Beesource Beekeeping Forums banner

Natural Selection Rambling

3K views 21 replies 7 participants last post by  GregB 
#1 ·
Since it is relatively cold and quiet in the beeyard and gets dark early now, I have more time inside to read / study various random concepts in the treatment-free realm and roll them around in my mind.

One such concept I keep struggling to wrap my mind around is the division between so-called Natural versus Artificial Selection, at least in a managed apiary. An article recently making the rounds in TF circles penned by Mr. David Heaf entitled, 'Dealing with Varroa: natural selection or artificial selection?' touches on this idea:

https://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/natural-selection

In it, Mr. Heaf makes the following statement: "Whereas artificial selective breeding is a justifiable approach in husbandry generally, it is questionable whether it is a sustainable approach with the honey bee, an essentially wild creature. Focusing on individual desirable traits that appeal to the beekeeper such as Varroa resistance (e.g. Varroa sensitive hygiene), docility, honey productivity etc. may displace traits for long term survival from the mix of traits that more holistic breeding by natural selection delivers. In short, in not knowing the direction in which natural selection is heading, killing colonies could be throwing away good genetics."

While I recognize that almost anything we do in relation to bees exerts some influence upon the colony and could thus technically be defined as artificial selection of a sort, what I am curious about is whether we can ever consistently and repeatably produce a bee with superior overall fitness with a grafting tool versus an innate colony-driven impulse to produce reproductive and/or supercedure cells?

One thing that has always troubled me is to read about folks who have been successfully TF for a few or several years only to experience increased rates of failure to the point it is no longer sustainable.

While I recognize there are many, many factors to consider as to what may be the root cause(s) in each specific situation I often wonder if increased beekeeper selection might be at least partially to blame in some situations?

I am way out of my depth asking this question, but part of what has me wondering this is a talk by Dr. Keith Delaplane (MSL previously posted it here) in which he spends quite a lot of time talking about the various genetic sub-families present in a diverse hive and how the colony as a whole will preferentially choose from these sub-families to develop a new queen when given the option:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PglNInHcj1I

The whole talk is well worth the investment in my opinion, but at about the 50:00 mark he gets into the 'Royal Patriline' concept and it runs to about the 57:00 mark. The crux as I understand it is that reproductive swarm cells (in general) produce the best overall fitness, especially as compared to supercedure cells.

So while I make no judgment upon folks breeding for traits, is it safe to assume that (in general) colony-driven reproductive swarm cells will produce the overall fittest colonies all other factors (i.e. colony health, drone encounters, etc.) being equal?

Again, I am not advocating for any particular breeding approach or method but simply trying to better understand more about the overall impact of bee versus beekeeper-driven queens.
 
See less See more
#2 ·
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PglNInHcj1I

The whole talk is well worth the investment in my opinion, but at about the 50:00 mark he gets into the 'Royal Patriline' concept and it runs to about the 57:00 mark. The crux as I understand it is that reproductive swarm cells (in general) produce the best overall fitness, especially as compared to supercedure cells.
Brother Adam wrote that supersedure cells make inferior queens compared to swarm cells.

Bees are able to select larvae for their like(favor one particular patriline), but the problem in natural selection concepts is mating. In dense beekeeping areas this leads to failure. Simple as that, but hard to accept for many.
 
#3 ·
Juhani:

Thank you for your reply. I sincerely appreciate it. I respect and admire the breeding program that you have developed, and I put a lot of stock in what you have to say.

I suppose my question has less to do with open versus closed mating per se but more to do with egg selection- i.e. the process that produces a queen cell.

In his talk Dr. Delaplane makes reference to research suggesting that the resident queen is involved in the process behind selecting the patriline which is placed in individual swarm cells whereas a supercedure cell is worker-driven and thus runs the risk of evoking the expression of parasitic genetics.

I can do his talk no justice, but fundamentally it begs the question in my mind if we would be generally better-served to employ swarm cells as the primary basis for our propagation efforts?

This obviously is but a small slice of the overall concept of 'natural selection', and I concede your point about controlled mating.
 
#4 ·
You propose that the workers have potential selection opportunity in supercedure or emergency conditions, and that the queen could have input only in swarm cell requeening.

Do we know that workers do make active choices or is this only considered a possibility? I find it difficult to accept that the queen can keep track of separate egg and sperm lineage and also implement the combination with intent. This would require knowledge on her part about the significance of a deliberate supercedure or swarm cell vs a regular brood cell.

I can see that the answer to these questions would have a big potential impact on the wisdom of the grafting process compared to leaving all such choices to the bees.

