# General beekeeping > Native honeybees >  importation of bees

## Stromnessbees

A recent article about importation of bees to Scotland:

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com...es-.6358744.jp

Well spoken, Gavin!

If only we had some legal backing to keep out imports! Keeping them separate just doesn't work.

Doris

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## Jon

> Well spoken, Gavin!


Seconded. Well said big man!

It is going to be a struggle getting native queens mated without hybridization in this climate.

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## Trog

The farmer did have a point, though.  He keeps bees for a living; we're only doing it as a hobby.  Would we be any happier if there was legislation to stop imports and he'd gone round snapping up every available colony in Scotland?  Where would the beginners get their bees then?  Where would the rest of us find replacements for heavy winter losses?

Quite agree with others who say separation of colonies has no effect.  Drones have wings and know how to use them!

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## Calum

> It is going to be a struggle getting native queens mated without hybridization in this climate.


I would disagree there. If protecting native bees is imperative there needs to be a asserted effort to promote queen raising. 
Also artificial insemination is no problem these days, though the apparatus is not cheap. An institute in the UK should be whacking them out like there is no tomorrow. If queens are cheaply available in copious supply it is no issue to buy in stocks and requeen with a native queens. 
That should be promoted. The import of bee diseases is a very valid point. Here they need a vets certificate that they are free from disease, and there are transport exclusion zones all around european foul brood or AFB occurances.

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## gavin

If you have a mobile in your pocket it is amazing what calls and what questions can get thrown at you while you are unloading your shopping into the car at Tesco.  I had a long chat with the journalist and thought that I was giving quite a balanced appraisal.  I think that I'm usually conciliatory whenever I can be, and I do appreciate that professional beekeepers are earning their living from the craft (or some of them do at any rate) and so they have to do what they need to do to keep their businesses going.  Perhaps the more robust tone came from our President, but I'm always keen to build bridges and get cooperation going between beekeepers where possible.

In that light I thought it quite promising to hear from Jenny Fyall at Scotland on Sunday that Mark Noonan was planning to segregate surviving Heather Hills stocks from imports.  The area he works is dissected by ranges of hills and valleys, so having a decent segregation of stocks is possible and the numbers of colonies they have (or at least had!) might mean that they could pull this off.  Another interesting possibility for Heather Hills is that they have had such an intense EFB problem - and probably over several years - that their near-native survivors ought themselves to be heavily selected for EFB tolerance.  If their stocks are still reasonably native - and Mark seems to have a degree of sympathy with keeping native stocks - then surely cooperation between hobby enthusiasts and Heather Hills would be a good idea?

When I have the time I'll drop him a line.

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## Stromnessbees

> The farmer did have a point, though.  He keeps bees for a living; we're only doing it as a hobby.  Would we be any happier if there was legislation to stop imports and he'd gone round snapping up every available colony in Scotland?  Where would the beginners get their bees then?  Where would the rest of us find replacements for heavy winter losses?


I don't think that because somebody uses beekeeping to make a living he should have a carte blanche to do whatever is convenient for him. After all he uses a natural resource which he is sharing with all of us. 

To use the word sustainability again: commercial and hobby beekeepers are only working sustainably if they can provide their own replacements, none of us should rely on byuing in bees or queens (except for avoiding inbreeding). If times have just become tougher (EFB, AFB, ...) we will have to get better at looking after our stocks, rather than hope that somebody else will keep bailing us out.

Doris

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## gavin

I'm in complete agreement with Doris' views there.

What I'd like to see is a continuing improvement in beekeeping standards and knowledge, better husbandry so that high winter losses should not happen (yup, me too), better cooperation over queen and nuc raising, continuing proper inspection service with teeth when necessary, and some encouragement for large-scale commercial queen raising locally from local stock.  *Then* we should close the doors on imports as they are just too high-risk.  If you can't keep enough of your stock alive at that stage and make up your losses, then you shouldn't be in beekeeping.

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## Trog

That doesn't allow for the losses that are  no fault of the beekeeper.  We lost our only two stocks several years ago because a household name pest control company poisened a feral colony in the nearby school without blocking up the holes.  Our bees went robbing and came back dying.  Woodpeckers, badgers, vandals, moorland fires, and sheer bad luck also play a part in bee losses, and what about those dreadful winters when the bees simply can't get out for cleansing flights for weeks on end?

