Genetic Diversity: What Would Brother Adam Do... Today?

[squarepeg]

adam, if i were going to trap out ferals or catch their swarms, i would try to locate them early in the season. that way, i would at least know they made it through the harsh winter up there. i think that would be a good starting point to getting some hearty bees.

[Steven Ogborn]

Adam, Hope,hope,hope that those 10 Buckfasts you got have some mite resistance. Look for the one, ones, none that live from
being eaten up with mites. Raise your next round of queens from those. Don't cross your current Buckfasts with any VSH bees
in an attempt to transfer some type of mite resistance into the genes they currently have. It's just to risky and complicated,and
you might not get a perfected bee from it. Don't raise bees from those Buckfast/VSH mutts that make it through next winter in an
attempt to tune your living bees into something that you like. It's not like it's been done before...Oh, wait. Yeah, catch those same
feral swarms, from the same stock you could buy where you're at now. The same stock that you've already been working with.
Okay I'll go with that.

[Adam Foster Collins]

Deknow,

Thank you for your detailed response. While it is not 'paint by numbers' as you say, it is still the kind of answer I'm looking for. I appreciate all the thoughtful responses each of you has offered.

It seems that, like so much of beekeeping, we just don't know what to do. There are few 'right' answers, as a total understanding of the bee escapes us. Dean, your recent posting of the talk by Randy Quinn is relevant to this conversation as well. For all his 'success' in bee breeding, he seemed to think it was all misguided somehow, and that is telling.

I'm going to start a new thread which is more specifically focused on my specific situation, and how I might move forward. The title of this one versus where it has wandered is now incongruent.

I hope you will continue with me there.

Thanks again,

Adam

[deknow]

...there is much more to discuss, we have not talked about the positive side of bottlenecking, success on a colony level vs. Population level, etc.

For the sake of continuity, i am going to continue on this thread.

Deknow

[Adam Foster Collins]

I am happy to learn whatever I can, wherever I can.

Thanks again - everyone.

Adam

[Daniel Y]

Deknow.a few other things I see that you missdirect..

Hybridization is a means to an end not the end in itself. You don't want to produce hybridized bees to sell in mass. Although many do for reasons of profit. For the most part it is a disaster. Hybrid bees are the way to consolidate a trait so that it can then be cross bred with other bees. hopefully resulting in several fixed traits in a non hybrid bee. I have said nothing about the reality of doing this. No it is not simple.

II is not a method to produce massive numbers of bees. One couple I read about manages to inseminate 2000 queens a year between the two of them. not exactly mass production. again it is a means to an end. control of genetics is relatively very few bees. those bees would then be used to produce the thousands of queens for sale.

So nothing I have been describing about II or in breeding or anything else is about mass production of queens.it is about getting the genes into or more importantly out of the queen you do want to mass produce. Just one queen. mass produced into the millions.

So can you take a Hyg. bee and breed it to a Hyg.bee and get a HYg.bee? Nope. and that is why you need to understand genetics. specifically the genetics of the bee. Do Hyg. bees turn out to be the holy grail of beekeeping? Nope, who thought they would be? Is any bee goign to be the perfect bee for everyone? Nope. It is most likely to be the best you can get and you will still have to live with it. Is a Hyg. bee that is less productive but disease free preferable to a disease ridden less productive, or dead one? IS it preferable that perfectly good brood is dead after 8 days so teh queen can get that cell productive again or that the bees dies in 28 days wasting more time. more room. more resources before it dies? You have to have an acute ability to see progress when progress is made. You have to be able to determine if it is even progress. If you continue to discount every advancement simply because it still contains some negative. you will never get anywhere. Do you have any idea how many people died in developing the heart transplant? How many times did Edison fail to make a light bulb work? That is the process you are looking at here. get through the how not to do it methods as fast as possible.

II, iNbreeding, outbreeding, cross breeding, rotational cross breeding, introduction of new genetics, Hybridization are all methods to an end. Not the sole way to that end. So you are the only one that thinks anyone is saying do this or that and get better bees. YOu say that none of these methods are hwo ti is done and then proceed to say what happens when it is done. SO which is it. are people usign these methods in breedign bees or not.

As for your definition of breeding or rearing. I am not sure what made you qualified to define them. if you want to do that for yourself fine. but the words do have definitions and I am not sure if anyone asked you if they where correct. But when I say breeding I mean breeding and when I say producing or rearing I mean rearing. you keep wanting to apply my words to methods of rearing. not breeding. Rearing queens is making a bunch of hives. producing thousands if not tens of thousands from them and open mating them, if they are mated at all.many are sold as virgins. The breeder is producing the queen the producer will buy. And you will not find them in the tens of thousands. it would likely have to be a top breeder that produces them in a couple of thousand at all. It is also likely that those couple of thousand breeders would have come from only one queen. There was after all only one Man o' war. You never mass produce the best. You can only mass produce from the best.

[BeeCurious]

Here is another factor concerning drones. since they are fully half of the equation they are a significant consideration.

I thought the male was only 25% of "the equation"...

