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”.

[@tanitsankopetrov4877]

Thank you very much!

[@PatBullenWhatling]

Very interesting and inspiring, thank you Herr Buchler

[@chipfriday9967]

You all (Ya'll here in Texas) continue to impress me with the strength of your speakers and diversity of the subjects picked to speak upon. I will look for this years posts eagerly. Thanks so much for the sharing. Will there be video of the vendors who have also attended. I think many U.S. beekeepers would be interested, and would order ones or twos of the products/items they find interesting. That would push into the markets here in the U.S. when these beekeepers wanted to order these products for their own apiaries. Perhaps some "across the pond pollination" would happen. Thanks again for all of your hard work.

[@mcbastaff9709]

Thank you from Bethesda, Maryland

[@myoldtractorshed]

Thank you.

[@ApiaryManager]

Again, another very good presentation by Dr Buchler.
I think that Roger Petterson missed the point at ruclips.net/video/4DVm_L7Fkqc/видео.html . A sample from a homogeneous group is sufficient to infer information about the population in statistics. The number of colonies in each location wasn't really an issue.