# General beekeeping > Native honeybees >  Colonsay reserve approved!

## drumgerry

Well it's a start....

http://www.scotsman.com/news/environ...vens-1-3128377

Oh and anyone who looks at the comments will see my exasperated reply to someone describing AMMs as lazy!   :Mad:

----------


## GRIZZLY

At last the government has woken up and has done something positive for once.

----------


## The Drone Ranger

If there is only one beekeeper on Colonsay how will that work ?

----------


## Jon

It means no one else can decide to keep Buckfast on the island and wreck 30 years of hard work put in by Andrew with his native stock.
It's ok at the moment, but up to now there was no legal protection to stop some eejit new beekeeper keeping a different sub species on the island.

----------


## drumgerry

And it's not the biggest of islands.  I don't see it being over-run by beekeepers.  And if someone does decide to take it up at least there'll be some assurance for Andrew like you say Jon.

Thought Andrew's letter in the SBA mag this month was spot-on.  My fervent hope is that the Colonsay decision is something we can build on and point to as an example to be followed on the mainland in appropriate areas.  No reason this has to be an island-only phenomenon with the terrain we have here in Scotland.  I have a dream of someday a similar reserve being set up in my neck of the woods say in Glenlivet.  And of course elsewhere in Scotland.

----------


## The Drone Ranger

Ok but lets say someone on Colonsay other than Andrew Abrahams wants to keep bees 
Are they to obtain bees from him or could they bring in AMM bees from Ireland
How are AMM bees defined in this legislation
Presumably all this has been covered in some way

----------


## drumgerry

I'll need to have a closer look at the SBA mag  to see what the new legislation says on definitions - there's a fairly lengthy quotation of it in there.  Unless someone else has it to hand and can answer DR's question first.

----------


## The Drone Ranger

Hi Drumgerry

This is the press take on the legislation taken from the BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan...-west-24428707

_A new law will come into effect in January, making it illegal to import any bee other than the Apis mellifera mellifera to the area._

----------


## Black Comb

My novices understanding is that to be certain bees are amm DNA tests are needed.
Is this correct?

----------


## prakel

> Ok but lets say someone on Colonsay other than Andrew Abrahams wants to keep bees 
> Are they to obtain bees from him or could they bring in AMM bees from Ireland
> How are AMM bees defined in this legislation
> Presumably all this has been covered in some way


I asked a similar question on the other thread, having read the link which Gavin put up I saw no mention of specifically Scottish/British amm. I think that it's great that some effort has been made in this direction -thankfully in an area where no other existing beekeepers will suffer from finding that their colonies are now classed as illegal -during the middle of winter, five or six months before they would realistically have chance of requeening. I wonder whether French/Danish/Dutch amm are deemed to be as good (from a conservation reserve perspective) as Scottish stock for the purposes of the legislation.

----------


## Peter

> Hi Drumgerry
> 
> This is the press take on the legislation taken from the BBC News
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan...-west-24428707
> 
> _A new law will come into effect in January, making it illegal to import any bee other than the Apis mellifera mellifera to the area._


Pity the BBC headed their article with a picture of what are clearly hybrids!  Also got this wording a bit wrong: ' but just one honeybee species, the native Black Bee (Apis mellifera mellifera).'

----------


## gavin

That's a bit Stromnessian of you Peter! Still, we didn't ban Doris (for that anyway) so we'll let you off with it too.

Very pushed for time so I'll tidy it late tonight unless someone else gets there first.

Thanks Ems.

----------


## drumgerry

Just looked again at the SBA mag piece about Colonsay.  The quote from the Order was not very comprehensive it turned out.  No mention of a definition of AMM.  Surely they must have put one in the legislation!?  If not it's a huge oversight.  Does anyone have access to the full text of the Order in order to confirm or deny the definition question?

