Читать книгу Honey Bee Medicine for the Veterinary Practitioner - Группа авторов - Страница 35

The idea that honey bees have been domesticated by mankind remains a matter of debate. What is clear is that across North America there are populations of wild colonies of A. mellifera that thrive independent of beekeeping activities and that do not require the regular input of new colonies from honey bee swarms arising from managed colonies (Oliver 2014; Seeley 2017b; Radcliffe and Seeley 2018). Furthermore, the wild colonies tend to be genetically distinct from those that queen breeders produce for commercial purposes; the former are both more diverse genetically and they show strong evidence of regional adaptation (Figure 1.7) (reviewed in Seeley 2019a,b). Evidently, the honey bee colonies managed by beekeepers are semi‐domesticated, since their genes are influenced somewhat by queen breeders and their lifestyle is strongly influenced by their owners (Chapman et al. 2008; Oliver 2014).

An important lesson can be learned from the many animals that man has domesticated over the past thousand years: domestication carries with it a reliance on humans and generally a loss of the ability to survive in the wild. Here we can take some guidance from Charles Darwin:

One of the most remarkable features in our domesticated races is that we see in them adaptation, not indeed to the animal's or plant's own good, but to man's use or fancy. Some variations have probably arisen suddenly, or by one step. However, we cannot suppose that all the breeds were suddenly produced as perfect and useful as we now see them… . The key is man's power of accumulative selection: Nature gives successive variations: man adds then up in certain directions useful to him.

(Darwin 1868)

Among the honey bee traits that are known to have a genetic basis, resistance to disease has shown to be a strong component of colony fitness (Tarpy and Seeley 2006). With this in mind, we believe that both the beekeeper and the bee doctor will be wise to consider the following items when it comes to managing the genetics of honey bees.