Basic Honey Bee Genetics for Beekeepers John Chambers

A lecture given by John Chambers at the 2019 National Honey Show entitled "Basic Honey Bee Genetics for Beekeepers" The lecture is sponsored by Buckinghamshire County Beekeepers Association. The National Honey Show gratefully acknowledge the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers for their support.

John Chambers
For John, beekeeping represents escape from everyday pressures. Inside his apiary, he is at peace and connects differently with the world. Town noises recede as a multisensory symphony of natural rhythms comes to the fore. He enjoys the passing seasons; the cawing of the high-flying resident crows who have become his friends; the hedgehogs; the mice; and the toads. He loves the botanical chaos of the untended borders and the teeming biodiversity of the neglected and increasingly bumpy lawn. In the middle of all this are his many honey bee colonies which get darker and easier to handle with every generation of locally-reared queen. Nothing beats lying in long grass on a summer’s day, gazing up at the sky and watching one’s bees flying in their thousands as they go about their activities, completely unbeknown to people passing by on the other side of a simple brick wall.

Basic Honey Bee Genetics For Beekeepers
Trust honey bees to flaunt basic genetics as taught at school! They follow more complex rules that we have thwarted for the last 150 years. To improve our national stock, we must collectively act in sympathy with the biological realities of honey bee genetics. This presentation starts by considering what a breed is, before revealing something astonishing about breeds of honey bee. Then, Gregor Mendel’s failure to improve his honey bees is contrasted with his landmark work with the common pea. The rest of the lecture provides insight into why he failed. In turn it considers quantitative trait loci; haplodiploidy and sex determination; genetic recombination, polyandry and the benefits of intra-colony genetic diversity; the fates of fatal, maladaptive, neutral and beneficial genes; the perils of inbreeding depression; the ecological headache of outbreeding depression; the importance of selection pressure; and what we might infer from genetic bottlenecks. All these genetic considerations (and a few more besides) should concern and fascinate us all. By the end of this presentation, it should be clear why it is so damaging to import honey bee stock and how we can improve our local stock quickly, simply and optimally, using an augmented “bees know best” policy.