APIS Volume 13, Number 1, January 1995
In this issue
- Florida Bee Meetings
- Apimondia in Switzerland
- Breeding Programs--Has their time come?
- 1995 Beekeeping Calendar
FLORIDA BEE MEETINGS
Two educational bee meetings will be held in Florida in late winter. Archbold Biological Station has been scheduled for a meeting to be held by beekeepers from New York on Saturday, February 11, 1995. Dr. Roger Morse of Cornell University has organized an informative program which will provide basic information about Florida beekeeping, as well as help beekeepers exchange ideas concerning commercial pollination (i.e. hauling bees in refrigerated trucks). Dr. H. Shimanuki, research leader of the USDA Bee Laboratory in Beltsville, MD will be present to discuss current ideas about bee disease. The meeting is open to all beekeepers, is scheduled from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and there is no registration fee. However, participants are asked to bring their lunch to the station which is somewhat off the beaten path.
Archbold Biological Station is about seven miles south of Lake Placid, FL. The station's entrance can be found by going one mile west on Route 70 from the junction between Route 70 and Hwy 17, followed by one and a half miles south on Old State Route 8. The auditorium is about half a mile from the entrance. The phone number is 813/465-2571.
A seminar on backyard beekeeping for pollination and honey will be held Saturday, February 25, 1995 at the Clay County Cooperative Extension Service. The site is the Exhibition Building, 4 miles west of Green Cove Springs at 2463 State Road 16W. The program will begin at 9:00 a.m. and end at 5:00 p.m. A $10.00 charge covers refreshments, teaching materials and a catered lunch on site. This fee must be paid by February 23, 1995; pre- registration is required. Those wanting more detailed information, and persons requiring special accommodations due to disability, should contact 904/269-6355, 904/284-6355 or 904/473-3711.
APIMONDIA IN SWITZERLAND
I am in receipt of the second circular advertising the thirty- fourth International World Apicultural Congress to be held August 15-19, 1995 in Lausanne, Switzerland. This promises to be a meeting rich in information (beekeeping economy, bee biology, bee pathology, melliferous flora and pollination, beekeeping technology and equipment, apitherapy and developmental apiculture). The scenery will also be spectacular (on the north bank of Lake Geneva). Deadline to register for the hotel as listed in the brochure is June 20, 1995. For more information, contact Apimondia 95, Agence de voyage officielle, Ernst Marti SA, CH-3283 Kallnach/Suisse, tel. +41 32 820 111; fax +41 32 822 123; telex 934 236.
BREEDING PROGRAMS; HAS THEIR TIME COME?
The beekeeping industry is increasingly faced with the lack of "tools" (various chemicals) to fight diseases and pests. And those that are available cost more each year in real dollars, as well as time and labor to apply. It looks more and more like the solution for many of these problems must have a genetic component. Breeding programs, therefore, are being looked at carefully and taken more seriously than in the past. Traditionally, many beekeepers have resisted paying higher prices for the queens produced by these efforts. Queen breeding is an expensive enterprise and can be fraught with many obstacles. These were discussed in some detail in the September 1992 issue of APIS. See also April 1995 APIS for information on resources in queen rearing.
Perhaps as a consequence of the costs and complexities involved, many breeding programs cannot be sustained over time. There are some notable exceptions, however. One of these is Hybri- Bees, the Florida program that was preceded by Genetic Systems. The genesis of Hybri-Bees was the Illinois breeding program that produced the Starline and Midnight varieties, hybrid lines originally developed under the guidance of Bud Cale and Dadant & Sons. Over the years, the breeding effort changed direction and focus, but its survival is a testimony that at least some beekeepers were committed enough to the stock to sustain it through some very trying times.
Detection of the tracheal mite and subsequent quarantines placed on Florida queens in the early 1980s dealt a great blow to Hybri-Bees, as they did to other bee breeders in the state. With time, however, a recovery has begun. According to an article in The Speedy Bee (November 1994), Hybri-Bees has reorganized and relocated to Dade City, FL. This move is coincident with a reduction in breeder-queen price to $300.00, removal of royalty payments on all stock (except USDA ARS-Y-C-1), and license to use the Starline and Midnight logo for one year from date of purchase.
Mr. Dean M. Breaux is the new executive vice president of Hybri-Bees, Inc., 11140 Fernway Lane, Dade City, FL 33525, ph 904/521-0164. In a recent conversation with Mr. Breaux, I learned that he plans to help cooperators in the program retune their genetic selection toward honey production. Each season, he will ship out breeder queens to large-scale cooperators, who will evaluate the stock and return to him selected individuals for further breeding efforts. In this way, he hopes to develop several closed populations of bees, which will benefit specific producers. This will be a departure from the philosophy that built the Starline and Midnight reputations; developing specific lines of bees that were crossed to produce hybrids.
The Starline and Midnight hybrids were not designed to be self-regenerating; the concept was for beekeepers to continually requeen with hybrids produced by the program. Over the years, this had varied success. Although the program's concept is changing, Mr. Breaux said that the Hybri-Bees program will still be based to a great degree on the genetic material incorporated into the stock over many decades. As a consequence, beekeepers should continue to see some of the same characteristics they have so long favored in these stocks.
