- Races are looked upon in connection
to each other, in a similar way as different local varieties
of a certain geographical race are looked upon. They are possible
genetic resources for combinations.
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- The Buckfast bee is more similar
to a geographical race, than to a commercial hybrid.
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- A key word in Buckfast breeding
is drone control. And especially when developing a new strain
using sister groups as the drone source is essential. The mother
colony of this sister group is then the genetical 'father' of
the new colonies achived.
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- Avoid close inbreeding. It
is the biggest enemy in bee breeding, but could be used occasionally.
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- Let the bees tell you! In
whatever way the colony you look at has come to be, let it tell
you how good it is, don't just look in the pedigree or on your
theory.
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- You have to be able to discern
the differences between the colonies and discover the peculiarities
of different colonies.
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- Take care of the positive
extremes you find among the colonies and let them in some way
and to some extent give forth their heritage to the next generation
for a test.
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- You need at least 100 colonies
to be able to be enough certain to do a reasonable progress in
your breeding.
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- You need to look in the colonies
yourself to get to know them, if you are the one who will make
the selection of breeders.
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- Share your genetic results
with other beekeepers. You will get it back in due time and together
you will get a better result then you would have got only by
yourself.
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