A lecture from Dylan Elen about 'Breeding locally adapted honey bees'

Hello Readers,

Today I bring you the contents of a lecture I’ve attended.

The lecture was given by none other than Dylan Elen.  The president of Zwartebij.org. 

A scientist/researcher that works with bees every single day.

Zwartebij.org, is trying to bring back and preserve

the local bee that used to be here before we humans

hauled over all sorts of other bees simply because

those other bees had traits we liked better.

We have to put the bee first, and forget about what we

want for a moment.  When you put the bees first, you

will see that working with the black bee is common

sense, as it has adapted to its local environment by

nature it is therefore better equipped to deal with

whatever we, as beekeepers, or nature throw at it next.

So if we want traits in our bees that aren’t there, we

have to select from the local bees that show signs of,

or are most promising towards, what we want.

Alongside that we have to preserve the wild bee;  We need to keep in mind that when we

start tinkering with the natural selection process, we might make mistakes and breed out

some needed qualities in order for the bees to survive, and in doing so we are actually

killing the wild bees and are making them dependant on human intervention to keep them

alive.  This is not what we want.

Nature has only one trait that is rewarded in every species and that’s survival.  So whatever

genes work best are passed on. Therefore we need wild bees as a backup for when we

screw up.

So the lecture was trying to explain how we can repopulate Belgium (and the Netherlands

and Luxembourg) with the native bee. (It was touched upon that France also had an interest

in the project and would like to participate.)

I hope you enjoy Dylan’s way of thinking; Here’s what happened:

Breeding locally adapted honey bees

The key to sustainable beekeeping - Dylan Elen

Why work with the apis mellifera mellifera

a history of the bees spreading around the mainland.

Dylan touched on the different bees that can be found all over the world, and how they spread

and evolved locally.

He then zoomed in to Belgium and the local species of AMM (apis mellifera mellifera).

The diversification of bees is a local process; some genes that are useful here aren’t

elsewhere, and vice versa.  Therefore it’s wise to start working with local bees and

select from there the bees that show traits that we want.

He stressed out that there is no ‘best’ breed of bee.  The best is a subjective noun.

What is best for me isn’t best for you.  So the bees I like might not be the bees you like.

But you can tell me, and I you, what I like about the bees we work with.  And as long

as we select our bees and breed them locally with whatever traits we like best we

shouldn’t have any major issues.

Breeding locally doesn’t have to be with the native bee, as The ‘Kirchheim’ Carnolian

line proves.  This beebreed exists for an amount of 40 years, and in the beginning

they were bred by means of artificial insemination.  One could say they are local now,

even though they didn’t start out that way, for breeding no longer needs to happen

artificially.

To get some local adaptivity into their Kirchheim Carnolian line they did however use

drones from local bees for their artificial insemination.  That is why they could sustain

themselves and move away from artificially breeding their line. Many queen breeding

stations do not practice this and import pure-blood drones, as such there is no local

adaptation, and only 1 or 2 generations show the traits you associate with that typical

beebreed..

The flemish bee breeding program is now looking at moving away from breeding
stations that import drones, but in reality the program is not accepted by the beekeepers.
They want the ‘pure-bloods’, the bees that already have the traits they want.  Moving away
from those traits and reselecting for those traits is not what they want, for the beekeepers
don’t want the setback or do all the work for selecting the right beehives to breed from
locally. It’s easier for them to let the selection take place elsewhere and then take the
queens they want mated to the selected drone populations..

Dylan also wants resilient bees, so that no treatments are needed.  Accomplishing that

means the bees can survive and do well without human interference.

To start breeding bees with those terms means you’ll always end up with the local (the ones

that got there by themselves, not the ones that the beekeeper shipped there) bees as your

base pool For Belgium that’s the AMM.

Selection is still needed, as beekeepers prefer working with docile bees that don’t tend to

swarm and yield a honeycrop.  But this needs to be done next to bee-preservation in the wild. 

Keeping in mind that the ‘defensive’ trait is a dominant trait found in the genes, selecting bees

to breed with is something we will need to keep doing;  The cross breed of local wild bees and

local bees kept by beekeepers, will mainly get the ‘defensive’ trait, se we need to keep

selecting the most docile ones.

Sidenote

The audience wanted to know the difference in genetic structure between Tessel black bee

and Chimay black bee, for they heard that Dylan was using both lines to preserve the black

bee with his Zwartebij.org.  So Dylan explained in short that hybrids have a different

genetic structure. As an example he used Ireland. There were black bees that showed

small differences genetically, from other black bees from elsewhere.  But there came a time that

the Irish Black Bee was in trouble. To make sure the beekeepers kept some bees they

imported bees from the netherlands. So now you can see that in Ireland there are 2

different species at work and that can be seen in the DNA of the bees.  Those 2 lines must

be from the original local adapted bee, and the imported Dutch bee.

For the black bee in Belgium, since the genetic pools are bound to meet each other as the

species grow and pan out, Dylan wanted to know now what that bee would end up like. 

