the work but the bees are doing just fine for bees. As far as life as opposed to death, nothing alive is immune to death no matter how much medicine is involved. Length, quality of life before death is a subjective term that if people are involved in the decisions, there is science and then there is choice. I might know that bacon and big gulps are going to take three years off my life but might think it is better during life then adding seven year by being a vegetarian.
I too am just making discussion cause it is interesting.
Cheers
gww

Ps, Choice is also subject to change, I might look differently when reaching those last seven years of life though my choice will have already been made by then.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

JWPalmer said:


> GG, by the same logic one could claim that the native Americans were treatment free for small pox until the European settlers introduced it here and caused the deaths of millions. Your argument based on 5000 years TF is, in my opinion, flawed.
> Actually, your logic is anti-TF. If 5000 years of evolution hasn't made the bees resistant, how do you expect to get resistant bees in one's lifetime? Just trying to provoke thought, no real agenda.


JWP that is actually a great example. But correct me if I am wrong "some Native Americans did survive", and there are some still today. so one would need to factor in the Vaccines but right , something come along and hit a population very hard , but they are not all dead. And I am of the opinion "several" things came along and wacked bees, the ones that seemed either to not be affected or were in pockets where they were not laterally infected , survived to make a new better populations. IMO 5000 years has made them resistant. they're still here, so they "resisted every thing that came along. Surly you do not offer the bees have never been challenged by a mites, right? Mites must have also been here for many years. The issue IMO is 2 fold. Today we have "trucks" which spread the "challenges" farther and faster. Also like the mosiquito which normally is not lethal, and has been here for a very long time, when the "parisite" starts to spread Virus, then the impact is far greater. So do we now not have at least 7 virus vectored by Mites? we as humans are affecting the impact, because of the way some folk move bees all over and the shipment of Packages , etc. , so they are getting a double wammy. I do not expect the bees to get resistant in "one " lifetime of Mine, they better get there at some point or we do not have bees. I believe the argument stating, "I need to dope the bees" to save them, is also flawed. Who doped them the last several times they were challenged? I'll concede that there have been times where 80% of the bees dies for one reason or another, but in nature rarely does 1 virus or spore or bacteria, destroy a whole species. I also do not have an agenda, the bees hopefully will be here long after I am gone. The prove it, or it does not exist is puzzling as a base stance since we humans have really only had bees in the north America for 250 years, this is not "history" it is a blip on the time horizon. And one could argue that with ferals not being 100% wiped out, TF works. I think there are pockets where the bees are making progress to survive. As long as humans do not screw it up to often and too much they will likely succeed. Weather you and I see it is a toss up.
GG


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

We actually agree on more points than we differ. One that is certainly a factor is the cross country transportation of bees, esentially diluting any regional resistance. However, unlike the zealots, I do not advocate for a discontinuation of the practice, rather we recognize it for what it is and find another solution.

I would be willing to live on a remote tropical island with 1000 hives for as long as it takes for the bees to become resistant. Perhaps even using hard Bond in the begining to weed out the most susceptible.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

JWPalmer said:


> We actually agree on more points than we differ. One that is certainly a factor is the cross country transportation of bees, esentially diluting any regional resistance. However, unlike the zealots, I do not advocate for a discontinuation of the practice, rather we recognize it for what it is and find another solution.
> 
> I would be willing to live on a remote tropical island with 1000 hives for as long as it takes for the bees to become resistant. Perhaps even using hard Bond in the begining to weed out the most susceptible.


JWP most points are intuitive and somewhat the same in every state. I normally have hair on my neck raise when I hear" I'm from the government and I am here to help" But IMO it is time for the individual states, to take a stance on Bees migration/shipment. Some,, say California , need the migration and they would obviously vote to keep it. Some states like maybe north and south Dakota do not have any value from shipment, and vote to stop it. The result would be 2 fold. the states that vote to stop it would have pockets of "bees" fearals + local adapted that head down the "somewhat natural, TF trail" And those that cannot be with out it could have the migrations. Maybe screen on the truck for those states, and pass thru no stops. The second "feature " is you would have bee raisers / breeders, in each of the "closed" states. even 15 states would generate 15 or more lines of bees, that start to be "unaffected" by bees from other states. The population would stabilize IMO and we would have more pockets of survivor bees. Some states would screw it up and some folks would Cheat but for the most part , some areas of stability would emerge. Then treat or not treat is not really as important. You would soon find out what you individually need/want to do. Today IMO we have a good number of folks would would go TF but the truck load dropped off down the road, wrecks the DCA and the Mite Bombs affect the hives they have. I am a Proponent of do what ever the he!! you want as long as you do not affect others, the migration does affect others so in Time I expect it to be more regulated/ phased out. I see some "drone pollination" Drones as in unmanned small flying objects, Being tested. so it may be soon the bees are not "needed" as much for pollination. Then some of this can be done. Importing bees from other countries is just nutty, We really do not know what they carry, and or how to stop it. The next mite coming in from Asia will be way worse that this one. So some plan is needed or we will soon be fighting that one as well. Better labeling would also help, the cheap Home depo and wal mart honey needs to be accurately labeled. Folks would pay for the real stuff, but to them it says honey, and is 1/4 the price I charge so why pay the difference. This "fake honey is really getting interesting. I could feed "rice Syrup" to my bees, extract and blend with other real honey and it is virtually undetectable. Or feed for a couple weeks prior to flow and a couple after and extract it all. I am confident this is what some of the lower priced honey is. If there is money in it , people somewhere will do it. I mostly make honey for my family and friends, so it is still a hobby , but if I "had" to make a living and I was selling over seas , the playground would change.
GG


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## Varroa Apiary (Mar 14, 2018)

gww said:


> jw
> nothing alive is immune to death no matter how much medicine is involved.


Part of living or semi-living creatures are immortal to be honest: parts of programs, information. Those are true players in evolution of livings things in earth. not bees, humans nor species.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

V.A.


> Part of living or semi-living creatures are immortal to be honest: parts of programs, information. Those are true players in evolution of livings things in earth. not bees, humans nor species.


Tell that to the dinosaurs. 
Cheers
gww


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## Varroa Apiary (Mar 14, 2018)

You mean all the birds: living dinosaurs in the present?  
I did not write that all programs are immortal. There are some. The information in the hardware (organism or virus) is information. It doesn't matter if it's a tomato or dinosaur organism, if it's similar or identical


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Varroa Apiary said:


> You mean all the birds: living dinosaurs in the present?
> I did not write that all programs are immortal. There are some. The information in the hardware (organism or virus) is information. It doesn't matter if it's a tomato or dinosaur organism, if it's similar or identical


Yep; we all carry some of the dinosaur genes in us.
In fact, we all carry much, much more ancient genes in us, originating 2-3 billions of years back - the very basics of life did not change.
Oxygen-based oxidation, iron-based oxygen transport are only few examples of immortal biological programs (immortal - for as long as life on this planet exists - which is not forever).


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

I was just being a smart butt, hopefully in a comical way. That is why I made sure and put a smiley.
Cheers
gww


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