Bee genetics

[220]

Being fixated on a set view you are missing the message of an example which clearly shows how
dominance works. Populist to near zero in five years is no mean feat.

I still fail to see why you are using the introduction of another species of bee that brought with it the triple threat of direct competition, predation and new parasites to support your arguement that any commercially breed bee is better adapted to local conditions than local ferals.
I didnt think we were discussing the ability of bees to handle competition, diseases and pest they have evolved in isolation from rather the exact opposite.

You mention SHB and your experience is exactly why local ferals are best equipped to thrive in local conditions.
Your hives have been overrun with their arrival yet the hives you think they came with are doing fine. No doubt due to SHB being endemic to the area the hives came from and the bees having time to evolve and deal with them.

Yes I have cut open feral colonies, I have a couple I am comparing to my more cultured queens. Under the same managed so far they have not proven to be any more predisposed to swarming, they are probably the calmest colonies I have. Honey production is on par and the only noticeable difference being they were more frugal with their winter stores and slightly slower building up coming out of winter.

[eltalia]

@220

"I still fail to see why"..
Of course you do... and there is why so many @ncient b'keeps an' the current commercial
(business) operators are so inclined to be often scurriously fearful of the "new wave"... by
far the majority of whom are focused on that $12 jar of honey on their market table.
Right here is where we shout "FlowHive [tm]... hey!
There are times I an' others do wish apiary managment was indeed "rocket science".

I mentioned SHB only to reflect the attitude, one you yourself project.
The fella does not know the state of those three colonies, and could care less. "If there is
honey in them it is all good".. direct quote.
I would know more than he... just driving by!

No way could I hope to persuade folk to better manage their apiary genetics around
hygenic prolific passive productive strains, it is all I can do to look quizzically upon that
 'b'owner' who laments the cost of a selectively bred queen from under the hood of
their $250+ bee suit.
Well may there bee evidence around USA and European colonies which
indicates a way forward using ferals in reducing VD - and nosema etc, I
own no "on the ground" experience to know either way. But I do know in
this Country it is a fool's game to capture and sustain feral bee genetics
within any apiary planning as a line of "new" genetics.

Bill

[omnimirage]

Great discussion guys. Could you elaborate more on why it'd be a fool's game eltalia to capture and sustain feral bee genetics? I ask because all of my beehives are from feral beeswarms and I'm now considering what to do with them.

I'm an amateur doing the best with the limited information that I've got to make the best decision. It seems that, I shouldn't be too hung up over the genetics of my bees and their origins, more so I should be focused on how well the hive is actually performing. Some of my feral hives are of great stock; they produce ample amounts of brood and honey, and they're rather gentle. I imagine that, regardless of their origin these are good bees and I'm considering breeding queens from these hives. Some of my hives, are aggressive. Some don't seem to produce much honey. I'm too inexperienced to easily know to what extent this might be some genetic thing with the bees themselves, or maybe over factors that's causing a few of my hives to pretty much always be struggling and just pulling through, to never be booming. I figure these hives might do better if I replaced their queen.

I could also import some queens and start my own breeding program, to replace all my queens with. I'm quite unsure of the advantages of doing this.

If all my hives came from swarms, am I, to some extent, selecting bees with genes that encourage swarming behaviour? Is swarming behaviour influenced by genetics?

[BeeMaster2]

Omni,
Keep in mind that bees are super organisms and swarming is how bees reproduce. If you have a queen who swarms from a small hive with lots of room to grow, that is a problem. If the hive is 5 deep boxes high or bigger and it swarms, that is nature doing its job.
Why pay for someone else to raise queens if you are able to do it your self and you can choose the queens that have the genetics you want for your location.
Jim

[little john]

[..] If the traits they are looking for were the best suited then they would have quickly become dominant in the feral colonies.

Reading that gave me a good chuckle.  Every now and again somebody displays such an ability to see through the fog generated by fashionable enthusiasm.