[Rader Sidetrack]

Deknow...

As for your definition of breeding or rearing. I am not sure what made you qualified to define them. if you want to do that for yourself fine. but the words do have definitions and I am not sure if anyone asked you if they where correct.

Absolutely astonishing ....

Shall we invite Daniel Y to detail his qualifications to speak authoritatively on this subject? Perhaps not, otherwise we may get more on such key points such as Man o' War and the lightbulb.

[Daniel Y]

I thought the male was only 25% of "the equation"...

You will have to explain how you come to 25%.

[Lauri]

I have to say breeding bees is extremely difficult to maintain any kind of true genetic lines. I read everything youall write, and still am unsure of exactly how I will continue to, not only improve my stock, but perhaps contribute to the genetic lines in general.

For example:
I have a great stallion and a few nice mares. If I don't breed my mares every year..no matter, I still have exactly the same genetics next year to work with.

Not so with the bees. Even if I could inseminate my stock, every year my lines would vary somewhat from the new generation of replacement population. Some call the dilution 'hybrids' and some call them 'mutts'. So the hybrids are high performers and the mutts are the average queens or the duds, LOL. They are all produced the same way and it's the breeder or producers job to keep the best and squish the unworthy.



I have about 20 daughters from my Glenn breeder queen I am overwintering, That queen never would build up much, I attributed that to the probable 'over hygienic' nature of this queen. Her best daughters are much better. I am assuming since the VSH gene is said to be recessive and assume this queen was homozygous for the recessive trait, my best generation of these daughters will be those that produce about 25% of the workers that exhibit the hygienic trait. Enough to keep the hive tidy, but enough non hygenic workers to build up and get down to business of producing product.
(But Wait! I culled quite a few daughters from that Glenn queen, but truthfully the mother queens was probably unproductive because of the same reason she made a good breeder queen. Homozygous recessive genes. So those unproductive daughters I culled may have been great breeding stock for the same reason)

I have a real hard time breeding anything that is weak. Is it because of inbreedings desirable traits that it has a lack of vigor or is it because they are duds?

Recessive genes suck.

I understand the significance of the two parent lines being inbred so they are homozygous for positive traits. Cross together they produce the F1 hybrid. Those offspring have almost a 100% predictable genetic outcome, especially if those homozygous traits are dominant.
You hope for a resulting line with the best traits from both parents+ the hybred vigor from the outcross.

But what confuses me a bit is many of you think the hybrids are just a dilution of pure lines and basically not the way to go.
If I don't bring in any new lines, my stock will soon be survivor hybrids, always slightly changing and evolving, but will only consist of the high performers as long as I continue to cull without fail. Isn't that how all lines are eventually established?


All great in theory, until the guy down the road buys new package bees up from California. There goes my drone purity percentage.

I assume the haploid nature of the drones is the key to keeping genes around as long as possible.. If a person collected drone semen the year before, froze it and inseminated daughter virgins from the over wintered sister queens, you'd have half of the next hybrid parentage without loosing too much in dilution. Cross those inbred daughters with unrelated drones with the traits you want and that season's hybrid cross is complete. Cross again too soon within those lines and you'd be at risk for inbreeding's predictable eventual cost-weak traits and poor vigor...But sometimes a superstar. Isn't that the lure?
I have heard though frozen drone semen is unstable and queens inseminated with it are superceded quickly. You'd have to be quick about harvesting your graft larva.

[Adam Foster Collins]

...there is much more to discuss, we have not talked about the positive side of bottlenecking, success on a colony level vs. Population level, etc.

For the sake of continuity, i am going to continue on this thread.

Deknow

I don't claim to know or understand much about genetics at all, and I'm still hoping Dean will continue with what he was offering here, as I was finding it very interesting.

Adam

[Adrian Quiney WI]

I think it was Larry Connor? who advocated, in one of the bee mags, alternating each year between two different bee suppliers. I would buy more queens if I lived closer to a breeder, but after seeing many timing, mail order, and supply problems discussed I buy very few and produce (not breed) my own. I have moved away from MH bees as the descendants of these had become too testy. My theory is that I will produce from the survivors of the bees I have, a mish-mash of genes from a trap-out I did, and a NWC queen I bought, and whatever the local drones will add to the mix. I cheat - I can't afford a set of breeder queens and figure that if I buy a queen each year from a reputable supplier there will be a healthy enough proportion of production genetics in there to give me bees that will work if I raise some queens from her.
Evaluating queens seems to be fraught with so many difficulties that I wonder with what level of confidence the suppliers can make any claims. I am not skilled enough in observations to be overly selective. I propagate queens from hives that survive, it's really hard to propagate from the dead ones.
The related questions I have are given the experience of the bee breeders/selectors, how long do you think it takes for a beek to produce a type of bee that is adapted enough to one's area? Are we talking in terms of years, or decades? I am 49, and that given with the fact that I can never see me having more than 100 colonies is a reason I don't worry too much.
My suggestion to Adam is don't sweat it too much. Do the best you can with what you can get. The Buckfast seems a good place to start.