Do we have the wisdom and foresight to know that we would be making the best decisions? Left up to the bees discretion would they move in directions we would not find to our liking?

You pose a difficult question!
 
#11 ·
You propose that the workers have potential selection opportunity in supercedure or emergency conditions, and that the queen could have input only in swarm cell requeening.
Frank:

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. To be fair, I don't consider myself either intelligent enough or experienced enough to propose anything, but am rather trying to think through the implications of assertions made by those much more qualified than me.

That said, I would suggest that this is exactly what I understand that Dr. Delplane is asserting.

His point (as I understand it) is that the process of natural requeening is more nuanced than we generally think and that this process reflects an evolutionary struggle between the castes.

If I can be permitted to 'dumb down' his point, I think he is saying that all of the luminaries in our field have understood that reproductive swarm queens are better than supercedure queens but that we have not fully-understood or appreciated the underlying dynamics, to whit, the presence or absence of the resident queen in the process.

Like I said, I am way over my head in all this, but it does raise an interesting question about the implications of various methods utilized to propagate.
 
#5 ·
Everything in this life seems to run in a spiral trajectory.
Most all new inventions/discoveries - had something related already been found/thought about (and often ignored/not-understood) in the past.

For the purposes of the science, it'd be really useful to resort to keeping the bees in the most natural setting possible (a log or a skep) AND let them run the normal life cycle (let them swarm if they do so) AND apply the latest technologies/tools to study the normal processes then.

Why don't the "researchers" get this, rather obvious, experiment setting?
Obvious to me, anyhow.
Even the standard foundation/standard frame usage in the experiment setups - is polluting and invalidating the experiments to a large degree (if not totally).

What about hit a pause button.
Setup a good baseline (use the latest tech against the natural, unaltered bee environment).
Then review everything.

Am I an idiot thinking this?
Maybe I am.
 
#6 ·
Greg, I think the hollow tree scenario would be a difficult condition to replicate in any meaningful quantity compared to the total existent population. The sheer numbers and population density of the real world of bees is of such overwhelming influence that it makes the log or langstroth decision trivial. Forced pre-industrial conditions could easily point out that a more self sufficient strain could be selected for, but the associated disposition and productivity characteristics would not make it fly.
 
#7 ·
Given the tools, tech, cheap wood available - production of several hundred simulated log hives for experimental purposes is rather a trivial project.
No one cared to look into it, to my knowledge.
Yes - need some funds and someone who cares to do it (nothing new).

Doing few independent and objective baselines (trying to quantify and collect data) using such setups should produce lots of curious findings, I imagine.
(no need to connect to existing populations or look for immediate practical applications - not even a point)
If for academic purposes only - totally fine.
But who knows - the usual case, again.

Sam Ramsie findings - who cared to look if it was easier to theorize and assume, until he actually DID look.
 
#8 ·
New Zealand had a large number of feral colonies in trees; still do, but according to what I read on their forums the ferals do not seem to be any bastion of disease resistance. They do manage to survive while continually reinforced by swarms from commercial colonies but are considered a great part of the problem rather than a potential solution.

Pastoral nostalgia!
 
#9 ·
The strict tree dwelling adherence is not the thing.

Unmanaged bee in a sufficiently closely simulated tree dwelling should be sufficient for data collection and baseline settings.
Similar to this - John Moerschbacher from Alberta(?), Canada has it:
Bee Beehive Honeybee Honeycomb Apiary


Standard lumber; standard tooling; some high tech gizmos for in-place data collection; some crude nest destructions/manipulations will be needed for more data collection (genetic material sampling, etc).
 
#18 ·
... but I don't know if a queen can select certain sperm from different matings and how would she know the best one to use anyways....
JRG13:

Thank you for your responses- I appreciate your input. I certainly do not know either. It is kind of interesting to think through the implications if we determine that she does in-fact know the best one(s) to use...

Thanks again for your feedback.

Russ
 
#13 ·
here is the study people are talking about
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0199124

In his talk Dr. Delaplane makes reference to research suggesting that the resident queen is involved in the process behind selecting the patriline which is placed in individual swarm cells whereas a supercedure cell is worker-driven and thus runs the risk of evoking the expression of parasitic genetics.
What was meant is when the queen lays an egg in a swarm cell, or a human picks up a larva with a grafting tool the chance of it being one of the rare parasitic genetics is very, very low and you have a much better chance of transferring traits the colony is expressing. But when the bees chose by making E cells the chance is 40%.