----------


## The Drone Ranger

Hi Drumgerry
One of my colonies (definitely not what I would call AMM ) scanned out a 77% AMM could I take that one to Colonsay, varroa and all, or would I be in jail shortly afterwards. ?
I don't get the SBA mag at the moment -- waiting to join again in January  :Smile:

----------


## fatshark

Interestingly the Scottish Wildlife and Countryside Act (again, like Scottish politics, Gavin will correct the terminology) makes it illegal to import 'foreign' species ... so taking varroa to Colonsay would be a crime (and a disaster).

I think this is a great development and those of you reading this that had some small part to play in supporting the proposal - directly or indirectly - should be congratulated.

Well done.

----------


## The Drone Ranger

> Interestingly the Scottish Wildlife and Countryside Act (again, like Scottish politics, Gavin will correct the terminology) makes it illegal to import 'foreign' species ... so taking varroa to Colonsay would be a crime (and a disaster).
> 
> I think this is a great development and those of you reading this that had some small part to play in supporting the proposal - directly or indirectly - should be congratulated.
> 
> Well done.


Not to sure about that Fatshark as varroa is already in Scotland you might not be importing it
Unless Colonsay is an independent country you would be spreading it possibly
When it comes to spreading invasive species I think the list includes Japanese knotweed perhaps grey squirrels Zander Catfish etc I don't know if varroa is on the list or not.

It might all be covered in the legislation that has been passed
The newspapers often just skim the surface but if AMM are undefined and the restriction only says non AMM can't be taken to Colonsay then that only amounts to a partial protection.
Also If that legislation appears to restrict other residents of the EU from bee keeping on Colonsay then that might run into trouble later as well
Of course that's all nonsense and it won't ever happen but sometimes the waterproof defence is just an illusion
Anyway hooray for the devil and his advocate

----------


## fatshark

Hi DR
The wording on the proposed amendment to the 1981 Act states:
_The release of any animal outwith its native range in Scotland is an offence. The release of any honey bee on Colonsay and Oronsay is therefore an offence._ 
Note that keeping bees is not considered release ... 
If you take this to the (il)logical conclusion - the native range of Varroa does not include Colonsay (or thankfully some of the other remote areas). However, there is a possibility that Varroa would be considered an invasive species ... these are again covered under the Act and there are restrictions to their importation.
I agree that the 'devil is in the detail' and hope it is not challenged. What is perhaps more interesting is whether the range could be extended to include other islands (or perhaps other geographically isolated areas) so strengthening the Amm position.

It's good to be positive about a bee-related story in the national press ... other than positive it's rubbish that is  :Wink:

----------


## The Drone Ranger

Fatshark you are right let's be positive hope there is possibilities for a full scale AMM breeding station on the Island in due course

----------


## drumgerry

Yeah hopefully there's some funding available to Andrew to expand his operation.  Can't have him hoarding his precious AMM bees eh?!  (reference to Phil's comments re AMM for those non members of the SBA!).

----------


## Jon

It's a small island and he has 50+ colonies so probably would not support many more.

----------


## drumgerry

Maybe he might be interested in learning II techniques to speed up any queen breeding improvements he wants to make.  I feel that as we have only one of these reserves we need to throw everything at it to make it the best it can be.

----------


## Jimbo

After visiting Andrew back in June he has a pefectly good breeding system already. When I was there a few people were picking up 5 frame nucs in the paynes poly hives. Some were on their way to Ireland to improve their stocks. Some people were picking just up queens. He also overwinters queens in Nucs or in Apideas. Andrew will supply queens but would prefer they go to people who are trying to improve their Amm. It was also mentioned that he supplies beekeepers in Mull and other Amm strongholds which he sees as an extension of Colonsay.
As an added extra if you visit Colonsay it will dispel the myth that Amm are agressive. Andrew has been selective breeding for over 30 years in an enclosed system and the improvements he has made is amazing.
If you are going to visit Andrew he insists you leave all your beekeeping equipment behind and is strong on biosecurity for the Island

----------


## gavin

> As an added extra if you visit Colonsay it will dispel the myth that Amm are agressive. Andrew has been selective breeding for over 30 years in an enclosed system and the improvements he has made is amazing.


