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
 
#2 ·
This seems to me to be a very nebulous subject. It's like dumping one bucket of water into another and trying to identify which molecules you've lost. How do you tell what you've lost? What does one set of bees have that another doesn't? Sure, you can say that something's lost, but what?

If I die without having children, is the human species somehow disadvantaged because it no longer has something in the gene pool it once did? Most of our foods have been bred from plants and animals originally what we'd consider inedible. Goldfish revert to their native brown if they go several generations without selective breeding. Beyond that, there is massive amounts of stored information in our DNA that is inactivated, relics of our ancestors and of viral DNA that has inserted itself into our code.

Perhaps what's lost, as in the case with the goldfish, is certain combinations of expressed traits. Without selection, those combinations are reordered, the wrong combination to a lock if you will. All the numbers are still there, they're just not in the right order.

What do you think?
 
#5 ·
Peg,

The link to her study can only explain it far better than I ever could. Take the time to read it; great paper. One of her summations is that “chemical treatments of honey bee diseases even if successful at the colony level in the short term have not eradicated the problem of pathogens at the population level". In other words you might be able to kill a few mites but you will do more harm to the bees as a superorganism in eliminating their ability to fight off pathogens and viruses that ultimately will lead to the demise of the colony as a whole.
 
#6 ·
and this gets into the genetics of it which are above my pay grade.

i'm all for not continuing lines of bees that consistantly require treatments to survive.

this could be accomplished by requeening, if the only genetics that are carried forward are in the queen's dna.

there was some information presented here (by wlc i think) that suggested that genes make it into the bees by other means, but i don't understand that.

i take a look at the paper, thanks!
 
#7 ·
ok, did a 'speed read'.

looks like at least two strategies responsible for varroa resistance have been developed in nontreated bees, and these traits are passed on to future generations. it was not determined if this is through the queen or the drone or both. so it makes sense to requeen with resistant stock, as well as cull drones from nonresistant colonies while pushing drones in the resistant ones.

it also looks like the use of fluvalinate (apistan) was found to temporarily increase virus loads in colonies receiving treatment with it.
 
#9 ·
thanks rb, i think. :)

when i did my master's thesis, i had to use the .05 level of statistical significance to say that my data supported my hypothesis. but even that meant i had a one in twenty chance of being wrong.

so 'proven' is always relative, and i don't know enough about this field to question the methodology ect.

but it looks pretty straightforward, and the results are not surprising. i tend to like randy oliver's reviews on these studies, as he has the background to critique and challenge them.
 
#10 ·
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.
Adam
First keep in mind that natural selection and breeding selection have nothing in common. Natural selection is extremely diverse. It is selecting for a very wide range of traits under a wide range of conditions. so it actually selects for a vast genetic pool. It also practices in some ways inbreeding. For example when environmental conditions are favorable there is a higher rate of survival. creating a higher population and an increase in cross breeding. In times of unfavorable conditions there is a high rate of failure. at times coming near extinction. population s are smaller and can often become isolated resulting in inbreeding of specific genetic traits. These traits become more set as a result and some traits may even be bred out.

In comparison selection for breeding is targeted to a very small set of traits under comparable identical conditions. variability is limited as well as the genetic pool. None of teh traits selected for are not necessarily beneficial to the bee or it's ability to survive. much less survive a wide variety of conditions.
 
#13 ·
The near death of the native bee of the British Isles comes to mind. When Acarapis woodii invaded, Apis mellifera mellifera all but disappeared. This bee, that lived on the southern edges of the ice for eons, was taken out by a parasite it had never before encountered. Were the genetics of the bee that remained diminished in some way? I would say so.

Also, I witnessed the initial infestation of Acarapis in North America. It killed my yellow bees, leaving the dark colonies seemingly untouched. My operation went from almost entirely yellow bees to almost all dark in just a few years. Yes, I requeened with carni and buckfast stocks...dark bees. But I also raised my own from strong colonies...both dark, and yellow if I could find them. The yellow bees all but disappeared. Was there a loss of genes? I would assume so.

Now, it's been 25 years. I still raise my queens from my best stocks...not selecting for color. While my bees are predominantly dark, yellow colonies are coming back...and I haven't bought in any yellow stocks since the mid-80s.

So was something lost, or something gained, or was it there in hiding all along? Beats me.
 
#14 ·
...So was something lost, or something gained, or was it there in hiding all along? Beats me.
That's interesting. Makes one wonder about genetic traits, and how they might appear and disappear under different conditions. I don't really know 'yellow' bees. I hear of them, and have read about them many times in Brother Adam's work, but I don't think I know them to look at. Does it refer to the more typical Italian coloring? Is it really that yellow, or is that just comparative to the carni's and russians?