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## gavin

Perhaps I should re-phrase that.  If you are making your living from bees, then after appropriate help if you still can't keep enough of your bees alive then you shouldn't be in beekeeping.

There is a desperate need for local queen and bee production, and I was assuming that having small or larger bee raising enterprises in place would be a prerequisite to closing borders to imports.  Both to service the amateur and professional markets - something that perhaps one or more of the current commercial beekeepers might consider taking on.  Once bee health can be guaranteed and preferably with hardy, locally adapted strains.

We've just had one of these dreadful winters and it caught many beekeepers (me included) unawares but others - who know the best practices to keep their bees alive - did very well.

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## Adam

I might have missed tha answer somewhere else... The question is, what are the best practices to keep bees alive over winter in Scotland? Why did some do OK and others suffer large losses?

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## Calum

Primary cause = the beekeeper.

Incorrect varroa management leads to anemic bees which are open to all sorts of infections and illnesses

Trying to keep weak colonies through the winter brings strong ones down with them -  sick bees fly into the strong colonies & strong rob the weak and pick up the infections or by that stage more likely dysentery.

Not skimping on feeding enough in the autumn (giving the winter bees food in the winter early spring shortens their lives considerably).

Keeping bees in an area where they can collect a good variety of pollen.
In Russia winter runs from October to May (thats freezing temperatures down to -35°C) and they keep their bees alive harvest honey and manage varroa.

Cool site from the Republic of Mari El http://www.mari-el.ru/bee/ second biggest export after wood is honey. Population 800 000. Federal Law section is very interesting.

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## Jon

> I might have missed tha answer somewhere else... The question is, what are the best practices to keep bees alive over winter in Scotland? Why did some do OK and others suffer large losses?


I doubt if Scottish bees are much different from mine and I agree with Calum.
Feed generously in the Autumn and treat varroa in time so that the colony can raise healthy bees in the Autumn which will overwinter well.

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## gavin

> Feed generously in the Autumn and treat varroa in time so that the colony can raise healthy bees in the Autumn which will overwinter well.


... and if your bees are not in polystyrene hives, insulate the roofs overwinter and especially after the turn of the year in case the weather turns cold.  Keep an eye on other diseases too, and treat in time if necessary.  Sorted.

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## Neils

I'm not starting to wonder if I just had beginnner's luck this winter as I pretty much left them to it with no additional insulation other than a standard wood crownboard.  I am intending to add insulation this year so we'll see what happens.

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## Rosie

Nellie, my view is that top insulation is there only to prevent condensation from forming on the underside of the crown board and subsequentyly dripping onto the cluster.  Before OMFs became popular people often increased ventilation by putting matchsticks under the crown board or even removing the crown board completely.  Either method (ventilation or top insulation) will help keep the cluster dry and that, to me, is the most important requirement.  I don't think cold has any relevance in our climate, particularly if you have native or well-adapted stock.

Last winter your colonies probably remained dry due to decent ventilation so top insulation would not have been needed.

Rosie

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## gavin

I suspect that cold does matter, particularly after brood raising has re-started.  Uninsulated colonies (as all of mine have always been until the last few weeks) will eat up their stores at a much higher rate, but worse than that when they cluster over the brood in cold weather they will be less able to reach distant stores than colonies with a warmer brood nest.

G.

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## Rosie

I think insulation might give you a slightly earlier start in the spring but that's no good to me when there is no forage for them anyway.  For 7 or 8 years I have kept my OMFs open with wooden hives with just top insulation.  I have yet to get more than about 20% winter losses.  Last winter was by far the coldest I have experienced and had only 5% losses.  3 colonies were on an exposed, North facing hillside at about 1100 feet with open floors and all came through the winter as strong as any I had.  The feed they all consumed was not noticeably different to any other year either (about 20 lbs).  I have yet to find any correlation between cold and survivability amongst my stocks but perhaps not all bees are like mine.

Before I used OMFs I had solid floors with the crown board feed hole fully open and had about the same winter results.

Rosie

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## Neils

Interesting thoughts and, as ever, the joys of asking a question, multiple schools of thought.

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