Beesource Beekeeping Forums banner

Live and Let Die - Do you really reduce the gene pool?

53K views 222 replies 22 participants last post by  Daniel Y 
#1 ·
In cases where bees are not given mite treatments, and those who cannot survive are allowed to die, the approach is sometimes called "The Bond Method" or "Live and Let Die".

An argument against this approach suggests that you reduce the gene pool by losing bees that might have other valuable breeding traits.

But given that users of the method are so much in the minority, wouldn't it stand to reason that any of the genetic traits of a given be that are not maintained in the treatment free yards would be carried on in the treated yards in the same area?

Adam
 
#113 ·
Very nice Dean. I am still a little tickled I could see that there is a clone in the mix. genetics are not easy to sort through.

The very important thing I believe there is in all this for the average beekeeper as they are concerned with bottle necking or reduction of gene pool.

The queen has 32 chromosomes. I would like to go back and address this since it was brought up. Genes a are put together in strings. These strings of genes are then called Chromosomes. it is this chromosome that is passed on to the offspring. They say a queen bee has 32 chromosomes. but that still does not tell us how many genes are on all those chromosomes. They also say there are as many as 15,000 genes associated with the honey bee. No single bee is capable of having all 15,000 if they did their woudl never be a problem with inbreeding or loss of genetic diversity.

The entire issue over bottle necking or reducing the gene pool is the loss of these 15,000 genes. we don't want to loose them. we actually want to ad to them.

What is a chromosome and what is a gene is really not that critical to this conversation. Understanding how you can loose those genes is. I believe it is far more important for the average beekeeper to understand that to have a large selection of those 15,000 genes requires that there be a large number of colonies in the area.

I see that many beekeepers have a thinking along the lines of. I don't care if I have all 15,000 genes. I only care if I have the very best 500 or so. The problem with having only the very best 500 or so is that as soon as something comes along that those 500 or so genes cannot contend with. like varroa for example. all your bees get wiped out.

What we want is to flood that 15,000 gene pool with varroa resistant genes. We want varroa resistance to be predominant gene throughout bees. Sort of like genes to have wings would be. Every bee has that.

So can every bee have resistant genes? Theoretically yes. Many beekeepers might argue that. but yet they would have no problem thinking that African genes are perfectly capable of taking over every bee in existence. So if bad genes can be a problem. you can make good genes be a problem just the same.

Some genes spread more readily than others. Dominant genes for example are easier to get into your bees and see the effect. Dominant genes can be a problem as well. such as in hygienic traits when all the genes associated with it are recessive. This causes a situation that you can't just get some hygienic genes in your bees and be good. you have to get all the other genes out. the only gene you can have in your bees is the hygienic ones.

And this is exactly the situation I believe it is very important that even the hobby beekeepers has some understanding of genetics. That some situations require that you have pure bees. and that they remain pure. or a trait is completely lost. Africanization begins when even one gene from an African bee gets into your colony. Hygienic behavior happens only when you have purged every other non hygienic gene from your colony. It is obviously easier to Americanize bees than make housekeepers out of them.
 
#114 ·
The average beekeeper? I doubt that the average beekeeper is concerned about bottlenecking of the ngene pool. I dare say that the average beekeeper wants decent inexpensively priced queens available when they want or need them. They may want a certain strain, but mostly they want live queens as early as possible.

Why7 does the average American beekeeper need to know anything more than how to keep bees? Why do we need to know Bee Breeding and Bee Genetics all that deep. I found Dean's illustration and explanation informative, but I could not regergitate it back to you. Basically I understand it when I hear it. That's enough for me. Am I going to make some mistakes by not knowing genetics any deeper?
 
#116 ·
I doubt that the average beekeeper is concerned about bottlenecking of the ngene pool.
The average Bond Method beekeeper really needs to produce their own queens and not rely on outside sources. Bottlenecking is something that should be considered, but unless you have thousands of hives and can dominate an area with your own stock, chances are it's not going to happen. Open mating will deal with all the problems, and if you get an inbred queen with a spotty brood pattern, simply replace her as you would any other sub-par queen.
 
#115 ·
Mark I totally agree with where the average beekeepers concerns are. Are they making mistakes. well to look at the past and consider that today is a result of everything that has come before. Yes they have been and are making horrendous mistakes. IF you look at the honey bee and it's resent history. Since the 1930's. bees have been in a declining state at the very same time that almost every other area of agriculture has made tremendous at one time considered impossible advancements. this not only indicates mistakes. it indicates tremendous mistakes. That is just my opinion.
 
#117 ·
Solomon, what you're saying there is in keeping with my initial thought.

