Yet another puzzle

[chris]

How long is this thread going to rumble on - seems to be the only active thread on the forum !!!

That's because it has grown so many tentacles. One of Eric's genetically modified threads.

[Jon]

I hear the latest version of vBulletin has Roundup Ready threads where one application will reduce a thread to about a third of its size when all the repeat sequences wither back. Apparently it does no harm to bees but can reduce the habitat available to wafflers and pasters.
Someone accidently sprayed biobees.com and all that was left was a small conspiracy theory which took up 2k of disk space.

[Eric McArthur]

Hi Jon/Chris

So the thread has become an octopus -and not a red herring.
Eric

[Jon]

No red herrings here, but I saw quite a shoal of them over at Moray Dinosaurs when I was browsing there the other day.
Apparently they can survive for years on a diet of pure speculation!

[Eric McArthur]

Hi Jon

So long as the speculation is pure! No worries! Critical comment on Bienefeld's work? There is more - he has funding to change breeding concepts in Germany!

Eric

[Jon]

If I may be permitted to shake one of Eric's tentacles (careful with the spelling!!) I found this little paper which has some nice tables to do with brood viability and inbreeding. It was one of the references to a paper which Pete.L drew my attention to yesterday. There are some nuggets of very useful information about general colony growth in the introduction. For example a colony which triples in size shows an 8-20 fold increase in foraging behaviour.
It's not as heavy going as stuff by Beye et al but there are still a few squiggly formulas.

http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/96/1/263

I noticed this paragraph:

It is interesting to note, however, that the mean viability of 2N brood (V) for
all reproductive females in the population is dependent only upon the number of
alleles maintained:

There are tables looking at permutations between number of alleles in a population vs number of drones a queen mates with on p269 -p270.

[Eric McArthur]

Hi Jon
Just home at 9pm after a lovely meal with the family. Couldn't put the paper down - meat and drink! The science was almost better than the meal!
Many thanks for that pull on my t... (I will not use the word lest a typo occur!). The prose on the alleles and the case for the natural selection pressure of one locus and multiple sex alleles for the honey bee as opposed to more than a single locus in other hymenoptera was really elegant It just gets better. I really envy you guys who studied genetics formally!
A few landmark statements from the paper:

Group selection need not be invoked. The fitness
of a given female genotype is a function of the number of sex alleles in the
population, the number of matings by an individual female and the specific
parameters that determine the relationship of brood viability to individual
fitness.

Inviable brood occupies needed brood nest area in rapidly expanding
colonies. The net result of brood mortality due to homozygous sex alleles
is a decrease in N,, and a decrease in b. This will lead to a slower rate of colony
expansion, with fewer colony divisions during a season in multivoltine populations,
a lower production of reproductive males, a lower seasonal food productivity
and decreased ability to survive unfavorable seasons.
.................................................. .
(I was actually involved with a beekeeper on Islay in the early 70s, whos bees exhibited just these symptoms!)
.................................................. ................
This individual selection model may also be useful in explaining the widespread
occurrence of multiple insemination in other social Hymenoptera. If we
assume a multiple-locus model for sex determination (CROZIER19 77), then the
case for the honey bee is simply a variation where there is only one locus with
multiple alleles segregating in the population. When two or more loci are segregating,
an individual must be heterozygous at one or more of them to be a female.
Selection will still favor multiple alleles at each locus and multiple mating;
however, the associated genetic load will be reduced. I

[Richard Bache]

[Back on 11th September, Rosie mentioned Richard Bache on this thread. The thread was locked when Richard wished to reply, not sure why, but here is his response which he posted on another thread and has asked me to move here ..... G.]

Sorry to post on the wrong thread, but this seemed the most appropriate as the one I was hoping to post on has been locked.
I was googling my own name and found it on this site and thought I brief clarification was required. The post in question is here http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/sh...ull=1#post2095.

Richard Bache seems to assume that if something has not been scientifically proven then it doesn't exist. Although I have not personally witnessed AVM I know at least 2 and I think 3 who have actually seen it. Beo Cooper was a professional entomologist and I very much doubt that he would have made it up in the first place. Peter Edwards reported that last season he had a whole batch of near native virgins mate at 5 degrees C. I very much doubt if they found a drone assembly at that temperature. Most research has been done with exotic strains of bees so science has little information to offer AMM enthusiasts.

So, to clarify, I have little doubt that Apiary vicinity mating does occur. There have been several records, described in sufficient detail to make me confident that it does occur. However, why it occurs is a mystery to me. Does it occur when a drone congregation area is close to an apiary? Is it part of a spectrum of mating behaviour where the DCA model is at one end and the AVM is at another? Does it depend on air temperature or other climatic conditions? Is it exclusive to AMM (there has been some suggestion that it isn't: see my posting here http://www.britishbee.org.uk/forum/s...76&postcount=8). And does it confer any survival advantage and does it risk inbreeding? Unfortunately few people have seen it, fewer have written about it and even fewer still have done so with sufficient information to ascertain why it occurs. So, to sum up, Yes I think it does occur, but as Jon seems to imply (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/sh...ull=1#post2094), I have no idea why it occurs.
best wishes

Richard

[Eric McArthur]

Hi
Interesting! Can happen had queens mated and laying by 7th May in Fine springs!
Question Gavin - this morning this thread told mw I was not authorised to submit a post Any answers? I am pleased to be authourised now!
Eric

[Jon]

There can also be very late matings. A nuc I sold to a BKA member this year superseded its queen in September and the new queen did not start laying until the second half of October.