Home▸Biology▸Honeybee Breeding Selection Simulator

🧬 Selective Breeding: Heritability & Selection Indices

Interactive 3D breeding-population visualization where adjusting trait heritability sliders and selection pressure shows simulated colony traits like gentleness and yield shift across generations.

Biology3DModerate60 FPS

A grid of 64 simulated honeybee colonies, each coloured by gentleness and sized by honey yield, evolves generation by generation as you tune heritability, selection intensity, and the selection index's trait weighting.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

The breeder's equation R = h² × S in action: how strongly a trait responds to selection depends on both its heritability and how selective the breeder is, and how blending two traits in an index slows progress on each versus optimising alone.

🎮 How to Use

Set heritability for gentleness and yield, choose a selection intensity, and slide the index weight toward yield or gentleness. Click "Breed next generation" repeatedly to watch the population's colour and height shift over time.

💡 Did You Know?

Because a colony's traits blend the genetics of a queen and many drones from multiple matings, honeybee breeding programmes often need far more generations than single-mated livestock to fix a desired trait.

⚙ Under the hood

Interactive 3D colony-and-pedigree scene where adjusting heritability estimates and selection index weights shows how selective breeding shifts traits like gentleness and honey yield across generations.

selective-breedinghoneybee-geneticsheritabilityselection-indexapiculturepopulation-geneticsbiology

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install