Were there any problems we needed to anticipate? To answer that question he crossed

both species from Chimay and Tessel. The results are in the making but don’t show any

major problems as of jet.

As specific traits for the Tessel bee Dylan pointed out the running on the comb (as an

undesired trait) vs the hygienic behaviour (a desired trait).  I must have been distracted,

or Dylan didn’t mention any specific traits for the Chimay bees.

The concept of breeding programs

When you start to select bees to breed from you start out with X number of bee colonies. 

This is your base population. Out of those you select the ones you like ‘best’ and define

the traits you want to select for.  The minimum amount of bees to start such a selection

is 4 hives, and we’ll use that amount to start an example of how to select bees from there.

In our example we selected 4 colonies with a good

survival rate.

We then need to divide the selected colonies into

Drone lines (1) and Queen lines (3).

The drone line is best chosen one year in advance,

so you can create a lot of splits from that hive to

increase the amount of drones when doing your

queen breeding.  The apiary with the drone lines

will become your mating station.

For each Queen line we need 6 mated queens,

make sure you have plenty.

Now divide the new queens equally over 3 regions,

(after mating flights on the mating station) to see

the impact of the ‘local environment’.

If you are going to keep more, keep in mind that they

need to find enough resources in the regions you put

them in.  So don’t overdo it, or you’ll end up killing your program by overpopulating your area.

Next step is to monitor your beehives per region, process the data - preferably through available

software - and then select 4 hives from the suitable hives to restart the process.

Dylan stressed that this is a selection process, so in order to keep the variables at a minimum

there is a protocol to be followed, the guidelines of which are yet to be laid down.  But one of

the prerequisites is to not split these hives! As you want to monitor how they do with as little

interference as possible. You’ll be interrupting the natural process enough by monitoring for

desired traits like VSH (varroa sensitive hygiene) whilst opening the hives as it is.

Steps

1. Step 1

• Find beekeepers to cooperate with
• Find 3 regions, relatively isolated, with good forage.
• Find at least 4 colonies to breed from (see example)

2. Step 2
• Setup the test case hives with mated queens (use the same frame-sizes, and hives throughout the project, or at least per region) in a non-linear way.
3. Step 3
• After 8 weeks (all bees are now from the newly mated queen) the first test can be done (taking samples for DNA - wings - …)
• Through the year; keep track of the gentleness, calmness, honey production, any traits you want to select for.
  If you want to, this is how you keep track of hygienic behaviour:
1. cleanup of brood [destroy (freeze, puncture, …) 50 brood cells and monitor cleanup]
2. Take note of the natural mite drop (during first flow)
3. Count the mites on the living bees within the brood nest (sugar shake, alcohol wash, …)
4. Step 4
• Collect and process breeding data into values (preferably by bee breeding software) to select hives from your project that look most promising and repeat. 

Meta population

When enough beekeepers keep their own AMM and enough local bee breeding locations exist, we need to find a way to connect them (give them the means to breed amongst themselves) and treat them as a meta population.

To replicate this, once the bee breeding program is operational, and as a go between,

since not all beekeepers will want to step into this program, we need to move colonies

from one area to another.  This will ensure the diversity of the genes whilst still selecting

for the desired traits.

Backup population

Keeping the wild populations alive as backup is a necessity.  Selection programs lead

by human input can go wrong, as we have a more narrow selection process that filter out

‘undesirable’ traits.  It might just be the case that those -for us humans- undesirable traits

turn out to be vital for the survival of the bee species.

To keep the bees in the wild you need 

1. a conservation area, (in Germany there are several with a 10 to 12 km radius).
2. an agreement within that area to only work with local bees and to let them swarms
3. (or at least have beekeepers that do not work with local bees cut the drones out of
4. their hives to minimize pollution of the gene pool)
5. supervision of the population in the area
6. provide nesting cavities (with or without the option to monitor the hives)

Darwinian black box selection (dbss)

The idea here is to stop treating and let the bees

deal with outside pressures themselves.

In nature one hive throws swarms (splitting the

varroa population in 2 or more ways) preventing

the varroa to grow out of control.  This process is

recreated in the following concept :

• In May we add a full brood box for the hive to expand.
• As soon as both boxes are full, we split the hive 5 ways.
• 1 with the mother queen, 
• 4 others with open brood or queen cells from that hive.  

Practice shows that 2 of the 4 splits will not make it.

This concept has shown it is viable and after 4 years the bees were still alive.  The bees

themselves did not develop in the same way though; there were 3 different developments

for dealing with varroa.

1. is mainly grooming
2. is VSH 
3. has some of both.

Dylan told us there is a beekeeper in Belgium, Kamthout region, that has made a deal with a

professional beekeeper to recreate this project with 40 hives. They remain the property of the

professional beekeeper, so there was no cost for the person conducting the experiment.  And

so far the experiment is working… No details were given, but the news makes me happy as

there is merit in my own project.

After all this theory, Dylan opened up some hives to show us what traits to look for. 

Calmness, defensive posture, … he allowed the people to puncture some cells with a

needle so they could get the feel of how it’s done.

That’s all for today folks,

Bob Out