From: cslade777@aol.com
Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 18:20:03 EST
To: BiologicalBeekeeping@egroups.com
Subject: Re: Observations.

As I have been asked I shall type out parts of pages 35 and 36 of Beowulf
Cooper's The Honeybees of the British Isles published by BIBBA 1986 ISBN
0-905369-06-8 and hope BIBBA forgive me if I trespass upon their copyright.
I do recommend the book.

"There is no sound reason for regarding hybrids - that is, hybrids between
British Isles and overseas strains - 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. It is the selective
survival of those which show certain advantages ("the fittest") which will
"guide" the direction in which breeding will proceed. Of course, with small
numbers of colonies chance may play a big part in determining which
characters will be perpetuated or disappear (genetic drift). But for the
most part, in moderately native areas, numbers will be high enough to ensure directional survival: directional to the point where native characters
survive preferentially.

While the crossbred progeny are reproducing among themselves, natural
selection is ever-present and always acting, whether the beekeeper knows it
or not. The management -oriented honey producer may try to perpetate all the progeny he raises, but even he will have selective losses in winter, or
queens that selectively fail to mate, or selectively mate with drones not of
his own choosing. The less management -minded beekeeper, as well as the let alone beekeeper and of course all colonies in the wild, will clearly be
subject to a very strong degree of loss and hence selection, and their drones will often dominate the population. Although part of this loss will be due
to chance and be non directional (colonies lost by hives being knocked over
....or by flooding...., for example), a very high proportion will be
directional and guided by one or more characters aiding survival. Such
characters will include dark body colour, low temperature working or mating,
heavy pollen collection, high load carrying capacity, tolerance of wind,
minimum breeding out of season, longevity, supersedure and many other things, including resistance to certain diseases. Possession of such characters will inevitably assist preferential survival under pressure of natural selection.

As a result, many of the characters which go to make up a native bees become reselected from bees of mixed parentage, and tend to reassort themselves together in the same stocks. ...This reassortment was particularly noticable during the import free years of the Second World War, and in individual years of great stress since then. A beekeeper who selects for yellow body colour, 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......

Assessment .....

Reassortment. Many people misjudge the implications of nativeness in a strain of bee, because a strain possesses some conspicuous ..trait, e.g. colour or proloficacy, they in their minds automatically attribute to it various
virtues or faults, about which they ought to hold an open mind. A bee which
is black (a summer virtue in our climate) probably derives little advantage
in wintering from this pigmentation, except for some marginal advantage in
very bright periods suitable for cleansing or early pollen gathering
flights...."

If you are seriously interested in working with the bees to improve them then you should buy or borrow this book.

Chris