Artificially inseminated Queens

[Sutty]

To be honest, I don't think that's the case at all. When I joined this forum, only a few people practised instrumental insemination. Over the years, others have "jumped on the band-waggon" without understanding that it is only a technique. It means little unless you test the progeny you've mated and breed from the result - like this!
The thing that really makes me laugh, and I see this countless times on Youtube, is when people collect drones from the hive entrance with no idea where they came from. They might just as well leave the queen to mate naturally than do this. It makes no sense at all!
The drone is often referred to as a "flying gamete". In breeding terms, he is only a means of translating 16 of his mothers (queen) 32 chromosomes into sperm, so a virgin queen from another colony can be mated. Since he is haploid, he only has 16 chromosomes to pass on, so all of his sperm are clones. Therefore, in single drone insemination, the only variation that can occur is in the queens egg. This is an extreme case though and instrumental insemination still usually involves multiple drones (mdi), albeit from the same queen - at least in selective breeding programmes. The drone-producing queen is, herself, selected for this purpose after her colonies performance is assessed and her relationship to the dam(queen), if any, understood. The point being, that you are selecting from from a large population the individuals that you will propagate to form the next generation. Those individuals influence the direction of the populations development more, simply because there are more of them in the population i.e. If I make 100 daughter queens from a particular combination, and they all survive long enough to reproduce at least once, their impact on the direction that the population develops is 100 times more than a colony that may only produce one successful progeny.
lets say that the population includes some 10,000 colonies -the impact of breeding 100 from a particular combination is 100 times greater than in the case where only a single progeny colony survives long enough to reproduce.

I'm not sure which bit you are disagreeing with? Certainly ii prevents selection of drones by mating ability, using drones from a single queen will inevitably reduce in-hive genetic variation.
That doesn't mean it has no place though!!

 

[B+.]

I'm not sure which bit you are disagreeing with? Certainly ii prevents selection of drones by mating ability, using drones from a single queen will inevitably reduce in-hive genetic variation.
That doesn't mean it has no place though!!

Exactly, we're in complete agreement. I wasn't disagreeing with anything. Except, perhaps, that the size of the population from which you draw the drones isn't shrinking. It is continuously renewed by replacing the P generation with F1's benefitting from the selection difference but subject to heredity. The more times you can do this within a season (selection intensity) the greater the population mean moves in the desired direction.