I can't see how one beekeeper practicing survival of the fittest, or "Bond method" selection is going to make a dent in the gene pool of the area, unless as you say, they are a very large operation which actually controlled the majority of the bees in the region.

Mike Palmer's point about the initial infestation of Acarapis in North America is different. There, you have all the bees of a region being hit by the same selector - the same pressure. In that case, all the bees who can't deal with that one pressure are dying. And in that situation, sure - you're likely to be losing more of the genetic diversity.

But I just don't see it in smaller, local or individual beekeeper scenarios. Even if you have a hundred hives in an area where there are other beekeepers and plenty of open mating, I don't see how your activities are going to dent the gene pool.

Adam
 
#119 ·
Daniel,
Please clarify what you see as mistakes. It seems like back in the mid1980s we had a choice, treat or don't treat. Steve Taber remarked that if we did not treat that in 30 years the bees and the mites would work things out. Not much of a choice for those who owned any sizeable number of beehives and not a good option for those dependent on honeybee provided pollination.

So please tell me where you see thge mistakes.
 
#146 ·
Sorry Mark, This conversation is moving fast and I have not been back to the computer in nearly 24 hours. I am not ignoring you.
To keep it simple. the 80's and other "Bad" periods are the symptoms of the mistakes. It is a bit like getting the flu and then saying. but I stayed in bed, drank lots of fluids etc. etc. etc. When others are talking about how to not get the flu in the first place. Theoretical at best. the flue will happen regardless of weather you stay away from sick people. just not as frequently.

I will say that conversations just like this one. and that someone like you that admittedly says it is not that much of a concern to you. is a good sign. you are still willing to take your time to listen and contribute. It will be very few individuals that are willing to look at the bee under the microscope. it is the majority that want to look at them from a lawn chair. And this is very true. One challenge this fact presents is how do you effectively take the information from the microscope to the lawn chair. part of that responsibility lies with the person setting in the chair. They have to be at least willing to hear that their is a better way. This gets diluted when to many promises that do not bear fruit begin to happen. Sooner or later everyone starts saying. Yeah Yeah Yeah, Shut up and keep bees. Now the guy looking in the microscope has an elevated burden of proof to meet.

Anyway my comments are trailing off in to to many side issue.

Suffice it to say it is a complicated multi faceted issue. and this conversation that is actually going very well is just taking a close look at one of them.
 
#125 ·
Solomon

I am not a strict disciple of the Bond Project per se, but I do prescribe to the practice of localized breeding of the current genetics within my yards. I am probably like you in that there are other people keeping bees within proximity to some of my yards that send forth drones easily within my mating zone areas. I do have 3 bee yards along the Rio Grande River spread out about 2 miles apart. Within this area I know that there are numerous wild hives located in the huge 100 year old cottonwood trees that line the river. Many of these colonies have originated from my hives as swarms. Every year I am also sure that I manage to catch some of these swarms and place them in my yards. As much as I regret losing my own swarms each spring at least I know that these colonies might be the feral survivors of tomorrow. In addition many years ago I worked for a commercial beekeeper (Jerry Cole) when I first moved to N.M. Mr. Cole used to run 70-80 hives in this same area until he passed away 10 years ago. I am fortunate that I am able to keep bees in this area, and that the bees are in very good shape as a whole. Our mite loads tend to be quite light here. Bite my tongue.
 
#135 ·
'let the sparks fly and the chips fall were they may.....' :)

i agree in open discussion, and not limiting participation by any arbitrary criteria, and i agree that profanity and personal attacks don't have a place on the forum.

this thread was a perfect example of how a group of people with diverse experiences and backgrounds can roll a topic around and end up learning something new, or advance their understanding.

i'd be willing to bet, that most everyone involved in the conversation here, not to mention all of those just viewing it, would claim that they were edified by it in some way. jmho of course.
 
#137 ·
i agree in open discussion, and not limiting participation by any arbitrary criteria, and i agree that profanity and personal attacks don't have a place on the forum.
Agreed. Also, most of us learn to sift the wheat from the chaff.

If we confined discussions to only those who are self annointed practitioners / experienced experts in it, we would have to exclude that large portion of the TF forum, who tell us they've had bees for nearly a year now and never treated, so it must work.

Is Specialkayme qualified to speak on the subject? Well since he practised the bond method for years, I would say more qualified than most. Blocking him is just excluding opinions that vary from one's own personal dogma.

If say, Adam Foster Collins was successful with his use of the bond method, he would be welcomed? But if next year he lost them all, would it be OK to report that, or would he get blocked?
 
