Nat'l Geographic—"Building Better Bees"

[susan rudnicki]

This article describes some of the human genetic tinkering we are engaged in to try to do it better than “Nature”
Tellingly, at the end is a long discursion by Phil Chandler, of BioBees in the UK about the mistakes and hubris of this endeavor. The journalist writes—-“I meet Chandler near Buckfast Abbey, at a gathering of beekeepers. Many around him agree with his diagnosis. Still, they look vexed when he says that the best thing to do for varroa would be … nothing. Keep bees healthy and well fed, but let evolution work. For ten years or more, beekeepers might lose most of their bees, he concedes. But natural selection would eventually lead to some kind of resistant bee. “We have to think of these issues in terms of what is best for bees,” he says. “Not what is best for us.”

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/building-bees/mann-text

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