Genetics question

[AndrewT]

I currently have four colonies of bees.  All those bees came from a feral swarm that I picked up over ten years ago.  The feral bees being much hardier than the Italians and with the fact that I stopped using mite treatments about seven years ago, the feral bees are all that I have left.  I make splits each year and raise my own queens, but with losing colonies to inattention or poorly-timed manipulations, I've never built up past four or five hives.

I find myself with more time than I use to have, and I plan to increase the number of hives at my place.  My first plan was to just keep splitting from my existing hives, since those bees continue to show very good characteristics.  I'd take a swarm or cuttout if I got one, but what if I just keep doing what I'm doing?  Does anyone have experience with negative effects from a lack of genetic diversity in a bee yard?

I know there are other beekeepers in my area, with one less than a mile away.  So, I know that my queens may well mate with drones from outside my yard, but other than that, I'm hesitant to purposely introduce "new blood" into my bees just for the sake of diversity when there doesn't seem to be any adverse effects in almost ten years.

[AllenF]

You are not on an island all alone.  I would not worry about.  There are more bees living in your area than you think.  And the drones are chasing queens all over.    If you find a swarm, keep it.

[indypartridge]

Most research indicates that queens fly to different Drone Congregation Areas than the ones populated by drones from your bee yard. Not aways, but usually. So over the last 10 years, you've introduced "new blood" nearly every time your queens mated.

[AndrewT]

Thanks for the feed-back.  I wasn't really worried about it until after re-reading one of my old bee books (Killion's Honey in the Comb). 

In the queen rearing chapter Mr. Killion says two things that I questioned.  In one part he explains that the same colony shouldn't be allowed to raise their own queen year after year or you will end up with an inferior, inbred bee.  If Killion had hundreds of colonies, how could he have possibly ended up with inbred bees?  And, if the quality of the bees in that colony did slack off, wouldn't that have been a sign to give them a queen from a better colony?

Also, I've read several older bee books that talk of using color and markings as an indication of quality in queens.  I realize the idea is that the "well-marked" queens they describe are pure Italians, unadulterated with "inferior" German, or other feral bee strains.  But I can't imagine a guy through his records and choosing a particular colony for brood stock based on survivability, and comb honey production, then opening them up and saying "Nope, can't use this queen, she's too dark in color".  Some apparently believed that if you were an irresponsible beekeeper and you allowed even a smidgin of feral blood in your pure Italian stock, you'd really be sorry in the long run.  Funny how that all worked out isn't it? 

[cdanderson]

Yes, it is like food.  What is horrible for your health today...may be good for you  in 10 years !

[Michael Bush]

>In the queen rearing chapter Mr. Killion says two things that I questioned.  In one part he explains that the same colony shouldn't be allowed to raise their own queen year after year or you will end up with an inferior, inbred bee.  If Killion had hundreds of colonies, how could he have possibly ended up with inbred bees?  And, if the quality of the bees in that colony did slack off, wouldn't that have been a sign to give them a queen from a better colony?

If you raise all your queens from the same mother one year, then all of your colonies are now run by full sisters.  The next year if you raise all your queens from that same mother, all of those queens (who are sisters) will be mated to their full brothers (the drones from their sisters from last year) and you have created a major genetic bottleneck no matter how many thousands of hives you have.

>Also, I've read several older bee books that talk of using color and markings as an indication of quality in queens.  I realize the idea is that the "well-marked" queens they describe are pure Italians, unadulterated with "inferior" German, or other feral bee strains.  But I can't imagine a guy through his records and choosing a particular colony for brood stock based on survivability, and comb honey production, then opening them up and saying "Nope, can't use this queen, she's too dark in color".

But that is precisely what many of them did.  Some didn't, but most did.

> Some apparently believed that if you were an irresponsible beekeeper and you allowed even a smidgin of feral blood in your pure Italian stock, you'd really be sorry in the long run. 

Yep.