#136 ·
I am just this season going "treatment free", and it's tense, I must say. I can see mite damage, and it's difficult not to break out the oxalic acid.

That said, I also split a lot this year. I also plan to create a nuc-based operation moving forward, so I imagine the splitting will keep the mites under control to some extent. I'm not going that way in order to combat mites, but I'm well aware that it may just work out that way.

Adam
 
#138 ·
many thanks oldtimer. 'wheat from the chaff...', i really like that.

specialkayme's posts will still appear here, and so will everyone else's, since sol is not the moderator anymore. (barring profanity and personal attacks, as judged by barry, the new moderator)

by blocking, i'm guessing that only means personal messages
 
#144 ·
yes specialkayme, that is correct. barry confirmed it, probably while you were typing.

sorry to hear about your previous bad experiences on the tfb forum.

i've heard about others having some too, before my time here.

we are all people, and people are funny, and

'almost as interesting as bees.........' :)

wadda ya'll say that all of us do our best to check our egos in at the door, and see if we can't generate some more good discussions like this on the tfb forum.

it's too important of a topic to all beekeepers for us not to try.
 
#147 ·
is a tf apiary that fails after seven years really a failure of treatment free?
That's how I viewed it. How would you view it?

Something failed. It might be the genetics of the hives, it might be the location (or the individual apiary), or it might be the treatment practices. Since I used the bond method, I selected the genetics of the hives through a "treatment free" practice. So to me, the first and last are interchangeable in this regard. As far as the location goes, I was stretched out over 3 different locations, all within about an hour and a half of each other. I used these locations over the course of the previous 5 years (admittedly not all 7). I only saw high losses of colonies in years 2 and 3. Year 5 I lost approx 50%. Year 7 I lost 100%.

That tells me it's not the location. It also tells me it wasn't "chance." I can understand losing 100% of my hives in year 7 if I only had 3 hives. Losing 100% of your hives when you are operating in the 20's is more than a coincidence.

If you ask me, the treatment free practices, in addition to the gene selection, created weaker bees than would have existed if I had treated periodically (with moderation) throughout the 7 years. The bees that resulted were able to fight off varroa (to some degree) but were completely unable to defend themselves against just about any other type of invader (nosema, SHB, and to some degree wax moths).

I've been told the failure of my apiary was not the bees fault, it was my fault. I was told that I wasn't doing tf correctly, in that I didn't use small cell comb (I used foundationless), I didn't rotate the combs out fast enough (I was on a 5 year rotation), I should have used 8 frame hives (I use 10), I should have used deep brood chambers (I used all mediums), I should have used more upper entrances, more screened bottom boards, less screened bottom boards, I should have purchased tf nucs, or purchased tf packages, or I should have shaken all the bees out of the hives for the first few years to get them to regress their cell size . . . the list goes on. It's easy for others to point the finger at me, and tell me I did something wrong, the bees didn't. Whether that's accurate, who knows.
 
#148 ·
Solomon, somewhere in the last two pages or so said that a bond beekeeper should make their own queens. this is not entirely true.

It is more of a matter of take a wide selection of genes and then select out for the traits you want. try to make those traits prevalent. but then you are going to then go outside and dump in a new selection of genes and do it again. But you want to select carefully those outside genes.
 
#149 ·
Solomon, somewhere in the last two pages or so said that a bond beekeeper should make their own queens.
I said it. I see no utility in letting bees die if one is not going to reap the rewards of weeding out the weak. They should and generally speaking, they do. Not all of them perhaps, but that is not what I'm saying.
 
#152 ·
For sure all beekeepers have had their low points. I don't think it's out of line to suggest that any total loss of ones bees has to be considered a failure since at that point you are either quitting or repopulating from someone else's bees that you may know little if anything about. I doubt that many get into bees under the notion that they will most likely lose all their bees in a few years but that's ok. I, for one, haven't bought any bees to repopulate hives since pre varroa as odd as that might sound and even then it wasn't that we lost all our bees, only that we had too many empty boxes to fill in just one year.
 
#155 ·
SpecialK,

With the added details of your experience over the 7 years, I can see that it was rough, or some version of a failure for the duration. In that case, the total loss at year 7 would indeed seem like a failure of your attempt at treatment free.

It's all so darned FRUSTRATING, isn't it? There are just so many conflicting reports and opinions.

This is why I've come to believe that you just have to try everything for yourself until you find what works for you and your bees in your part of the world. All a forum like this does is give you a sense of options, and adds (or subtracts) a level of confidence in what you're trying at a given moment.

What a pain!

Adam
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top