Environmental Adaptation of Honey Bees (Part 2 of 4) Ralph Büchler

A lecture given by Ralph Büchler at the 2019 National Honey Show entitled "Environmental Adaptation of Honey Bees and its Consequences for Selection (Part 2 of 4)" The lecture is sponsored by C.B.Dennis British Beekeepers Research Trust. The National Honey Show gratefully acknowledge the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers for their support.

Ralph Büchler
Working with honey bees since his youth, Büchler studied agriculture and biology at Bonn University and finished his PhD in bee science. In 1990 he moved to the bee institute in Kirchhain which is one of the larger German training and research centres for beekeeping. Since 1997, he is leading the institute with its about 20 coworkers. Honey bee selection, disease resistance and alternative varroa treatment concepts are in the focus of Büchler´s research activities. He has participated in many national and international research projects like Smartbees, Coloss, Fitbee and is recently coordinating an EU study on varroa resistant stock and a national selection project on SMR. Büchler acts as the scientific adviser for the breeder association “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Toleranzzucht”. He is author of hundreds of papers, book contributions and scientific films.

Environmental Adaptation of Honey Bees and its Consequences for Selection
A recent European study showed strong genotype – environment interactions which do affect the productivity, behaviour and survivability of bee colonies. Some data will be presented to better understand for example the relevance of winter clustering or swarming tendency. If it is true, that the best bee has to be identified under local conditions, selection should be focused on local populations instead of importing breeding stock from external sources. And in general, preservation of the natural biodiversity of European honey bees has to be recognized as a priority objective. For those reasons, the EU funded SMARTBEES project (www.smartbees.eu) supported the establishment of regional breeder groups in many European countries. A standard performance test protocol has been developed which enables access to modern breeding value estimation and improvement of local populations. Meanwhile, an “International Honey Bee Breeding Network (IHBBN)” was founded to support the cooperation of regional breeder groups and to further develop the strategy of “preservation by utilization”.