From: "Dave Cushman" <dave.cushman@lineone.net>
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 18:27:04 -0000
To: BiologicalBeekeeping@egroups.com
Subject: Re: girls on small cell, regressing bees



Hi All

Before I try to answer Dee's questions I must make a few comments about
various differences that exist between the USA and UK.

Climate,

The USA is a large place with much of it's area more than 100 miles from the sea.
Much of the weather is stable and reasonably predictable.
In the UK no place is more than 100 miles from the sea, the weather is
rather turbulant and unpredictable. It is also generally colder and wetter
than USA but as America is so large it is possible to find extremes as well.

Population of humans,

As a large place the USA has a large population...But the population density
is less than in UK.
We are a fairly crowded place, there are no wide open spaces. I have heard
it said that nobody in the UK lives further from a colony of bees than 100
metres. (the figure included bumble bees but not solitary bees). Owing to
shortcomings in our UK education system, non beekeepers in our comunities
are frightened of bees, (this may also be true of USA).

Population of bees,

In the UK, roughly 100 years ago, we had a "problem" termed "isle of Wight
disease". There is still much discussion about what it actually was but the
end result was lots and lots of dead bees. To make good the shortage of bees
many colonies were imported from many different locations throughout the
world. With our cramped conditions and close proximity of apiaries we have a
legacy of very mixed genetic material in our bees. Natural matings of bees
from these mixed strains give rise to "bad" traits like stinging and robbing
and the "nasty" bees are difficult and time consuming to handle. As a high
percentage of our bees are kept in urban and suburban gardens the
manipulation of "nasty" bees gives rise to stinging incidents which gets
beekeepers a bad name.

In USA where thare are gaps between large populations of bees it is possible
for local substrains of bee can keep themselves relatively pure bred.
Certainly the extreme mixing that has occurred in UK is not present. Some
large bee outfits in USA re-queen large numbers of colonies with identically
reared strains thus introducing large numbers of similar genes into
concentrated areas.

Queen Breeders,

In USA most queen breeders do it for commercial profit. In UK we have a
large number of very skilled "amateur" queen breeders, most of whom are
dedicated to putting right the genetic mixing that has gone on. The term
"amateur" is used as most of us are not businesses. It should not imply that
we are less dedicated or competant than any commercial breeders. As we have
this large number of breeders, there are wide differences in aproach and
many differences in technique. Our general aim is "Bee Improvement" which is
the name of the BIBBA magazine. BIBBA stands for Bee Improvement and Bee
Breeders Association. I am a member of this association but I am not a
spokesperson for it, The views that I express are my own.

Differences in emphasis,

There are many large American beekeeping outfits.
Much of US commercial beekeeping is focussed on pollination. In the UK we
have a few operators with thousands of hives and pollination plays a large
part in their business. The majority of UK beekeeping is carried out by
"hobbiests" about 85% of UK beekeepers own between 5 and 15 colonies, most
of these colonies are kept for honey production. Less than 1% of UK
beekeepers have 1000 or more colonies. The criteria for election to the Bee
Farmers Association is the owning of 40 or more stocks.

Differences in language,

I mean no offence when I say our two populations are "divided by a common
language". There are differences in the way we use everyday words but the
beekeeping terms seem to be even more differently used.

Rather than trying to address these differences here I request that we start
an independant thread Titled "US & UK terminology" which can run on any of
the lists to translate the particular differences.

----- Original Message -----
From: deelusbybeekeeper <deelusbybeekeeper@excelonline.com>

> Perhaps I should outline basically what we look at in a hive for workerbees,
> that one might want to use then, for production of drones later and/or
> queens.
>
> We believe that beekeeprs should look for and select honeybee breeder/drone
> hives based on a whole bee theory of field characteristics. Since we select
> to the black side, because we have found more beneficial characteristics on
> this cold-weather side of the spectrum, I will therefore list basically,
> what we look for to offset the characteristics, of the yellow hot-weather
> side of the spectrum:
>
> 1. Colour.

I do not select on a basis of colour directly, I find that by selecting for
other desirable characteristics I tend to get dark brown or black bees. I
would not exclude a colony for being yellow if it showed characters that I
was trying to propagate or fix.

> 2. Largeness of brood pattern during main honeyflows.

I tend to select on quality of pattern rather than size particularly if the
colony is storing pollen underneath the pattern or all round it.

> 3. Lack of disease.