I just feel that anything I'm liable to 'lose' in my yards, is just as liable to be sustained by another beekeeper in the area. I just don't see what is lost with the death of a small number of colonies in terms of important genetic material.

I've heard of saskatraz a number of times. I sent them a one line email asking a couple of questions about getting queen cells. It took just over one month to get a reply, which was a shorter line than the one I sent and didn't answer my questions.

I ended up going to Bill Ferguson for Buckfasts.

Adam
 
#16 ·
I understand. No doubt a busy man, and until this summer, Nova Scotia complicated things with a closed border and requiring permits. Looks like they've done a lot of genetic work up there, and I can see bringing in some of their stock at some point. Are you running Saskatraz stock now, Ian? If not, where do you source queens?

Adam
 
#18 ·
yes I have bought some of their stock this past season. Good producers anyway, time will tell if I like them or not. Im not sold on the mite tolerance bit though I do support all their work on the project. That is the main reason why I bought some in, 200 queened nucs.
I also source California. But im getting tired of getting poor queens. I am seriously considering re vamping my whole op to run off the reliance of early queens
 
#19 ·
Its not just a matter of resisting the mite, they also have to become resistant to the number of viral infections transferred from the mite. before they were able to manage with a relatively high pop of mites, now, it seems if there is a trace of mites in the hive they will crash. Its the virus interaction also. so ya, they just have to be able to eliminate the presence of mites within the hive
 
#23 ·
I had very few options until this summer.

• NS had a closed border for 20 years.
• No importation of bees without special permits.
• Province imported all the queens for everyone at one time each spring from one supplier in Hawaii.

I obtained a permit this summer, and I got 10 of Bill Ferguson's Buckfast queens and queened my wintering nucs with those. We'll see how they're doing come spring.
The fruit industry (blueberries, and namely Oxford, who is the single largest beekeeper out here with 15,000, colonies pushed the province to open the border, because even with the all their colonies, they're still short on pollination. Also, I have a feeling they plan to get out of the bee business. We shall see.

Anyway, it appears that this year will be more open, and while that may increase competition for pollination contacts, it will make it easier for me to bring in strong genetic stock to build my own with. I am just getting started. My primary goal is a sustainable bee population. I am aiming to run about 100 colonies. Right now, I have 13. A ways to go.

After that, who knows?

Adam
 
#29 · (Edited)
It seems due to factors beyond our immediate control our best options for building better bees goes out the window for a couple of reasons:
1) Successful natural selection comes from members of a species adapting and surviving a range of variables in region which will be limited in scope by the travel abilities/habits of the species combined with the species being exposed in a limited in scope to the conditions and pathogens which would exist in that region and the limits of exposure to new threats due to the same factors. In modern times new threats or issues are introduced in multiples which would not exist in a "natural world", ie. packages of bees from Austrailia, Africanzed bees from South America or Africa as are believed to have either migrated or been introduced from a ship and migration of colonies, being kept contary to natural conditions, nation wide. This factor it would seem places a very un-natural pressure on the species. This seems to eliminate this natural selection as a having much viable impact due to the never ending cycle of what appears to be bee pandemic.
2) Treaments, which if not in existance, would have likely resulted in at least a large (perhaps I should say larger looking at CCD) depopulation of bees, a great reduction in both commercial pollinators needed to support the worlds food supply, and hobby beekeepers who would likely not be able to invest in the cost of buying from very limited bee suppliers. Drugs are not what any of us want, they negatively impact the betterement of the species but are absolutely necessary as a bridge for the industry to reach a future. Israli virus (one of many), hive beetles, varroa, wax moth, AFB, Africanization, pesticides, etc. - too many un-natural and constantly chaning factors on scene at once.
3) The "puppy mill" effect on queen breeders as a result of the perfect storm of conditions from many factors which arise from a sudden large demand for replacement bees and queens. This has decreased the quality of queens as studies have shown and may even be increasing the spread of negative survival factors on a large scale, ie. queens being shiped with unusual numbers of virus strains and the decreased ability to do more selective breeding due to losses in breeding operations.

When I look at these factors combined with the 2012 drought I wonder where is the safety net of time and resources that allows us to get out of the survival mode and develop a more comprehensive model to deal with what we face and overcome the multitude of issues on a large scale which more comprehensively deals with the current issues and treatments. Maybe some of the folks who have the protocol and have written a thesis could work on such a model or make suggestions in how we get to that model? It would be good if the research monies were distributed in a way to eliminate duplication of work and aimed at developing a model we could all understand and work with. Is this approach possible?
 
