Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Breeding Super Bees
Elliot Chang writes "Over the last five years the world's honey bee population has been steadily dwindling, with many beekeepers citing 2010 as the worst year yet. In order to save these extremely important insects, scientists are working on breeding a new super honey bee that they hope will be resistant to cold, disease, mites and pesticides. If all goes well, the new and improved insect will continue to pollinate our crops for years to come."
bees pollinate 90% of the world’s food crops
This is not like tinkering around with a ton of fissile material for a lawn ornament, this is breeding bees to ensure we have food. Creating a second breed of killer bees is not a nightmare scenario. There have been 11 deaths in the US due to killer bees since the 90's. Imagine we create a killer bee variety that's worse, and that number rises a thousandfold. Compare that nightmare scenario to 90% of the crops worldwide failing to be pollinated.
Which would you rather risk?
If you're that paranoid that every article about biological research makes you worry about "I am legend" scenarios or clouds of murderous insects, I don't know what you're doing typing on a computer. Skynet and the matrix people! What could possibly go wrong?!?
Not exactly.
Over in parts of Brazil, someone imported African honey bees to raise in CLOSED enclosures, and like all pets they escaped into the surrounding terrain when the colonies became large and their containment was challenged.
What I find odd is how quickly the African honey bees inter-bred with the native wild bee populations, and it didn't take long for the native bees to show traits that not even the original parent strains had shown. In my experience of managing several 40K hives with a single queen in them, the difference between a Africanized hive and a normal hive is 9 of 10 bees will attack you from an Africanized hive as opposed to a normal hive where 1 of 10 will only "investigate" and then 1 of 20 will actually try to sting you.
In contrast, Africanized honey bees produce less honey and are over-active in a schizzophrenic way, where when disturbed they will actually survey upto 2 miles around their hive to aggressively attack anything that moves and will remain this way notably longer than non-Africanized populations. In reality, all bees that have stingers are the females and they die after stinging once because they have a barbed stinger that rips their intestines and poison gland out of their abdomen (except the queen, she is barb-less). Why have Africanized bees not simply died-off from their suicidal attacks then? They key is cross-breeding, where only a fraction of thier genetics remains after a 50/50 mating of the original strain gets reduced to verry low genetic footprint after successive mating with other bees. Also of note, because the queen mates only once are rarely more in her life, her collection of male reproductive matterial is stored for her life inside her and it's as though it is preserved, and with successive matings that queen might lay eggs that hatch either pure non-Africanized bees or native bees: there is her genetic footprint, and then there is the share of potential offspring that are fertilized with a pre-stored African contribution.
In my opinion, scientists realy are the ones to blame: they are introducing unnatural successive genetic statistic into a genome that wasn't aquired through natural selection. With all the corruption of Monsanto Corporation, and the corruption of prior US Army partnerships to USDA to enrich and cross-breed dangerous animals and bacteria and fungus for warfare, you simply can't trust the scientists to ever having any wholesome ethics: the scientists themselves should be given the same suspicion as would when approaching a bee hive you suspect has lost it's native queen and could be turning into African bees with a new queen.
In reality, there are higher-quality bees that produce more honey, not as destructive when agitated, have better social customs, and are more patient in their lifestyle. The average European Honey Bee lives anywhere from 2 to 4 months, but a Africanized bee lives less than 3 weeks. That alone is proof that the Africanized strain is destructive to itself if not just a bastard to it's surroundings. By far in yield and quality of honey, the greatest replacement to the Africanized bees, as well as to phase-out all Honey Bees due to the recent contamination, I would choose the Denmark Black Bee. Like the Denmark red cow, the Black Bee is endangered. I find that quite saddening how such a higher-quality animal is always the one on the bench.