In order for Natural Selection to proceed, a genetic mutation must occur which confers some kind of survival advantage (otherwise there will be no selection) - and this advantage must be expressed by an organism prior to mating in order that this advantage be passed on to it's offspring (otherwise such selection will not be conveyed onwards to others).  Such selection (as we understand it) has been taking place for millions of years, and therefore without human involvement.

The Treatment-Free Beekeeping movement engages in a process of actively selecting colonies which are considered to have survived to a greater or lesser degree from a varroa mite infestation and then propagating from these, claiming that this process employs the principles of Natural Selection - but it does not - such action is that of Human Selection.

If indeed some kind of advantage prior to mating had been created, then that advantage would already have begun to steadily and progressively sweep throughout a whole geographical region without any requirement for human involvement - i.e. it would have taken place 'automatically' and 'in the background', so to speak.  The fact that this has not yet happened is, I think, evidence that an advantage by genetic mutation has not yet occurred.  Hopefully one day it will.

LJ

[BeeMaster2]

LJ,
I beg to differ with you.
If what you are saying were true then old feral hive would not exist. I have removed lots of feral hives with very black comb, lots of honey and lots of bees.
If we did not have SHBs and wax moths, you could say a new swarm moved into d comb but around here the comb is destroyed pretty quickly if it is not protected.
Black comb doe not happen in one season.
Jim

[eltalia]

LJ wrote:
> Reading that gave me a good chuckle....

Likewise, for all of the reasons you cite and then some, despite
the obvious typo which also had me chuckling ;-)

Bill

[eltalia]

(edit)
 I ask because all of my beehives are from feral beeswarms and I'm now considering what to do with them.

You know this for fact at your location?

Bill   

[gww]

lj

If indeed some kind of advantage prior to mating had been created, then that advantage would already have begun to steadily and progressively sweep throughout a whole geographical region without any requirement for human involvement - i.e. it would have taken place 'automatically' and 'in the background', so to speak.  The fact that this has not yet happened is, I think, evidence that an advantage by genetic mutation has not yet occurred.  Hopefully one day it will.

I am not sure this is true.  There are pockets out there that people are keeping bees off treatment and some have lower losses that those in those same areas that are treating.  Everything seems to be fluid.

  There are places where one year or every other year treating was enough that now require 4 treatments a year to get the same or worse results.  Papers like this show that it is being studied and that the sientist still don't know how and why some stuff works and some does not but that it is not all due to gene changes.
http://elsakristen.com/docs/LopezUribe_2017_Apis_diversity_immunity.pdf
So if they don't know why some bees are able to say, "reduce mite reprodcuction" then to make an arguement that it is purely gene change is just a theory along with all the other theories like small hive and spread out hives.  The truth is something is differrent with some bees compared to others and that can be seen but the why is a guess.  That it takes thousands of years might depent on if you are talking resistance or tollerance, learned behaviour or genetic change.

Nature is in a constant battle even in humans and that is why flue shots are only 30 percent effective and have to be developed each year for what is new.

I am more with jims position on this and am not so convinced that things can't adapt to pressure like mites or virouses in a very fast rate and even if adapted things can change just like the mite changed its host.  In the war there are times that one side wins and the other side loses but on the bees there is enough evidence that there are places where they are holding thier own when compared to places that are treating and those places getting worse.  It is not much of a strech to say that it is pretty simular for both depending on the enviroment and what stress factors are around at the time.  If trees are studied, they could be genetic mirrors but a florida maple still may not do as well in montana as a montana maple will do though it might not take a thousand years for any root shoots from said maple to get better in montana pretty quick.

I know I don't know how it works but have sure read a lot of studies from smart people that spend full time on knowing and the still are not sure of the how and why either but can measure things like mite reproduction being reduced in certain hives and it making bees strong enough to live with mites.  And they know it happened in 20 years and not a thousand years.
Cheers
gww

[Michael Bush]

>MB, is that because feral bee swarms are likely to be more resistant to the weather and varroa?

Yes.

>As the European Honey Bee isn't a native species within the Americas - from where do you think the local mongrels/ 'ferals' originated ... from managed colonies perhaps ?

