Re: NANFA-L-- perils of Fla collecting

J. C. (hillbillynursery-in-yahoo.com)
Wed, 2 Aug 2006 06:21:35 -0700 (PDT)

It is highly unlikely. Bees are difficult to breed
because the males(drones) have no father and only a
mother. They have a grandfather. Drones are haploid
males meaning they contain one set of genes. All
females have 2 sets of genes(pairs). All unfertilized
bee eggs become male and fertilized eggs become
females. This is why you can take eggs from a worker
cell and put them into queen cups(the beginning of a
queen cell) and the bees will raise queens from them.

The agressive gene tends to follow the productive
disease resistance genes even in our EHBs. The
hotter(meaner) hives are normally our best producers
and these have no AHB in them. So the production
minded beekeeper sets there limits to agressiveness
they will tolerate from a hive before requeening. I
prefer something more in the middle toward the lower
producing gentle hives. There are a few exceptions to
this rule and they are F1 hybreds between bees from
different parts of europe(Italians and causain(spell
check)). This hybred goes by the common name of
midnights. But all midnights, that I know of, in the
US are now line bred and they are not better or worse
than any other line.

Another problem with AHBs is that the agressive trait
also has another behavoiral pattern of swarming much
more than EHBs. This causes more hives to be started
each year by AHB. These bees have been proven you can
breed the agressive traits out of them but you loose
what makes them so productive in the process. This is
why managed hives are our only real defence against
AHB other than destroying all AHB hives we find in the
wild and requeening the ones we find in our bee yards.
When you replace the queen within 3 months all the old
queens genetics are gone. Some states say this is not
enough because her drones are still alive in the hive
and able to breed so you must destroy the whole
colony.

Another reason AHB is more common is the AHB drone is
smaller and can fly farther and faster. So he beats
the EHB to the queens on her mating flight. It may
sound like the cards are stacked against us but we
keep millions of managed hives in the US not counting
the wild hives that have not been infected. We just
can no longer raise queens in these southern areas
like the Weavers in TX. I do not see how they get
certified every year to ship queens all over the US. I
raise my own queens or get them from N. CA and NC
which have not seen the AHB as of yet.

BTW to make this fishy, fish love bee larva. I have
used capped drones for feeding my fish and for
fishing.

Later, John

--- Mysteryman <bestfish-in-alaweb.com> wrote:

> So I guess now the question is, can these AHB's be
> re-hybridized into
> something more docile? It seems to me that with a
> little tinkering someone
> should eventually be able to come up with the
> perfect bee, super-productive
> and mellow.
>
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John Cox of Cumberland Killifish
Honey Robber beekeeping and removal services

Please join A Fishy World my new email group all
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/ This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes
/ Association (NANFA). Comments made on this list do not necessarily
/ reflect the beliefs or goals of NANFA. For more information about NANFA,
/ visit http://www.nanfa.org Please make sure all posts to nanfa-l are
/ consistent with the guidelines as per
/ http://www.nanfa.org/guidelines.shtml To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get
/ help, visit the NANFA email list home page and archive at
/ http://www.nanfa.org/email.shtml