VSH Testing

[B+.]

Clear as mud.
So when "you" say "breeding" you don't actually mean breeding you actually mean "selective breeding".

You could do with reading Friedrich Ruttners "Breeding Techniques and Selection for Breeding of the Honeybee". I have a well read copy which is tattered through use. It really opened my eyes to lots of things.
The first paragraph (p 8) says:

'All breeding begins with the choice of breeding stock. The "value" of the breeding animals will first be determined by their own performance and qualities. But only a part of the selection process is involved here, since the gene assembly which will be transmitted to descendants interests the breeder much more than the immediate apparent performance, (i.e. the economic value of the colony). A performance that will not be inherited is without significance for the breeder. The essence of breeding is to transmit a certified, above average performance of individual animals to the greatest possible number of descendants, undiminished and as far as possible enhanced.'

 

[foghornleghorn]

last post cut off, all crop and livestock breeding has followed this process,role of the breeder is make the improvement

 

[foghornleghorn]

it has always been up to the end user to figure out the best way to keep the improved stock.large queen production units

 

[foghornleghorn]

in europe could knock out thousands ofthese queens,maybe not fully pure but good enough as a queen mother for most of us

 

[Fusion_power]

Despite Fusions bluster, he doesn't evaluate or control (he has previously admitted this).

I exercise enough control to produce queens that breed true for specific traits. Honeybees are uniquely adapted to either individual or mass selection. I am not asking about your methods because this is your thread to post results. I am not blustering, I am posting what I see with my bees. More important, I don't take open discussion as a personal attack.

To address a few of your statements, I selected three breeder queens this year and produced queens from each. The first queen was a Buckfast from Fergusons in Canada. She was the best of 8 purchased last year. Buckfast have little or no mite resistance. The objective was to breed for reduced swarming incidence in my bees. The second was a queen from 2015 that produced a good crop of honey in 2016 and 2017. I got 8 daughters from her before a virgin managed to fly into her hive and voila my 2015 queen disappeared. The third was one of the Buckfast daughters which was raised this year. I don't have enough results to justify breeding from her based on performance, but her colony is gentle, has a good population of bees, and she shows excellent laying pattern. I have 7 cells from her to distribute to mating nucs tomorrow.

Would I like to use AI to tighten up the genetics of my bees? Of course I would, but I don't lose sleep over it. I manage the drone population in the area where my queens mate which gives enough purity of mating to make progress.

Most important, I am not trying to breed the next great bee that produces more honey than all others. I am trying to maintain and improve a line of bees that are highly mite resistant. As I stated earlier, if I found 30 mites in one of my colonies, I would off the queen's head and replace her with a cell from a more resistant line. This is not being critical of your efforts. It states that my breeding threshold for mites is different than yours. The bees you have access to are not highly mite resistant therefore you have a different objective and different triggers. With time, I hope your bees become mite resistant enough that your focus can change from counting mites to other economic traits.

I hope your efforts are successful because it will mean more beekeepers can get off the treatment bandwagon.


How do you generate a polarized argument with stones, bows and arrows, guns, tanks, and nuclear weapons all on the table to be used?

Put 3 beekeepers in a room together. Two can do the job in a pinch.

 

[SDM]

With time, I hope your bees become mite resistant enough that your focus can change from counting mites to other economic traits.

Have you missed completely the handling characteristics and yields achieved by B+'s bees?
It's you that needs to improve the economic traits of your bees which is why you look to buckfast ( should have looked to the Arista Buckfast bees).
What was the concept behind your mite threshold ? It goes far beyond just surviving mites and prospering.

 

[B+.]

Have you missed completely the handling characteristics and yields achieved by B+'s bees?
It's you that needs to improve the economic traits of your bees which is why you look to buckfast ( should have looked to the Arista Buckfast bees).
What was the concept behind your mite threshold ? It goes far beyond just surviving mites and prospering.

Thats exactly what I meant about our approach being different. Instead of developing a single trait, which is comparatively easy, the European approach is to make progress in a range of traits simultaneously. Thats why progress may appear to be slow.
I'm glad you mentioned the Buckfasts being developed through Arista (https://aristabeeresearch.org/). I was going to mention them myself.The Buckfast programme started about a year before the carnica programme but has made good progress. There are a lot of well known and respected breeders taking part.
There is a lot of stuff that isn't in the public domain, but, is very encouraging.

 

[SDM]

I'm always a year behind but 2014/15 they more than doubled the percentage of high vsh colonies. So if they have continued in that vein, it's very encouraging indeed.

 

[Beefriendly]

The essence of breeding is to transmit a certified, above average performance of individual animals to the greatest possible number of descendants, undiminished and as far as possible enhanced.'

