I must have been typing when mike posted
That is of course the systematic removal of selective pressure via treatments. For as long as beekeepers think they - personally - can do better commercially through simple systematic treating, the problem will continue, and the vulnerable genetics artificially dominate the gene pool.
That's pretty much common knowledge now, yet it is also something of a taboo issue. It shouldn't be.
Very true, and it highlights why the reverse is needed, we need to artificially dominate the gene pool with better genetics to shift a stock.
In nature a large spring surplus is what makes a large spring colony ready to do business. In robbing winter-weakened colonies, in raising a large foraging force, and in reproductive terms. Whether that is swarming or just raising a large drone population, the means is the same: it is the surplus that powers the colony in preparation for the year ahead.
In the beeyard perhaps, but if a large overwintered surplus was being selected by nature bees would show a preference for a larger nest to accommodate it. Robbing winter weakened hives as you suggest is not overwintered surplus .
Well of course, nature selects, then we do some more, what's your point? I do the same. You only talk about the later and ignore the former
I don’t see alowing livestock to die under your care as natural selection. If a cow is sick or has a trait you don’t like, you treat it and sell it and don’t breed form it.
That being said I am not ignoring the” natural selection” because its going to happen "naturally":lpf: I don’t have to worry about pinching a queen that died, infact I don't have to think about it at all, so its not a topic of discussion
The problem here is the TF talking heads focus on negative selection form nature with very little fouse on positive selection…and that is were the change needs to be made.
“splitting everything left alive” is a huge offender of the main TF complaint of the area being flooded with poor genetics. Your polluting you own airspace with weak gentnicks by allowing average drones out there.
People are kidding them selfs that just because a split overwintered once, and is now 9-10 mounths old its got “good” genetics and should be split and or its drones be allowed out. But that not the case. And the trend of the TF types to go foundationless only exabrastis the problem
If people really and truly want to make a change… and not just your bees its time to shift the message to all the back yard beekeepers…
Buy local restiacant queens , IPM and protect your stock, install robbing screens, use drone culling on all queens that haven’t spent 2 winters TF. If you have a hive that have stayed sub 5% mites for a year, make and distribute cells in the spring, and instead of culling move the drone frames to other hives
If the majority did the simple steps above we could enact change.
Mabey its time to relook at something like the Ally drone excluder
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c0/8d/49/c08d4923518809ecccf569c833cab7ab--drupal-beekeeping.jpg
It simply about gene husbandry. To the extent that that you keep beekeeper-dependent bees alive and free to spread their genes, you will get more of the same. The vulnerable genes have to go. That is basic population husbandry. You can't buck it.
It is, but it needs to be done on a order of magnitude beyond what nature will usaly do. If you don’t, you still get too many hives dependent bees
The sheer fact we are “keeping” bees (as lharder points out in post 27) lowers our losses vs wild….that lowers the selection pressure….
We need to simulate a mass die off of around 96% as Kefuss did in Argentinian, or as he suggests in soft bond. Graft, pinch, place.
If as some suggest we let the 96% just die we don’t have the resources for the needed positive selection, and if like most of us we are not isolated and not on a scale of hundreds of hives by the time we build our numbers back up we have lost the traits in outcross and suffer another major die back do to peeing in the ocean…
Ie we go from 10 hives to one, by the time we split the 1 and split the splits to get back to 10 we are looking at 75% of the genes coming form the back ground drones, and we are not contributing any from our slect stock , we are reinforcing the background, not making change, this gets us no were!
The above is another example of how permoting splits over grafting (by that I mean cell building with select stock in general.. be it grafts, comb strips/cell punch, foundtionless frame and cutting cells etc) and slection…is very hurtful to the end goals of TF…
Far better to save the resources, graft form the 1 and turn the 10 in to 20-30 strong F-1 hives pumping out drones form selected stock, rinse and repeat and had out as many cells as you can to locals. Even better to make up some drone holding colonies from drones from the breeder queen.. something your not going to do if your low on resources and trying to recover from losses..
Now I have no issue with splits as an easy way to get your numbers up to provide resources for positive selection down the road, just like I have no issue with using treatments to protect those resources. I have done both…. They are resources, not the end product and if I don’t let them swarm, and cull the drones there is little to no harm in it.