Ie from the study
" Because swarm queens are raised directly from queen-laid eggs, there is little opportunity for workers to bias the outcome. Such activities would be limited to preferentially transferring eggs/larvae from worker cells into queen cups [52], or selectively rejecting certain queen-deposited eggs/larvae cannibalism or destruction of completed swarm cells prior to queen emergence [21]. Lattorff and Moritz [22] found that swarm queens do not significantly differ from worker patriline distributions,"

"Similarly, supersedure queens (produced when a queen is failing but still present and laying) are presumably also laid by queens in queen cups [53] and so should not undergo significant selection by workers. Because of this, the “royal” patriline bias is a primary factor in only a minority of requeening events."

This is key to many TF types
"Because of this, the “royal” patriline bias is a primary factor in only a minority of requeening events"
The split culture(make them queen less, put cells in nucs) causes this to become a major player in the game, as 40% of the queens you make from a "good" hive won't have the genetics that made the hive good, and because of them being E Cells another 60% or so of those queens will be sub par. While trying to be "natural" They are propagating unnatural genetic lines and pushing those drones out.


So while I make no judgment upon folks breeding for traits, is it safe to assume that (in general) colony-driven reproductive swarm cells will produce the overall fittest colonies all other factors (i.e. colony health, drone encounters, etc.) being equal?
Going with swarm cells would be good, if it didn't lend its self to swarmy stocks..
Tarpy's work shows grafted cells on par with swarm cells for queen quality.

If we wish to make good queens, from genetics of our choosing, when we need them. We need to select larva of the correct age(grafting, cell punch, cut strips, nicot, etc).
 
#15 ·
Going with swarm cells would be good, if it didn't lend its self to swarmy stocks..
Not necessarily.
You simply force the queen into a swarm situation and they/she will create the proper swarm QCs.
Good queen in a small hive.
Check weekly and steal the QCs.
Should do it.

Not always possible, but something I try for in practice - timing the split to when they set a batch of swarm cells is about perfect.
It depends, but most any bee (however NOT swarmy) will try to swarm if kept in 40 liters or less.
 
#14 ·
From many past discussions here on Beesource, I dont think there is a great consensus that the issue from a swarm motivated queen cell is measurably different than that from grafting optimum aged larvae raised in a well populated and well supplied colony. Is it more than conjecture, that there might be some benefit from allowing the workers and queens possible input? I am asking this as a question rather than stating. If it is true, it would be a real forehead slapping event if we find for sure that we have been discarding such potentially consequential factors.
 
#17 ·
Is it more than conjecture, that there might be some benefit from allowing the workers and queens possible input? I am asking this as a question rather than stating.
Frank:

I could not have said it better myself- while I do not presume to have any answers, my mind wanders and I am left wondering whether there is more to the process of a colony selecting a queen than we might have previously anticipated.

If one assumes so, it leads to the inevitable question of whether I can do better than a colony in selecting larvae for queen rearing for the purposes of overall colony fitness?

Again, I concede the point that it is appropriate and maybe even wise to direct queen rearing when selecting for traits- that said (and getting more to the TF concept at hand), it seems that TF viability might be based at least in part on this nebulous concept of overall colony 'fitness' which appears to be the complex interaction of various traits being expressed in myriad sub-families and expressed in varying degrees based on the selection pressure being brought to bear on the local population.

Ultimately, makes me come back to the practical implication of such an assumption- one should primarily propagate via colony-driven swarm cells?

I have no answers, just questions...
 
#21 ·
Good plan.
If my #1 makes it into the next year (fingers crossed) - will try to do the same.
All she will be doing - making swarm QCs and pumping drones.

One BUT - using a 5-frame nuc for QC generator is a little too small I feel.
40 litre unit is good.
5 or 10, I don't know enough to know. My thought is that 5 frames is very tight and would encourage swarming a lot more. Also, 5 frames is small and tight and easy for the bees to control warmth. On the other hand, it might be too small to have the resources? It really depends on how many hives survive the winter and if I have enough hives to play with. If several hives survive, I'll try both.
 
#22 ·
5 or 10, I don't know enough to know. My thought is that 5 frames is very tight and would encourage swarming a lot more. Also, 5 frames is small and tight and easy for the bees to control warmth. On the other hand, it might be too small to have the resources? It really depends on how many hives survive the winter and if I have enough hives to play with. If several hives survive, I'll try both.
40 litre volume has more flexibility built-in, so that you can run it as compressed 5-6 frames if desired OR expand to the max if needed.
Yet you can pack many more bees onto a small number of frames and still keep them inside - a very good thing.
Yet you have some spill over space so to reduce a chance to ACTUALLY loosing a swarm.
As they explode in spring, the 40 litre volume is not much more to slow you down (in fact, for you and me and our terrible springs - we don't want them to jump out of the box too early).
 
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