Quote Originally Posted by drumgerry View Post
Thanks DR - interesting stuff. I guess what I'm really asking is how far we can take selective breeding of bees. In other livestock they've bred from wee wild sheep that roamed the desert or the mountain sides to ones who can provide three fat lambs or a heavy milk yield and similarly with cattle etc etc.

Bro Adam and others say for example that Carnies are like this and AMM are like that. What I'm asking is why can't we breed an AMM with qualities other than those widely accepted. The follow up question might be why would we want to. The answer I would hope would be that producing a bee with quality X whatever that might be would make imports less of a go to option.
Hi Drumgerry
I'm pretty sure you could start with any bee and select for the traits you most want
Epigenetics ie all the genes are present in every bee but which ones are activated ?

Trouble is that unlike the sheep and the cows etc we are not in control of both sides of the mating
Local adapted drones get involved and very few people can avoid that

Brother Adam really was taking a breeding shortcut because he was collecting bees which had the traits he wanted
From there, and with a fairly isolated position, he tried crossing those bees and fixing the traits in his new matings
He succeeded in his location but that wouldn't work for most people

Time to get the AI kit out