The concept of selecting for honey production may not be as "sexy" or in vogue as selecting for disease and pest resistance. But this kind of breeding design can be cost-effective. By definition, bees that are riddled with diseases or pests will not produce more honey. Selecting for this trait, therefore, is probably the result of a number of good genetic characteristics. It's the kind of approach discussed by Dr. Walter Rothenbuhler in "Necessary Links in the Chain of Honey Bee Stock Improvement," American Bee Journal, Vol. 120, Nos. 3 and 4, pp. 223-5, 304-5.
Acknowledging the potential cost and complexity of any bee breeding project, Dr. Rothenbuhler asked rhetorically in his article whether there would be room for smaller, less expensive operations. His answer was yes, provided someone assumed overall management responsibilities. Some of the decisions and actions that must be made in perhaps the simplest of these plans, according to Dr. Rothenbuhler, are:
- What region of the country is the bee to be developed for? Conduct field tests in the region in a practical way.
- What bee characteristic is to be improved? For simplicity, select one. Honey production is suggested.
- How many colonies are to be tested in each generation? Keep the number small, but not too small. Fifty colonies is suggested.
- What percentage of the fifty are to be selected for further breeding? Ten percent is suggested.
- Should new queens be naturally or instrumentally inseminated? Natural mating in a large population of drones, from other than the queen mothers, is suggested.
- Send fifty naturally mated queens to the honey producer for field testing.
- Continue this procedure for several generations.
- Learn whether progress has been made by comparing in the same apiary the newly bred stock with samples of commercially available stocks.
- If the newly bred stock is superior, the queen producer or producers will make it commercially available.
Such a plan, according to Dr. Rothenbuhler, concentrating on selecting only drone mothers, should result in stock improvement about half as fast as if both parents were selected. The design is simple, not costly and can be carried out by good beekeepers. One can build, he concludes, any number of more complex and efficient programs, but they increasingly must be carried out by people and organizations specially prepared to do so.
Although bee breeding programs are important, they are only part of the answer when it comes to the many beekeeping problems facing the industry today. And it is dangerous to focus totally on this aspect in favor of other considerations. That is the view of Dr. Michael Burgett, writing in the January 1995 (Vol. 123, No. 1, pp. 58-60) Bee Culture. He suggests that genetic solutions are problematic, especially if they are considered a quick-fix to what ails the beekeeper. As Dr. Burgett says:
"A genetically selected (designed) honey bee line is by most genetic definitions, a hybrid constructed from crosses manipulated by bee scientists. It is not genetically 'fixed' and without continual human intervention, the qualities of the line will be eventually lost when those queens are placed into hives. Why? Because most beekeepers do not requeen frequently enough. Because many newly requeened colonies will undergo supersedure without the beekeeper's knowledge. Because those supersedure queens will be mating with drones from local (unselected) stock. Because a single selected line cannot be well adapted for all the beekeeping conditions found in North America."
For all of the above reasons, Dr. Burgett says, there is no possibility of a genetic quick-fix honey bee breeding program, characterized by an open, multiple-male mating system. In spite of this, Dr. Burgett doesn't advocate stopping the search for and development of improved lines of bees. The genetic solution when found, however, cannot stand alone, he concludes, but must be part of a generally improved system of beekeeping practice.
1995 BEEKEEPING CALENDAR
Continuing a long tradition, the North Carolina State Beekeepers Association is selling its 1995 calendar for $6.00 (send check or money order to NCSBA, 1403 Varsity Dr., Raleigh, NC 27606). Authored by Stephen Bambara, the calendar is sure to help you schedule your beekeeping chores. It's written with an eye for North Carolina conditions, of course, but there's plenty of other information if you're not interested in what's happening each month in the coastal plain, piedmont or mountains of the tarheel state. In July, there's discussion of the arrival of the "golden bee" in America; the native bumble bee's lifestyle is portrayed in August. There are even recipes and tips about cooking with honey.
My favorite topic of the month (November), right in tune with the bee breeding theme of the previous article, is the linguometer, developed in the 1880s by John H. Martin of Hartford, NY. This instrument was advertised to determine the potential "reach" of each bee into the long-corolla of red clover flowers, much in vogue by farmers in that era. According to an article in the Beekeepers' Magazine (May 1882):
"If we wish to breed for the reaching power, this instrument will enable us to do so without trusting blindly to the development of this quality. A general trial with a correct instrument will soon teach us if large yields of honey from certain swarms is dependent on this quality of the bees. It will also tell us if climate makes a difference in this reaching power."
The inventor concludes that his bee's tongue tester "...occupies but a few minutes of time and the tongues of any honey loving insect from a fly to a bumble bee can be measured." Always the optimist, Mr. Martin admits to designing the instrument so that it could measure up to a full inch, "in anticipation of the arrival of Apis dorsata."
Malcolm T. Sanford
Bldg 970, Box 110620
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-0620
Phone (904) 392-1801, Ext. 143 FAX: 904-392-0190
http://www.ifas.ufl.edu/~entweb/apis/apis.htm
INTERNET Address: MTS@GNV.IFAS.UFL.EDU
©1995 M.T. Sanford "All Rights Reserved