[Daniel Y]

Inbred lines are used for hybrid crosses (like the starline and midnight programs...I posted a video of Randy Quinn talking about these programs a few days ago). I don't know of anyone doing this kind of hybrid breeding today (doesn't mean it isn't happening, I just don't know about it if it is). This is _one_ way to approach breeding, and is not what is commonly practiced today. Not having inbred bees that need to be constantly propped up with frames of food and capped brood does not mean you are not a breeder. deknow

Yes I did watch the video. I almost have the impression I was seeing the second half of a two part video though (video of Randy) . The other one I could not either see well enough or hear well enough to make anything out. So no I don't think that information came through.

II has it's uses (research, breeding programs), but it is not how one produces a good quality queen for production. II queens are generally used to raise production (open mated) queens. No one uses II queens for production...they are too expensive, and they do not perform as well as open mated queens. deknow

Well this begs to differ with you on the quality issue. http://link.springer.com/article/10....007029?LI=true

The abstract of the above study is this.
Instrumental insemination, a reliable method to control honey bee mating, is an essential tool for research and stock improvement. A review of studies compare colony performance of instrumentally inseminated queens, IIQs, and naturally mated queens, NMQs. Factors affecting queen performance are also reviewed. The collective results of the data demonstrate that the different methodologies used, in the treatment of queens, has a significant affect on performance rather than the insemination procedure. Beekeeping practices can optimize or inhibit performance. The competitive performance of IIQs is demonstrated when queens are given proper care. The advantage of selection and a known semen dosage can result in higher performance levels of IIQs.

[deknow]

That's an interesting paper...it's not a study in itself, it is a review of some other reported results. Regardless of what was written in 2007, I'm not aware of anyone who actually does II today for production queens...both because of cost, and because of performance.

deknow

[Oldtimer]

I have to say breeding bees is extremely difficult to maintain any kind of true genetic lines.

Aint that the truth!

For myself, I have not been able to genuinely achieve it. And I know at least one breeder using II who has also not been able to maintain his true lines regardless of the II.

Brother Adam appeared to be able to do it, and that was without II. Of more recent times Robert Russell has mastered the fixing of a trait, I would love to spend some time in his operation to do some learning.

[Daniel Y]

Dean I have pointed out several times II is not for producing queens. no way. Who can afford $100 plus queens for every hive. Plus I don't think anyone could Inseminate queens fast enough.

As far as being able to get a queen get a few queen cells from her and then let those virgins open mate. That woudl be exactly like me getting a pure bred dog of any kind and then let it run around the neighbor hood to breed. Am I going to get pure bred pups? Does anyone think that is a workable situation for breeding a quality line of dogs? Sure I may get lucky and my female gets caught by the fells pure bred champion down the road. that is if there is a pure bred champion down the road. Plenty of people say mutts make the best dogs as well.

So depending on your opinion of what a good dog is. It is pretty obvious I have zero chance of a pure bred but maybe a better than average dog out of my pups.

But if you buy a queen for a queen rearer (that is the mass producer selling queens for $25 each) and you like what you get. the only way to get it again is to go buy another one or get some of their breeding stock and breed your own from it. Now unless you need to breed quite a few queens it is not goign to be worth buying breeding stock. And still you will have to open mate them unless you get the breeders drones or semen from their drones and inseminate. Keep in mind the queen you bought from them was open mated. The queen they produced your queen from may have been inseminated.

I hope that helps put insemination in it's place for folks. There are a lot of decision that need to be made before you aver get to that issue. do you even desire that much control over the mating of the bees. are you satisfied with the open mating results in your area. Can you st up a few drone colonies just to boost the number of preferable drones in your area?

Okay so most of us are the little guy like me and we really can't go to all this to get good queens. I know for me there is a big guy that is just 30 minutes away and another one 40 minutes away and a whole bunch of them including Randy of scientific beekeeping just an hour or two away. Susan Cobey is 2 hours from here. So how bout I let them do all this breeding insemination blah blah blah stuff and I just gets my queens from them when needed? Still I want to know what I am getting and why I picked it. I am not just going to buy some queen because someone is selling it. Any more than I would buy a registered purebred dog without giving a very careful looking over. I woudl want to see it pedigree. look at it's sire and dame, see it's litter mates. maybe talk to owners of other dogs from this pair. if they show I want to see the record of how the pair did in competition. Medical records proving they pair have been properly cared for and should be healthy. I will want to see a litter history on the mother size of litter mortality rate and any known health issue with any offspring she has ever produced. I will evaluate the pup as to it's development at it's age.

And I would take just as much care in choosing my queen. But I also need to learn what to be looking for as well. Dogs I know and I know well. bees not so much yet.

[squarepeg]

you can research your queen's linage to your heart's content, (at least what lineage there is to research).

and that can be useful, to a point.

but in the end, you just have to evaluate each queen's, (and her queendom's), performance.

you either like what you see, or you don't.

if you do, breed from her, give her lots of brood comb, and good luck.

if you don't, well, you get the idea...