I prefer to work with the Oxford English dictionary definiton of breeding
breeding
NOUN

1The mating and production of offspring by animals.


Rather than rely on a translated from German to English text as my definition for breeding.
Just call me a word pedant, but their correct usage and definition is very important.

 

[Fusion_power]

Have you missed completely the handling characteristics and yields achieved by B+'s bees?

The difference being that I am starting with bees that are highly resistant to mites and breeding from that position toward improved performance.

Arista brought in VSH traits to introgress into their breeding lines. The same principle applies to starting with mite resistant bees and breeding for enhanced performance traits.

On a different note, a major beekeeper here in the U.S. had 2000 colonies tested for hygienic behaviour and identified about 20 colonies that highly express the trait. He has those colonies set up for breeding and is producing hygienic queens to requeen all of his colonies. What do you think he will achieve by doing this?

 

[B+.]

Arista brought in VSH traits to introgress into their breeding lines.

As with other comments you have made, this is only partially correct. The Buckfast contingent may have used some US stock initially, but the carnica group didn't.

 

[SDM]

I prefer to work with the Oxford English dictionary definiton of breeding
breeding
NOUN

1The mating and production of offspring by animals.


Rather than rely on a translated from German to English text as my definition for breeding.
Just call me a word pedant, but their correct usage and definition is very important.

Perhaps the title in the thread helped you differentiate between
Breeding :
The good manners regarded as characteristic of the aristocracy and conferred by heredity.

Yet you couldn't make the leap to selective. Very odd.

 

[Finman]

.
Difficult to discuss, if another person is idiot

 

[B+.]

Have you missed completely the handling characteristics and yields achieved by B+'s bees?
It's you that needs to improve the economic traits of your bees which is why you look to buckfast ( should have looked to the Arista Buckfast bees).
What was the concept behind your mite threshold ? It goes far beyond just surviving mites and prospering.

Fusion has missed many things.
It isn't just a matter of examining sealed brood. The age range should be 7-10 days post capping (purple to black eyed bee pupa stage) to perform the VSH test properly (https://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/album.php?albumid=751&pictureid=3789). This, by necessity, means the mites are concentrated into a small patch of brood and have plenty of time to reproduce. To do otherwise would be an unfair test.

 

[B+.]

On a different note, a major beekeeper here in the U.S. had 2000 colonies tested for hygienic behaviour and identified about 20 colonies that highly express the trait. He has those colonies set up for breeding and is producing hygienic queens to requeen all of his colonies. What do you think he will achieve by doing this?

Based on this information alone, I can't see that he would achieve anything positive.
You'd need to know the ancestry of the 1% of colonies selected (potential inbreeding problem). Then, you'd need to be sure that they weren't just random matings and some attempt was made to control the pairing.
In any case, hygienic behavior isn't VSH although it can be used as a pre-selection tool. That's what I do. Only queens that express hygienic behavior at a high level (as well as the other traits) are selected for the VSH test (actually, her sisters have to be highly hygienic too). It is too labour-intensive to perform VSH testing on unworthy individuals

 

[Finman]

If you look Australian high hygiene breeding project in Tasmania, you see how difficult project it is. I gove up to do Anything with my apiary

It will not succeed with hobby beekeepers.
.

 

[SDM]

If you look Australian high hygiene breeding project in Tasmania, you see how difficult project it is. I gove up to do Anything with my apiary

It will not succeed with hobby beekeepers.
.

It's not often I agree with you completely. I have neither the resources or commitment to achieve anything like this.
Just as well others do eh ?

 

[B+.]

If you look Australian high hygiene breeding project in Tasmania, you see how difficult project it is. I gove up to do Anything with my apiary

It will not succeed with hobby beekeepers.
.

I've had hygienic bees in my test groups for many years Finman. I've only had high VSH for the last year though.

 

[B+.]

It's not often I agree with you completely. I have neither the resources or commitment to achieve anything like this.
Just as well others do eh ?

....and some of us should have been committed a long time ago.

Anyway, I just got off a skype call with the NL.
If she survives winter without treatment, I should have 100% VSH drones from her for my II next year and > 75% VSH daughters.
I will also send micropipettes of drone semen back to the NL for use over there

 

[Finman]

I've had hygienic bees in my test groups for many years Finman. I've only had high VSH for the last year though.

You are a part of bigger group. You could not have afford to your own strains.

It sound stupid to tell to 2 hive owners or 20 hive owners,how real breeding work goes . Many however believe that they can keep their 10 hives' genepool on their backyard, and mite often, if you have one good hive, you can copy paste it to the end of the world.