I do not select colonies that have obvious signs of disease. I did (between
1984 and 1989) maintain a strain that stayed alive even with both Nosema and
Acarine in evidence. It was their resistance to the disease and infestation
that I was trying to isolate. The strain died out, mainly owing to the bees
continously superceding their queen (I believe they recognised some genetic
defect). The bees were very black and shiny with a sheen similar to
bluebottle flies.

> 4. Lack of/low number of parasites.

We in UK are not fully into this yet as we have only had varroa for 8 or 9
years and we have not worked out the best method of judging it. My own ideas
here are in process of modification, I am trying to put some numbers on
"mite damaging" behaviour.

> 5. Body uniformity.

I take notice of colour variability within a colony but have never used
conformity of body size.

> 6. Lack of crossbrace.

We call this "brace comb" or "burr comb" and deselect colonies that show it
in an excessive fashion.

> 7. Body size.

For many years I propagated a strain of black bees with noticably small body
size.
In general I pay less attention to body size than many of my friends. (They
see a "small" queen as substandard. I am not so certain, I see no reason why
polymorphism should not produce small queens as often as "large" juicy
ones.)

> 8. Honey and pollen gathering capabilities, both main and out-of-season.

Pollen gathering, particurly early in the season is a strong point for me. I
pay no attention to honey gathering capability as that is an indication of
the degree of hybridisation of the bee and should be ignored for first year
selection. Second and subsequent selections may include honey gathering but
by using it as an initial selection criterion we defeat the object and
increase the mongrelisation.

> 9. Colony defense.

I rarely consider defence, it tends to reduce by my selection of other
characters

> 10. Hours of flight.

Here I look at temperature rather than time we positively selct for flying
in cool temperatures.

> 11. Manageability (aggressiveness).

We have several catogories to cover this element of behavior which tops our
list as the prime reason for selection.

Stinging,

If a bee stings for no obvious reason like miss-handling this is a very bad
trait and is strongly selected against

Jumping,

We also select against any colony where the bees fly up to an operator.

Running,

Bees that dash about when the lid is raised are also selected against.

Docility under provocation,

This involves waving your hand about over an open colony, if stings are
received it counts against. If they take no notice that is a good sign.

> 12. Robbing capacity.

I select heavily against robbing.

> 13. Conformity of brood pattern during out-of-season and pre-flow periods.

I look for strong build up if that is what you mean.

> 14. Cluster and fanning abilities.

There is a distict behaviour known as cool weather clustering that we select
positivly for. fanning abilities I have no concept of what you are looking
for here.

> 15. Propolizing abilities.

I select for a low level of propolising but it not a big issue in my region
of UK.

> 16. Broodnest priming abilities during out-of-season and pre-flow periods.

I am afraid I do not know what broodnest priming is.

I have a criterion that you do not mention...I select for "apiary vicinity
mating" as apposed to "drone congregation mating"

> Now with the above, there are various reasons for looking at these
> characteristics both pro and con. We look for all within a colony, because
> we have found that to put a colony aside for and/or select for only one or a
> few attributes only can have detrimental consequences.
>
> Dave also wrote about splits. He said, 'We do not 'split' colonies as we
> would have no control over the genetic make up of the queens that would
> result in the queen less have of the 'splits'.
>
> Reply:
> This chain of thought I do not follow! A colony that is divided is a 'split'
> colony or a 'divided' colony, and if one is practicing outbreeding, to a
> point, there would be no control over the drones, with which the queens
> would be mating.
>
> This can be rectified somewhat, with out-of-season breeding though, to
> either the yellow and/or black side of the spectrum. Perhaps Dave could
> explain a little more here on his way (s) of making increase in numbers for
> understanding for me so I can follow his chain of thought better.

Owing to the bad mixing outlined earlier, if we used the split method we
would end up with unmanagable colonies. we use time and temperature
isolation to get "in strain" matings where possible for queens that we raise
then make up nucs with these.

> Dave wrote: I out cross regularly, but certainly not everytime.

Our "outcrossing" is only done using colonies we have selected. We try to
avoid feral bees for the same reason that we do not split colonies.

Inbreeding,

> 'ie backcrossing' is just as useful a breeding tool as 'outcrossing'.
> Backcrossing helps stabilize lines and 'fix' characteristics that would
> otherwise be variable.
>
> Reply:
> It is nice to see that Dave regularly out breeds his colonies, but I am a
> little bit puzzled by what he means concerning inbreeding as pertains to
> backcrossing.

Looks like differences in terminology here.

Back crossing may have several generations between like and like.