I have to say that I wish our president had been to see Andrew's bees before he repeated that stuff on dark bees in the September Scottish Beekeeper.  Andrew wrote a cracker of a riposte in the current issue, and mentioned that Phil had witnessed bees at the Robsons in the borders in March which were vigorous and gentle.

Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk

----------


## Jimbo

After visiting Andrews bees It proved to me that if you can get an isolated site and by careful selection and the hard work that Andrew has put in on selection it is possible to breed in good traits to Amm. Most of us are not in that situation. It is very difficult to improve your stocks with other beekeepers not on board and even worse if they are importing other strains of bees into your area.
The bees on Colonsay are well worth protecting and could be a great resource for people wanting to improve their Amm stocks.

----------


## Jimbo

Hi Drumgerry,

Andrew uses the cupkit system and sometimes grafts. He produces a lot of queens each year. A possible way forward is to identify other Amm strongholds (Work in progress) and use material from Colonsay to increase or improve the Amm stocks in these areas eg Mull or Orkney and some areas on the mainland and then II from these stocks to increase the Amm areas.

----------


## drumgerry

Fair enough Jimbo.  If Andrew feels his systems are all they can be that's great.  But if he needs help or wants to expand into the realms of II he should have the funding to do so.  After all he's doing something truly worthwhile as opposed to a certain other scheme funded to the tune of £200k

----------


## Trog

I'm not sure I'd want other islands to be forced to keep only pure AMM.  My apiary has pure AMMs and also West Coast mongrels.  Like any other livestock, the AMMs are a variable bunch.  Some are slow to build up - very slow - and don't produce much honey but because of the small numbers are easy to handle and give confidence to beginners.  Other AMMs of ours are absolutely cracking colonies which gave a good crop this year and last year.  Both varieties of bee and the in-betweenies in our apiary are delightful in spring and summer but require a little more respect at this time of the year.

It's a bit like folk who've only met nervous, nippy collies saying that they're all like that, while others know that a well-adjusted collie, trained properly and allowed to be a collie is the most delightful dog in the world!

BTW, it's not that easy to buy bees from Colonsay, especially if you're a beginner who doesn't want to fork out for a course, accommodation and travel ... then the nuc on top of that!

----------


## Mellifera Crofter

> ... My apiary has pure AMMs and also West Coast mongrels.   ...


So how do you manage to keep your AMMs pure, Trog?
Kitta

----------


## Jimbo

Hi Trog,

That interesting that you have mongrels on Mull. I have not come across any yet with the samples I have been sent

----------


## Jon

> I have to say that I wish our president had been to see Andrew's bees before he repeated that stuff on dark bees in the September Scottish Beekeeper.  Andrew wrote a cracker of a riposte in the current issue, and mentioned that Phil had witnessed bees at the Robsons in the borders in March which were vigorous and gentle.
> 
> Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk


A brief summary of that exchange is in order Gav!

----------


## Trog

Jim, some of my samples were more pure AMM than others, weren't they?  Mind you, the results from the wing morphometry on some that I'd assumed weren't very AMM because of their yellow colouring seemed to be 'blacker' than they looked. We're taking part in the nosema testing project so should we keep the wings from the frozen samples for you to have a look at?  Or perhaps you'd like to come over and do a winter session to show us all how to do it?  We have microscopes available.

Kitta, the AMMs seem to be keeping themselves pretty pure - possibly because they mate in worse weather so are perhaps the only ones out and about a lot of the time!  They also tend to mate next to the apiary.  With this summer having been so hot, it'll be interesting to see how this year's queens' offspring turn out.  Maybe they'll be less pure!  Certainly there's not much point my trying to get pure matings here as we have a lot of ferals about.  Nor would I attempt it; I like the mixtures and, as I said, not all AMMs are lovely in every way!