>Funny how that all worked out isn't it? 

Yep.

[FRAMEshift]

If you raise all your queens from the same mother one year, then all of your colonies are now run by full sisters.  The next year if you raise all your queens from that same mother, all of those queens (who are sisters) will be mated to their full brothers (the drones from their sisters from last year)

Maybe you are talking about commercial operations on a large geographic scale?   In a recent thread here (I think you were out of town when we had this discussion :)   it was mentioned that queens fly about 1 mile on mating flights while drones fly 1/3 mile.  So queens don't mate with drones from their own hive or from the same bee yard.  But you are saying queens do mate with drones from the same hive or yard?

[Michael Bush]

If you have thousands of hives (as the Killion example) then the odds of the queens mating with your drones is extremely high.

[AndrewT]

Just last night I happened to watch a queen rearing presentation that Mr. Bush had given that was on Youtube.  In that (very informative) presentation, he mentioned a couple of times that even today the larger queen breeding operations (if not almost everyone who breeds queens to sell for profit, in my mind) is motivated to produce the highest number of laying queens using the least amount of resources.  In doing that, even if they select good stock, they are still producing relatively high numbers of queens from relatively few colonies.  It's far easier to pull frames of larvae from one hive for grafting than it is to pull frames from many hives.  The main reason for them to pull frames from more than one colony is that they may not get enough larvae of the right age from any one colony.  If it were possible to get a queen to lay several deep frames full of the same aged larvae, no doubt most would use only one frame for all of their grafting.

It doesn't take a geneticist to realize that if all beekeepers only used queens purchased from queen breeders, eventually, the over-riding characteristics that their bees would have in common would be queens that lay a lot of eggs in one day on one frame, their workers would keep the larvae well supplied with food starting the first day (to make it easier to get under them with the tool), the young larvae would be able to be jostled around with no ill effects, and the workers would put queen cell building as their top priority.

[AndrewT]

I'm not saying that everybody should quit buying queens, just that I think that it's a good thing that not everybody does.

[Finski]

Does anyone have experience with negative effects from a lack of genetic diversity in a bee yard?

yes, I have 50 years experience.

By the way, Italian is a splended bee and as hardy as any other race.

You cannot know what are your bees if you do not compare hives to other stocks.

It has happened to me several times that the genetic pool in my 20 hives yard has glided to miserable level.  Ability to resist varroa cannot be the measure are the hives  good or not.

Beebreeding is continuous work to select good properties. Otherwise the stock glide towards average. But now I understood the danger of strong selection (after decades) is that when you have a splended hive, you take too much daughters from it and next summer the whole yard has too narrow genepool.

Those ferals....you say that they are best. Of course not.  i had ferals 20 years and they were the most miserable bees I have ever had. Then varroa killed all ferals.

During my beekeeping years yields has growed 3 fold compared to those feral times.  If ferals are good, it means that a huge bee breeding work during last 60 years has had negative results.

.But I can tell that beebreeders have made marvellous work compared to guyes which do not mind select their bee stock.

If you get 150 kg honey from your feral hive in one month, tell me and I will stop my beebreeding.

[AndrewT]

I didn't mean to disparage Italians, some of my best friends are Italian (just kidding).

And, being a beekeeper by hobby and not by occupation, I also realize that my knowledge and experience doesn't compare to many others who post on this forum.  And, I never mean to disrespect those of you who have probably forgotten more than I'll ever know about bees.

I guess my main points were that I didn't really believe that by letting one good colony raise their own new queen year after year, in itself, was necessarily a bad thing, even though an old book would have me believe that it was.  And, that I couldn't figure why queen breeders, noted in several older books, would decline to use a queen, with otherwise good characteristics, for brood stock just because she wasn't the right color.

