But basically, survival rates will equal reproduction rates in a stable population.
ding...
and given most wild hives will issue a swam + a cast or 2 in the spring + another swarm later in the year we can see "wild losses" are 75+%
I like you’re analogy, but why are we selecting for 48” dogs by culling 12” dogs? If our selection criteria and desired outcome are the same (survivability), isn’t that more akin to selecting for dogs over 12” by only allowing dogs over 12” to breed?
yes but if you want 48" dogs why are you allowing 13" dogs to breed with your bigger dogs?
its a fairly easy mater (in the over all scope of things) to get a TF hive threw one winter, happens all the time... getting it threw the 2nd-3rd-4th is a way different matter..
after year one it needs to return to its baseline mite level to live...
example numbers only!!! you start a swarm in may and it has say 200 mites, june its 400, july 800, aug 1600, sept 3200 at 40k bees thats a 8% mite load, not great but surivabul for some stocks so you lose some and some live
say the winter brood break kills off 90% of those mites, great right?
nope
brooding starts in april with 320... may its 640 mites, june 1280, july 2560, aug 5120, sept 10240 25% mite load and a dead hive.
but it lived a year, so you split it 3 ways
each states with 1/3 of the mites
April 106, may 213, june 426, july 853, aug 1706, sept 3413 ... a few make it a bunch don't but you have more hives so it must be working right?
the problem is all these unless genetics that can't get bigenuf to make honey or be effective pollinators with out crashing are throwing drones, and your propagating thier queens witch throw more drones.. this causes you to flood your mating area with poor genetics and mite bomb gentinic that would have outer wise lived.
the simple answer is alive doesn't make breeding stock... d
you have to rember how the bell curve and standard devasiton works.
I wrote this for the local club and it is bit over simplfided
ets just say we use "alive" as our traite
average loss is 50%
below average performance is 75% loss
well below average is performance 90% loss
above average is performance 25% loss
and well about average performance is 10%
on the curve 68% of the hives are “average” at the start, so at 50% losses 68% of what lived isn’t any better then 68% of what died. So to improve local stocks.. Yes, we need to stop importing a whole bunch of queens, but we also need to be making queens from at a minimum the top 32% that overwintered, and realy it should be closer to the top 2-5%. Then with those queens make your increase/replacements AND requeen the bottom 68% of what lived so those hives throw improved drones..
if you make queens form every thing that lives (or mate with those drones) you get 68% of average bees (50% will die the 1st winter) 16% crap bees, and 16% that are above average
out of 100 you get (68*.5)+(16*.75)+(16*.25) (34+12+4)=50... 50% losses
but if you propagate form the above average overwintered stock(queens and drones)
you get 14% well above average, 68% above average, 14% average, 2% below average. you have shifted the bell curve
out of the 100 you get (14*.9) +(68*.75)+(14*.5)+(2*.25) (12.6+51+7+.5)= 29% loses
you have shifted the bell curve to the right.
This is why people graft and requeen with there best, then the hives are casting better drones for your better queens to mate with..