----------


## drumgerry

This might be a slight deviation Trog but I think, and I'm sure anyone who breeds any (I hesitate to say it in relation to bees) livestock thinks, that selection pressure needs to be brought to bear before you can get bees of the type you want.  AMMs left to their own devices may not be anything special although they'll likely exhibit traits that we recognise like flying in less than optimum conditions.  I'm sure Galtee, although they started with AMMs, had to spend a number of years selecting for temper and productivity to get bees they are happy with (maybe someone with experience of their breeding programme could explain further?).  I'd be concerned for the future of AMM as a bee of choice unless we can provide people with good tempered and productive bees.  No reason that can't be done - we just have to select for those traits.

----------


## Jon

The Galtee bees are both docile and productive and that is the fruit over 20 years selection including an II programme.

----------


## gavin

OK Jon.  Here is Andrew's letter.

----------


## Peter

[QUOTE=The Drone Ranger;21667]Hi Drumgerry

This is the press take on the legislation taken from the BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan...-west-24428707

What a pity the BBC chose to have a picture of a hybrid!

----------


## Peter

Pity the BBC used a picture of a hybrid - and got the wording wrong!

----------


## gavin

The consultation documents including all the responses are available here:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/En...eeconsultation

----------


## Phil McAnespie

> OK Jon.  Here is Andrew's letter.


Having spent all day at the computer answering emails in respect of the SBA I can assure you that the last thing I wished to do at this time of the morning (0220 hrs) was to once again comment on incorrect assertions which people make about me.
In the September SBA magazine I wrote:
I will however respond about the rearing of local black bees in Scotland.  I have discussed this type of bee with many older and extremely experienced beekeepers who indicated that they would not wish to work with them again.  Their experience was that the bees, though very frugal were slow to build up, usually not even tempered and although producing honey in many different climatic conditions were not so appropriate for our present day farming.
That having been said, it is the interest of some beekeepers to rear and promote this type of honeybee today and that should be applauded and encouraged as in the case of the SBA support of the Colonsay Project.
It has been my experience however that those who appear to have this bee are very unwilling to produce them in quantity and disseminate them to others.  I personally have tried on occasions to purchase a stock and have always been unable to do so.

The question I ask myself is, where in these comments am I, quote: rubbishing the black bee as not worth bothering about as, stated by Andrew Abrahams?

The experience I have had with a friends bees, which, after wing morphometry appeared to be Amm, was exactly as I wrote and from the posts here, is the same experience as commented by Trog.  Further to that and far more impressive as far as experience is concerned is that this is the view expressed by very experienced beekeepers whom I have spoken with including one who has held an NDB qualification for many years and worked with Amm.  This is not to say that all Amm bees are alike.  They vary as do every type of bee but the experience of those, I have spoken to was, that they were a bee for the clover and heather crop in particular.
This in no way rubbishes the Amm bee but purely comments that they are not all alike.  Surely that holds good for every race of bee.
In respect of farming practices is concerned, there have been huge changes in recent years.   Crops, boundaries, hedges, set aside, fertilisers, wild meadows etc have all caused an issue for our honeybees and unfortunately have to be taken into account in our beekeeping practices. 

In respect of Andrews comment quote: advice is merely the prejudice of others
There is a world of difference between advice and experience.  I learned a huge amount from an old mentor who had a vast amount of beekeeping experience and never once evidenced any prejudice.   

In respect of trying to obtain Amm colonies, I can truthfully say that I tried to buy bees from Andrew and others with no success.  I discussed this at length one evening recently with Andrew and spoke about the fact that those with them should be involved in more breeding programmes if they wish to strongly promote their use.  When it comes to having a desire to see Amm reintroduced to areas, selling nucleus colonies is not the way to bring it about.  Utilising stock to accompany a queen is a waste of resources.  Whereas utilising that same stock to rear queens has a far greater potential.  This does have mating difficulties in many parts of the UK and Instrumental Insemination brings about a greater potential of success in the professionals hands.