I've never understood using the "non native" argument for anything.  Who cares where they came from?  Are they surviving?  Then they are able to survive under the current circumstances.  People were still discussing whether or not they were native in the 20's in the bee magazines here and no new evidence ever came to light to prove it one way or the other.  So MAYBE they weren't native.  Maybe the were introduced by the Vikings (I can't imagine them not bringing bees if there were none here... you can't be a Viking without mead...) or maybe the Chinese in 1421 when they brought the chickens that are now in South America and the bones that are in California...

>By definition the history of a feral swarm is unknown.

It's actually quite obvious by their size.  Feral bees that are swarms from feral bees are quite small.  2/3 the size of domestic bees.

>Evolution takes thousands of generations, so with honey bees understand this could take a lifetime.

Evolution in animal breeding is irrelvant.  It won't happen in our lifetime.  Selection, on the other hand can take as little as one year of selective pressure.  In one generation of humans we went from breeding horses the majority of which did not trot to breeding horses the majority of which would trot.  It's just selection, not evolution.

[gww]

michael

I've never understood using the "non native" argument for anything.

I agree with this.  I also wonder how long does it take a bee to become a wild thing that is considered native.  Is it one hundred years, two hundred?  Bees are not native but then again niether is an apple tree, but it now and they are not going away.  In fact, most plants in america that people use were imported and so it does not matter what was started with but more what is now. 

It did not take a thousand years to change the landscape but it is native now and the clock can not be turned back.

Lasty, it always amazes me that people say that bees are not wild but are live stock.  Bees are a little differrent then a herford cow.  Though they are managed, they were wild before being managed and unlike a herford, they have kept a wild population even while their was a managed population.

That wild population has adjusted from when the mites switched its host and even the mite when switching host did not take thousands of years to happen.  It happened all most instantainiously. the studies that show that after a pretty hard initial hit when the mite arrived that some wild populations are at the same place they were before the mite.  this took what, 30 years total?
Yes, all hives still die of mites but they also die of starvation and queen loss and lots of things and dieing is part of living.  The question is not if they die when untreated or treated, cause they do but more can they be managed in a profitable way and enough live that it is still worth doing.
Cheers
gww

[little john]

michael

I've never understood using the "non native" argument for anything.

I agree with this.

I can't believe I'm reading this ...

Because the European Honey Bee is non-native to your country, they will have had to be imported, yes ?

And from whom will they have been imported ?  Not from your average beekeepers, but from breeders who specialise in exporting - thus your nation's stock will have originated from - what - maybe a hundred suppliers ?  But whatever the figure is, you will have imported a relatively small number of lines compared with the number available throughout mainland Europe.
And then your own commercial breeders - in pursuit of 'breeding only from the best' - have proceeded to diminish even that number.

If you don't understand this - then I really don't know what else to say.
LJ

[bwallace23350]

michael

I've never understood using the "non native" argument for anything.

I agree with this.

I can't believe I'm reading this ...

Because the European Honey Bee is non-native to your country, they will have had to be imported, yes ?

And from whom will they have been imported ?  Not from your average beekeepers, but from breeders who specialise in exporting - thus your nation's stock will have originated from - what - maybe a hundred suppliers ?  But whatever the figure is, you will have imported a relatively small number of lines compared with the number available throughout mainland Europe.
And then your own commercial breeders - in pursuit of 'breeding only from the best' - have proceeded to diminish even that number.

If you don't understand this - then I really don't know what else to say.
LJ

The first bees to come to America from what I understand came with the colonists and they were of the German type. I think they came with people bringing their own bees back from Europe with them. They brought what they had. Eventually these bees went feral. The Italians and everything else came after that and of course some of them went feral. I would imagine that our wild bees come from thousand if not more lines. Now our domesticated bees that most keep probably come from very few lines.

[omnimirage]

(edit)
 I ask because all of my beehives are from feral beeswarms and I'm now considering what to do with them.

You know this for fact at your location?

