From: Dave Cushman <dave.cushman@lineone.net>
Date: Tue Dec 19, 2000 6:17am
Subject: Re: girls on small cells, regressing bees

Hi All

An answer for Dee... but aimed at all beekeepers.

Also addresses Barry's question about ideals.

----- Original Message -----
From: deelusbybeekeeper deelusbybeekeeper@e...
>
> This is mainly directed to Dave Cushman...
> >
> > > Question:
> > >
> > > John, why are you watering down the honey instead of just liquifying it?
> >
> > On liquid honey bees will take it up and stimulte brood rearing and also comb
> > building.
> >
> > If you are raising bees in small colonies or nucs, dilute honey is mere
> > readily converted to broodfood it save the bees having to collect the water
> > which wastes time and wears out bees that are already short in numbers.
>
> Reply:
>
> We are now talking biological management here and diluting with water by man
> does not appear in Nature and is a crutch for rearing bees, that perpetuates
> needing to be catered to, rather than survive on their own. Bees that can't
> use moisture condensation from inside the hive during winter, or go get
> their own, are not good bees to want to have. Watering honey is a bad habit
> and causes more disease and problems than it helps.
>
> Further, Inbreeding does not occur in Nature as routine without something
> forcing it to happen.At very most a queen might be inseminated if she is
> real special, but normally a good breeder can work around it if he really
> cares about what he is doing. Never tell beekeepers to inbreed and then
> think they can become good biological beekeepers without problems in their
> bees. Either you want to do it without crutches naturally to gain strong
> outbred lines or you don't.Inbreeding in animals results in dead lines and
> end of evolution for species and we seem to have enough of that started
> within the bee industry now.

I see where you are coming from on this issue Dee, BUT when a beekeeper puts
his bees in the artificial environment that a beehive is...He (or she) takes
on a certain responsibility for the bees' wellbeing.

Our bees, in the UK at least (and probably in USA), are degenerate owing to
around 500 years of miss-management by man. I do not wish to propagate this
degeneracy but to select those components of behaviour and morphological
features, that to the best of our knowledge, were original traits. This
requires a certain amount of intervention before we reach a stable state
that would allow us to adopt your principles fully.

We have also to take into account that bees do not live in a perfect
environment (they live with us on our polluted globe). It would be great if
we could keep bees without any "manipulation" at all. I think it is possible to achieve your aims, but it will take many dozens if not hundreds of years of refining techniques and selective breeding to get there.

Non intervention and totally natural non technological methods will have to
wait until our bees are "good" enough to survive. Until then we have to use all the methods and technology that we have available...I include "watered down" honey and "inbreeding" as some of our tools. Our knowledge base will grow and we will need to rely on these methods less and less over the next few years making beekeeping more pleasant and "user friendly".

If we adopt a pure "survival of the fittest" policy from the start then we
lose the most susceptible strains of bee very quickly...It could be that
there are other traits in those susceptible strains that we should be
nurturing but have not yet recognised. Your ideals are a wonderful aim...but
let us fully analyse what we have available before we cut off some strains for ever.

No matter how much we may think we know about bees we will not get it all right.

Best regards, and seasonal greetings to you and all on the list,
Dave Cushman