In respect of Andrews kind invitation I have agreed to go to Colonsay next year and am very sure that I will experience quality stock.  Having discussed with Andrew photographic images from the past I am very sure that there were days gone by when colonies, of whatever race, were extremely calm and pleasant to work with and the colonies on Colonsay may well be the same. 
My comments were expressed in an article written originally about the importation of honeybees and should be read in that context.  Anyone who knows me, knows that I have the greatest respect for all races of honeybees.  I dont believe they are all appropriate for all locations and some have qualities better than others but I have never expressed views, which rubbish any type of honeybee, and I certainly object to that assertion.

Just for clarification in respect of the Colonsay, Oronsay project is concerned, I with others on behalf of the SBA executive attended meetings at Edinburgh and there sought to support this project.  I discussed various aspects in relation to practical legal issues and gauging from the posts in this discussion my comments have come to pass.  There is a difficulty in providing an exact legal definition of Amm and from the coverage of the act it appears that someone with Amm bees from any location can take them onto the two islands.  I am aware that Andrew would wish this to be different and I support him in that view, however the legalities of the situation may provide a difficulty if challenged.  I do trust however that this does not come to pass and that Andrew is able in time to work with the stock he has on the island. 
The legislation can be found at the following site:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/20...0130279_en.pdf

As an aside, the SBA as an organisation recommends that local good quality stock should be used for rearing colonies. 

Phil McAnespie

----------


## Phil McAnespie

Having spent all day at the computer answering emails in respect of the SBA I can assure you that the last thing I wished to do at this time of the morning (0220 hrs) was to once again comment on incorrect assertions which people make about me.
In the September SBA magazine I wrote:
“I will however respond about the rearing of local black bees in Scotland.  I have discussed this type of bee with many older and extremely experienced beekeepers who indicated that they would not wish to work with them again.  Their experience was that the bees, though very frugal were slow to build up, usually not even tempered and although producing honey in many different climatic conditions were not so appropriate for our present day farming.
That having been said, it is the interest of some beekeepers to rear and promote this type of honeybee today and that should be applauded and encouraged as in the case of the SBA support of the Colonsay Project.
It has been my experience however that those who appear to have this bee are very unwilling to produce them in quantity and disseminate them to others.  I personally have tried on occasions to purchase a stock and have always been unable to do so.”

The question I ask myself is, where in these comments am I, quote: “rubbishing the black bee as not worth bothering about” as, stated by Andrew Abrahams?

The experience I have had with a friend’s bees, which, after wing morphometry appeared to be Amm, was exactly as I wrote and from the posts here, is the same experience as commented by Trog.  Further to that and far more impressive as far as experience is concerned is that this is the view expressed by very experienced beekeepers whom I have spoken with including one who has held an NDB qualification for many years and worked with Amm.  This is not to say that all Amm bees are alike.  They vary as do every type of bee but the experience of those, I have spoken to was, that they were a bee for the clover and heather crop in particular.
This in no way “rubbishes” the Amm bee but purely comments that they are not all alike.  Surely that holds good for every race of bee.
In respect of farming practices is concerned, there have been huge changes in recent years.   Crops, boundaries, hedges, set aside, fertilisers, wild meadows etc have all caused an issue for our honeybees and unfortunately have to be taken into account in our beekeeping practices. 

In respect of Andrew’s comment quote: “advice is merely the prejudice of others”
There is a world of difference between “advice” and “experience.”  I learned a huge amount from an old mentor who had a vast amount of beekeeping “experience” and never once evidenced any “prejudice”.   

