From: "Lucinda Sewell" <lucindajohn@sewellhome.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2001 22:12:46 -0000
To: <BiologicalBeekeeping@egroups.com>
Subject: Re: Colour and Climate

Greetings All, I hope a very good Odyssey awaits!

A while ago on this list Dee Lusby said we can't see genes, I'm under the
assumption we can, but every text I've referenced so far has drawings of
genes and diagrams of alleles, not photos. My apologies if this is a very
junior question...but can we see them? Just how proven is Mendels' selection
theory apart from peas? All the writing I've read (junior level stuff
admittedly) stresses that very large populations are needed to strengthen or
lessen characteristics notably, otherwise it's lucky dip...or natural
selection that is possibly even influenced by immediate environment. (Like
cellsize hmmmm)

The section of 'Honeybees of the British Isles' Chris Slade refers to is
titled Natural Selection. The book is available from BIBBA, follow other
links from

www.beedata.com

To BIBBA site or Northern Bee Books can supply it too. About Six pounds I
think. There are some excellent articles on both sites. I've had my knuckles
(rightly) rapped for referring to my bees as Mongrels, and this is (I think)
the thrust of Coopers argument:

"There is no sound reason for regarding hybrids snip as less worthy of
study than their pure mated relatives. Alleles of genes are not destroyed by
hybridisation, only by selective elimination of their possessors.
Segregation of characters will rearrange the available genes from generation
to generation, so that some will preponderate in certain colonies and not in
others. snip snip snip As a result, many of the characters snip become
reselected from bees of mixed parentage, and tend to reassort themselves
together in the same stocks. snip A beekeeper who selects for yellow body
color, for example, may find that nature has at the same time been selecting for long body hairs or native wing venation, nosema resistance or
non-prolificacy; he may end up with a yellow-pigmented bee with otherwise
native characters, as in at least one case in my experience. Appearances may be deceptive."

There you go Chris...paste more in if I left out important stuff. Happy
Christmas.

Beowulf Cooper performed experiments in England years ago with combsize, but the original material seems to be obscure. I hope I'm not being obtuse, but he settled on a larger combsize seemingly because of Belgian success with larger dark bees. The direct references in the book are few, but there are several photos of experiments, one with 3 sizes of comb on one frame. There is very little transition comb apparent, and no signs of that awful 'lost
pattern' comb I've seen. Unfortunately I have not found a reference in the
text to that photo.

I'm not sure if I believe colony traits are lost because they're not
apparent, I'm tending to think the ingredients are always in the larder, and
each generations recipe depends on pressures on the parents and embryo. But I'm nooooooo scientist.....

John Sewell.
Reading in Reading, England.