#31 ·
I was thinking about this subject because it's one that comes up again and again, posed in opposition to Bond Method beekeepers.

Here's my thought. All the bees we have are descended from a relatively small population of bees already, especially the commercially available ones. And if the stories are to be believed, a relatively small number of colonies were imported to this country some hundreds of years ago. Furthermore, the honeybee genome is a tenth the size of the human genome, containing only 10,000 genes. The honeybee genome has evolved more slowly than that of other insects and has fewer genes for immunity than other insects. In this country, there are around 2.5 million kept colonies and for the sake of argument, let's say there are just as many feral ones. Since each colony is essentially one reproductive individual and each drone only gets to mate once, we might think of colonies as individuals, at least for a simplistic view.

If I'm losing a fifth of my hives on average each year, and everybody else seems to be losing just as many, I ask again what's being lost? Bees aren't endangered. I haven't seen any evidence that the species has lost any specific gene or trait. They still do all the things they used to.

I calculated that it takes something like 29 generations before any given queen has more direct ancestors than there are base pairs in her DNA. If a hive exists in a tree and swarms once a year, then outside of any supersedures, that hive achieves 29 generations in 29 years. Any significant similarity in the DNA of the granddaughter is gone long before then.

I'm just trying to understand the scope of this subject in real numbers.

Here's what I believe according to the evidence I have gathered: The number of colonies is so great, and the amount of genetic information is so great that the chance of losing any given piece of information with the death of any given hive is miniscule or functionally impossible. That's what I believe according to the evidence I have seen, but I am always open to new evidence or interpretations of the evidence.
 
#33 ·
Here's what I believe according to the evidence I have gathered: The number of colonies is so great, and the amount of genetic information is so great that the chance of losing any given piece of information with the death of any given hive is miniscule or functionally impossible. That's what I believe according to the evidence I have seen, but I am always open to new evidence or interpretations of the evidence.
If one looks at the concept of Founder Effect and more generally Island
Biogeography in biology and evolutionary biology, one may see the same
questions asked and answered or at least theories proposed to answer the
questions raised in a "Bond" or "Live and Let Die" scenario of selection
pressure.

A salient point in honey bee heredity is sex determination. Honey bees'
sexual heredity is allelic, not chromosomal (XX vs XY) as in vertebrates.
Thus, one may find their population limited by a homogeneous expression in
the sex allele area, causing poor brood pattern and general decline.
This inherit mechanism forces drone promiscuity to be positive, and forces
small populations of isolated bees to retain a specific size necessary to allow the sex
allele expression to remain diverse enough to keep the general population
viable.

Physiologically, a small, isolated honey bee population will go extinct after X
number of generations due to the inherint homogeniety that will occur
in sex allele inheritance.

One could say that drones fly and virgins fly, each to mate, to increase
the chances of heterozygosity in sex allele expression by mating with
others that have different sex allele expressions.

BOND or Live and Let Die would encourage the rapid sex allele
homogeneity, if the population became to small. The Paige-Laidlaw model for
breeding in a closed population addresses this somewhat, but folks who use
this model still bring in new breeders now and then, injecting new genotypic
combinations where specifically, sex determination, needs to be made more
heterozygus: more diverse. You get the idea.

If one has a small, highly controlled breeding population, one will indeed
need to create an artificial gene flow by bringing in new blood, or one will
lose all. If one has a small breeding population and one is open-mating, then one is
usually okay with the way the gene flow occurs.


Adam Finkelstein
www.vpqueenbees.com
 
#32 ·
you would have to agree that certain traits can and will be lost after generations of selection pressures. you would also have to agree that while loosing those certain traits, they are replaced with favorable traits related to that selection pressure. So really nothing is lost right?
 
#36 ·
you would have to agree that certain traits can and will be lost after generations of selection pressures.
I would politely disagree on that point. Perhaps there are traits which are suppressed in favor of other traits, and with further inbreeding, those traits can be firmed in. But introduce that population back into the general population, or do nothing while the general population reinserts itself into your population and much variability is returned. Even with a well inbred population, are the traits truly gone or just well suppressed? Furthermore, is such a population still fit to survive?


So really nothing is lost right?
That's what I'm trying to figure out in very real and actual terms. I cannot see how anything is "lost" by the Bond beekeeper. They are merely using a firm selection criteria for a few specific traits, some of which are unknown, that keep bees able to deal with mites or whatever other pressures they have. Firm selection criteria have been used since time immemorial on all sorts of species.
 
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