I have never gotten as much honey from my feral bees as I did with pure Italians that I kept in the past.  One of the advantages of being a hobbyist beekeeper is that I can judge success by things other than honey production.  And I have had feral colonies in the past that neither produced good amounts of honey, nor survived well.  The ferals that I keep now, just seem to me to survive much better than any other bees I've had, Italian or feral.

I would be curious to know what the average honey production per hive is today in the US, compared to 50 years ago.  I would be surprised if it was much higher.

One note about ferals in the US is that in many locales, where there were relatively many beekeepers, I believe that the original wild bees were pretty much displaced by the swarms of Italians that were continually being lost by beekeepers.  Even though the wild bees may have been hardier on the whole, there was a constant supply of new Italian swarms from beekeepers which were better honey gatherers than the wild bees.  I believe that the loss of "wild bees" along with beekeepers colonies in the recent past resulted partly from that fact (just my thought).

[Finski]

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I am hobby beekeeper but I have byed my first appartment with honey money.

Beebreeders have allways used  feral bees to see what genes they have.
In nature agressiveness and swarming are important features. In beekeeping they are bad things.

USA is a big country and has a big  collection of different kind hybrids.

My biggest surprise was when I got first artifically inseminated queens. They were splended compared to those semi feral bandits. The year was 1982.

Englishmen are mad with their "national German Black Native Bees".  the stock is full of diseases like EFB and chalkbrood, but they cannot see the facts through their national sun glasses. The yield is 15 kg per give.   

many love "catch and release" beekeeping. But it is not beekeeping.

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[BlueBee]

I have Italians, Carnioleans, and Ferals.  I'm a little more fond of the Italians myself.  They've wintered fine in Michigan and bring in a lot of honey.  I haven't gotten very systemic with my breeding yet, so I'm interested in the original question too. 

Finski can you share with us how you breed your queens?

[Finski]

Finski can you share with us how you breed your queens?

i have had 15 - 20 hives alongdecades. It is too small gang to have good mother queens.

Our professional breeders have 500 - 1000 hives it much more bigger oportunity to get good stock from that population. And theymake all the time great work in breeding and they have network to change they achievements. They live more in north and their bees are really strong.

So I buy every year  3 queens from different breeders and take daughters from those if they are good. All professionals' queens are not good.  I have got bad experiences from many breeders.

It seems too that professionals sell what ever queens what they have.

There is no quarantee to quality.

But trust on "ferals"is pure nonsense. I have studied genetics in university and you cannot  piss on me. But some believe that "nature knows best". - and the whole nature is for me. Second nonsense.



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[AndrewT]

Another thing is that feral bees are widely different in different areas, especially on different continents, I would imagine.

In the American mid-west, where I am, feral bees are (I think) Italian and German black bee mixtures.  My bees look like Italians, but some individuals have more black on them.  I think that even pure Italians look a little less "Italian-looking" when they live in natural sized cells, since they are smaller and the black stripes appear bigger.  Some of my queens are pure yellowish, but others have been more dark.

If I had more hives, and if I was trying to make money selling honey, I would surely get to know where good breeders are and get good queens from them, but I think no matter how many hives I had, I would always want to keep some feral stock, just to see what good traits they might have.

I agree that it would be nonsense to rely on ferals, but I also think it would be nonsense also to totally discount their potential value.

[Finski]

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If you keep ferals you keep them.
But you need not judge other bees when you do not know much about them.

All bees have imported to American continent. Ferals are escaped swarm.

Gene mapping has revieled that USA has had scutellata genes before killer bees arrived via Mexico.  There are scutellata chains in USA which have not met in Brasilian stocks.

[AndrewT]

You're right, I really don't know nearly enough about the subject to say anything one way or the other about bee breeding.  I was probably getting in a little over my head.

I should just say that I like my own feral bees, because I found them, and because they've been with me through good times and bad, like old dear friends.


I wonder what the ideas are on the origin of the scutellata genes found in American bees that didn't originate with the Tanzanian stock released in Brazil.

Maybe imported stock from an earlier period had the African genes.