> To me inbreeding practices are basically the usage of the same drone mother,
> back to back in the field. This could also be put, as the selection and
> usage of the same queen mother, back to back, for production of queens to
> take to the field, as the drones are a direct compliment of the queen in a
> colony.

This is severe inbreeding. certainly never knowingly practiced.

> I also would call the insemination of drones back to it's mother,
> which would be mating back to itself, the queen again being a direct
> compliment to the drone, and thus inbreeding.

There are occasions when it is useful to artificially inseminate a queen
with its own drone but this is a rare situation. John Atkinson covers this
in "Background to Bee Breeding".

> I have never heard backcrossing in general context refered to as inbreeding,

Back crossing may have several generations between like and like but it is a
form of inbreeding.

> Nor have I ever seen the half moon patterns

What are half moon patterns?

> buckshot patterning associated with inbreeding,

we call this pepperpot brood, again John Atkinson's book covers this in
detail and puts numbers on it.

> Dave wrote about saving fragements, so that genetic information is not lost,
> and I wrote about not saving the weak, but either letting them die or
> absorbing them into other colonies for strength. I can certainly see Dave's
> point on destroying weak or sickly bees as being of no use, and we do not
> aborbe sickly bees, but I most certainly do believe in combining weak
> colonies or abosorbing into other stronger colonies.
>
> Many times 2-3 weak colonies combined, going into the winter or early
> spring, will come through strong. There is no need to find the queens or
> make a selection, of which would be best to keep. The bees themselves will
> do that. Question: Is this not a way thru absorbtion of keeping traits that
> would have been lost, if the only thing not liked about the colony was the
> size of it's force (weak) for going into off season conditions? What
> survives in the absorbtion is what is best for survival then, Yes? Just
> giving something a chance to go for it and seeing if it has the fortitude to
> go for it!

Our damp conditions may affect this. If we combine two weak colonies they
never seem to take off like the others. However I have used bees from such
weak colonies to stock mating nucs and this seems to work ok

> Dave said, " No, I do not use an incubator, I prefer my virgins to emerge in
> a small colony of about 1500 bees. They fly from these for mating and then
> are allowed to lay up the small nuc so that their quality can be assessed.
>
> Reply:
>
> I myself like to use an incubator in conjunction with out-of-season breeding
> cycles. By using late breeding or early breeding cycles, we can avoid many
> yellower drones in our area. The virgins emerged within the incubator can
> then save precious time on a breeding program and increase it's success
> ten-fold, by allowing for sorting of queens for body conformity and colour.
> The virgin queens, can then be taken immediately to the field and smoked
> into marked colonies where yellower characteristics are, skipping the darker
> caste colonies. This way several virgin queen lines can be smoked into a
> single yard for outmating, to give a very wide genetic makeup and secure
> large broodrearing patterns for honey production.

If we had large "yards" as you put it we could practice similar. I rarely
raise more than thirty queens in a batch and I lost hundreds of mating nucs
when I went bankrupt. I only have a few dozen such nucs these days. We would
also need to surround such a mating yard with rings of drone producing
colonies to improve our chances.

> Dave wrote: "Indescriminate or repeated inbreeding will lead to disaster. I
> believe the American practice of 'splitting'colonies increases the chance of
> inbreeding and is a major reason why so many US outfits purchase
> commercially produced queens".
>
> Reply:
>
> Again here, I myself do not know how splitting/dividing/making increase of
> colonies increases the chance of inbreeding and could be a major reason why
> so many US outfits purchase commercially produced queens.
>
> As far as I know, over 2/3 of the colonies in the USA are not requeened by
> use of commercially bought queens. This is statistical fact and has been for
> a number of years. Splitting is not inbreeding.
> I would have to see a chain of thought here to try to understand ehy this is
> thought to be so.
>
> Perhaps in UK there is a practice that is done, that is or leads to
> inbreeding that I and others are not aware of. Perhaps Dave could enlighten
> me so I can understand and we can all talk more then and relate back to our
> own beekeeping operations.

It is not so much that splitting causes inbreeding...A better way of saying
it would be that we would not want the resulting colonies because of the
influence of outside drones.

> Like I said earlier, I am enjoying these discussions and listed above what I
> consider to be a whole bee concept for seletion of colonies to perpetuate.

Our UK bee improvement is a slow process but it is a steady improvement. We
cannot afford to make any mistakes otherwise we will be back with the
horrible bees we had twenty years ago.

Best regards Dave