large queens

Breeding to me seems to be a hit and miss affair. With at most 10 colony's the most I could do is choose the queen with the best characteristics to breed from and squash the rest on an annual basis. One of the difficulties I have is understanding breeding for a pure race. It would seem difficult for a breeder to produce a single strain of bee that would have all the right qualities. Perhaps the bees natural way of having all the right qualities in a colony is for the queen to mate with as many different drones as possible, thus some workers might be good at one thing whilst others might be better at something else.

Sorry if I'm waffling but I do find genetics a very tricky subject.

Hawklord said:

Perhaps the bees natural way of having all the right qualities in a colony is for the queen to mate with as many different drones as possible, thus some workers might be good at one thing whilst others might be better at something else.

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...

"If I'm a good rower in a dragon boat with 49 poor rowers, I am going to lose all of my races. But if teams were shuffled after every race, I'll likely have a better chance of winning. I may even get to be in a boat with 49 good rowers just like myself," says Zayed. "The same thing happens with mutations on a chromosome. Recombination makes the evolutionary fate of mutations independent of their surrounding neighbours, which enhances the process of natural selection.".

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http://phys.org/news/2012-10-genetic-remix-key-evolution-bee.html

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=16194&highlight=genetic+mix+key+honeybees

Thanks Pete.

How much variation is there with the Buckfast queens, workers in behaviour and visually?

All of which tells us what a genius Br. Adam was all those years ago......which begs the question amongst the current Buckfast breeders; is anyone trying to improve further? or is the aim to stabilise the current stock?
i.e are we content with the current Buckfast stocks or is anyone trying to add in further strains/characteristics.

Hawklord said:

One of the difficulties I have is understanding breeding for a pure race. It would seem difficult for a breeder to produce a single strain of bee that would have all the right qualities. Perhaps the bees natural way of having all the right qualities in a colony is for the queen to mate with as many different drones as possible, thus some workers might be good at one thing whilst others might be better at something else.

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Jurgen Tautz (?) describes the variation very well in term of heat stability. Different workers because of their different fathers may have different tolerances to heat, such that as the temp rises the sensitive one begin fanning/water gathering first. As Temp increase further more bees are affected and join in and so on. So the genetic diversity within an individual hive is beneficial in maintaining the homeostasis.

Thymallus said:

All of which tells us what a genius Br. Adam was all those years ago......which begs the question amongst the current Buckfast breeders; is anyone trying to improve further? or is the aim to stabilise the current stock?
i.e are we content with the current Buckfast stocks or is anyone trying to add in further strains/characteristics.

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Buckfast is now over the globe. Who knows what hundreds of bee breeders do.

In Finland we havea a big buckfast queen seller company. It has 1500 hives in honey production.
On that beekeeping area winter
temps are often -30C.
.

Finman said:

You have 4 boxes brood or what?

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Yes, the hive was given to me like that, now it has 2 brood boxes and a QE with 3 super on top

Seems to me the Modern Buckfast bee is a simple F1 cross or hybridisation between an Italian and a Carniolian bee.. giving hybrid vigor that is lost in the subsequent generations.

But then I only have an understanding of genetics at degree level.


Yeghes da

I think you would be amazed at the record keeping of the lines for both drone and queens used in crosses for continuing the Buckfast lineage throughout Europe.

Thymallus said:

I think you would be amazed at the record keeping of the lines for both drone and queens used in crosses for continuing the Buckfast lineage throughout Europe.

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I think its very similar, if not identical, to the German system. I looked at the site a couple of days ago and they appear to be doing the same sorts of performance tests that are done in Beebreed.

I think you need to register as a breeder to see the data on the Beebreed site. The Buckfast pedigree mating lineages are openly available which makes them more accessible.
Regardless of this, I think this attention to detail and record keeping puts most of our amateur open/random mated queen rearing in perspective.

Finman said:

Buckfast is now over the globe. Who knows what hundreds of bee breeders do.
.

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You can find out exactly what they do here should you wish to. It appears to be very tightly controlled.

Thymallus said:

You can find out exactly what they do here should you wish to. It appears to be very tightly controlled.

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It is not. I know. Beeks say more than they do.
I wonder how many test sensitiveness to chalkbrood for example
Many breeders speak about high hygienic genes but chalkbrood tolerance does not work that way

Finman said:

v
I wonder how many test sensitiveness to chalkbrood for example
Many breeders speak about high hygienic genes but chalkbrood tolerance does not work that way

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Really? Then, how does it work?

Michael Palmer said:

Really? Then, how does it work?

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There are strains, which do not become sick, when you put the queen into a contaminated hive. That was the way I breeded out chalkbrood from my hives.

I had mating nucs which had chalkbrood contamination on floor. When new queens brood become sick, I killed the queen. Lots of new queens and selection.

And in spring you need spare queens. When you see chalkbrood in hive, change the queen at once.

But first you need tolerant genes from outside.

Finman said:

I wonder how many test sensitiveness to chalkbrood for example

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I don't know but chalkbrood is not something my Buckfast bees (so far) seem to suffer from. An occasional mummy but very few and far between.
Whereas my local bees can be martyrs to it, particularly in spring where they can struggle to maintain temps above 30oC around all the brood nest. The spores don't germinate very well at 35oC.

Your posts suggest chalkbrood can be a major problem in Finland, or have I read them wrong.

Thymallus said:

You can find out exactly what they do here should you wish to. It appears to be very tightly controlled.

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As I said, it is another thing to say and to do. On Brother Adam's footprints. That is enough to me.

Thymallus said:

I don't know but chalkbrood is not something my Buckfast bees (so far) seem to suffer from. An occasional mummy but very few and far between.

Your posts suggest chalkbrood can be a major problem in Finland, or have I read them wrong.

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Chalkbrood is not major proplem. I have not written nothing like that. It was in my yard 10-20 y ago.

Finman said:

It is not. I know. Beeks say more than they do.
I wonder how many test sensitiveness to chalkbrood for example
Many breeders speak about high hygienic genes but chalkbrood tolerance does not work that way

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All I can say is look at the link https://www.dropbox.com/s/0fsy96gm8zjc23w/Screenshot 2015-05-03 13.23.04.png?dl=0
You can see that chalkbrood is assessed

B+. said:

You can see that chalkbrood is assessed

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What does it mean?