Inbreeding in Honey bee colonies in a close population
Hi Gavin and Jon
Reassuring to see such a flurry of activity on such a tight time scale - the oil supply for the midnight oil lamps must have taken quite a 'tanking', (excuse the pun!) over that 8 hour time scale. I hope that the inbreedng issue will encourage many more hits than just the three of us. At the time I wrote the initial piece on the inbreeding problem facing Scotland's bees I had hoped to involve a geneticist in Strathclyde Uni but unfortunately this involvement it appears was discouraged by a more senior member of staff.
At the time Roger Paterson was having trouble with his queen bee failures I wrote suggesting that his problem was most likely inbreeding. This postulation was supported by an eminent beekeeper in Ontario, Canada in an e-mail at that time to Nigel Hurst, editor of the Scottish Beekeeper
Inbreeding in the honey bee has long been ignored by most beekeepers. "The problem doesn't exist"! Hmmmm. That was a numbere of years ago when I first mooted the dangers of inbreeding at a Glasgow and District meeting some years ago in the company of Ian Craig and a number of other experienced beekeepers - to a man they had never even considered the phenomenon.
Inbreeding is now coming high profile as honey bee colony and experienced beekeeper numbers diminish. The key word is "experienced"!
The inbreeding situation on Islay, in which I became involved in the early 70s, when I was the only beekeeper in Scotland actively marketing queens and nucleii gave me a deep insight into the problems of inbreeding, which actually ran parallel to the Paterson queen situation. Paterson implies that genetics was a device dreamed up by some April fool - tell that to Sir Alec Jeffries or Crick and Watson.
Now to the nub of the matter - in a closed population of 10 colonies entering their first winter, losing 50% of its number each winter but re-establishing the complement to 10 colonies each subsequent summer with the gene pool remaining; Since genetics is such a closed book - simplify the situation by substituting a letter of the alphabet for each individual colony- vis:
A,BC,D,E,F,G,H,I,J. So in the spring there are only 5 of the original colonies left: eg - A,C,E,G,H.- Go on do the elimination randomly and see how many generations it takes to have a classic inbreeding situation.
Eric McArthur