Bill

Bit of an exaggeration, I have about 28 hives, about 21 came from swarms, the others were derived from a beekeeper who abandoned his bees and has unknown origins.

[gww]

lj
Maby you will never understand but I think Bwallace covers it pretty good and I don't see it much differrent the from where you are.  Our bees are probly your bees plus a few add that got lose from brazil that we wish we didn't have now.  You could make the same case in france where abby warre was big on getting Italian stock added to what he had just like britton and germany probly did.
Even if what you imply is true, it would not have anything to do with native or not, African bees were native but have differrent genes.  So if you are talking of a gene bottle neck, that is differrent then being native or not.  I would say the link I provide covers some gene bottle neck but that happened with all the genes already being here and has nothing to do with native or not.  I am sure you have the same where you are.

Cheers
gww

[220]

If indeed some kind of advantage prior to mating had been created, then that advantage would already have begun to steadily and progressively sweep throughout a whole geographical region without any requirement for human involvement - i.e. it would have taken place 'automatically' and 'in the background', so to speak.  The fact that this has not yet happened is, I think, evidence that an advantage by genetic mutation has not yet occurred.  Hopefully one day it will.

LJ

If we are talking bees developing close to 100% mite resistance in a single generation then a mutation is the only way. Selective breeding with colonies that show a slightly better resistance will eventually lead to a more resistant bee but it certainly wont happen in a few generations and no doubt it is happening in feral hives as well with only those that have survived and thrived for what ever reason reproducing.

Taking mites out of the equation my responses are more aimed at the evolution of feral colonies to local conditions.
In most areas of the world where honey bees were not native and introduced it wasnt a single breed of bee that was introduced but multiple breeds that had all evolved in isolation to best suit their native area.
In the wild you are not going to have 3, 4 or how ever many different breeds that have been introduced surviving as different strains rather a local mutt that has taken on the most suitable traits for the area they are in from the available genetic pool. If a specific trait of a carni gives them a greater chance of survival then if that trait is available in the local gene pool it will quickly become dominant. You are not waiting 1000y for italians to mutate or slowly develop it.
The local mutts will quickly evolve into the most suitable for the location, they obviously wont be the perfect bee for that location as they havent had thousands of years of evolution but they will be as good as the genetic pool will allow them to be for that location.

[Dallasbeek]

Bwallace, I know what you are saying about settlers bringing bees from Europe is true, but I'm just trying to imagine how they were able to transport a bunch of bees on a sailing ship for voyages of months, then jostle them over makeshift roads to wherever they were going without major problems -- with the bees and with fellow passengers.  Maybe they were VERY gentle bees.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

{>As the European Honey Bee isn't a native species within the Americas - from where do you think the local mongrels/ 'ferals' originated ... from managed colonies perhaps ?

I've never understood using the "non native" argument for anything.}

LJ was not making an argument as implied, stated by MB.

LJ is an organic chemist, understand this man is kindly offering his expertise.  The man across the pond, LJ, could exercise his knowledge in a MARCO, MICRO, CELLULAR, MOLECULAR, or ATOMIC level with specific details to primary, secondary, tertiary, or quaternary structures.  I realize this may be ?Greek? MB, however I am trying to point out the expertise is being offered in effort to perpetuate healthy bees for all.  Mr. Lil John is most certainly not arguing, ?argument for anything.?

I have read above texts:  my, my, there are many, to many well written text brilliantly constructed knowledgable sentences for me to quote made by many on this topic of feral hives or apirary queens.  I applaud, impressed by, many, your text, but to many to individually direct to.  Well done fella(s).
Blessings

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Dallas, how thought provoking, good catch.  I never looked at the migration that way.  This opens up new thought for me, the genetics of the original honeybees to America.  Ingenious, just ingenious.

[Dallasbeek]

Brother Adam developed the Buckfast line over a relatively short period.  Somewhere in this thread I believe I've read language assuming one generation of bees per year.  That, I believe, is not the case.  Bees can "evolve" several generations in one year by selective breeding, as Brother Adam demonstrated.