In respect of trying to obtain Amm colonies, I can truthfully say that I tried to buy bees from Andrew and others with no success.  I discussed this at length one evening recently with Andrew and spoke about the fact that those with them should be involved in more breeding programmes if they wish to strongly promote their use.  When it comes to having a desire to see Amm reintroduced to areas, selling nucleus colonies is not the way to bring it about.  Utilising stock to accompany a queen is a waste of resources.  Whereas utilising that same stock to rear queens has a far greater potential.  This does have mating difficulties in many parts of the UK and Instrumental Insemination brings about a greater potential of success in the professional’s hands.

In respect of Andrew’s kind invitation I have agreed to go to Colonsay next year and am very sure that I will experience quality stock.  Having discussed with Andrew photographic images from the past I am very sure that there were days gone by when colonies, of whatever race, were extremely calm and pleasant to work with and the colonies on Colonsay may well be the same. 
My comments were expressed in an article written originally about the importation of honeybees and should be read in that context.  Anyone who knows me, knows that I have the greatest respect for all races of honeybees.  I don’t believe they are all appropriate for all locations and some have qualities better than others but I have never expressed views, which “rubbish” any type of honeybee, and I certainly object to that assertion.

Just for clarification in respect of the Colonsay, Oronsay project is concerned, I with others on behalf of the SBA executive attended meetings at Edinburgh and there sought to support this project.  I discussed various aspects in relation to practical legal issues and gauging from the posts in this discussion my comments have come to pass.  There is a difficulty in providing an exact legal definition of Amm and from the coverage of the act it appears that someone with Amm bees from any location can take them onto the two islands.  I am aware that Andrew would wish this to be different and I support him in that view, however the legalities of the situation may provide a difficulty if challenged.  I do trust however that this does not come to pass and that Andrew is able in time to work with the stock he has on the island. 
The legislation can be found at the following site:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/20...0130279_en.pdf

As an aside, the SBA as an organisation recommends that local good quality stock should be used for rearing colonies. 

Phil McAnespie

----------


## prakel

> There is a difficulty in providing an exact legal definition of Amm and from the coverage of the act it appears that someone with Amm bees from any location can take them onto the two islands.  *I am aware that Andrew would wish this to be different and I support him in that view*, however the legalities of the situation may provide a difficulty if challenged.  I do trust however that this does not come to pass and that Andrew is able in time to work with the stock he has on the island.


Great news -I'd previously thought (based on the excellent article which he wrote about Tasmanian beekeeping for Bibba) that he may have been the unnamed person mentioned in this thread here:

http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/sh...ns-for-imports




> Was chatting to a well known AMM breeder on a island up north,even he was thinking about importing some breeder queens, either from Denmark or Tasmania


Which of course would have blasted a hole right through the spirit of the scheme. Glad to hear that it's not him after all.

----------


## Jon

Hi Phil



> “I will however respond about the rearing of local black bees in Scotland.  I have discussed this type of bee with many older and extremely experienced beekeepers who indicated that they would not wish to work with them again.


Unless these older beekeepers are about 100+ years old their comments on 'black bees' will not predate the introduction of imports into Scotland so what they are describing may well be black hybrids or black mongrels as opposed to AMM. Or may even just be 'misremembered' nonsense as I find the older beekeepers are the source of almost all the old wives tales prevalent in beekeeping. If you are back at the UBKA Conference next March I will be delivering a talk called 'Myths in Beekeeping' which will rake over all these well engrained beliefs which do the rounds - to try and separate fact from fiction. There is video on this site somewhere showing Black bees from France arriving into Scotland in the 1930s. Comments like this from older beekeepers are pure gossip. And there are commercial beekeepers with a vested financial interest in promoting imports in spite of the fact of the damage they do to local breeding programmes. It is important to understand who may have a prejudice when they seek out your ear.




> It has been my experience however that those who appear to have this bee are very unwilling to produce them in quantity and disseminate them to others.  I personally have tried on occasions to purchase a stock and have always been unable to do so.”


I keep AMM and I reared 50 mated queens from 30 apideas this summer, 45 last summer when it rained for 3 months and about 50 the summer before. The problem here is not lack of willingness to share. The problem is lack of people doing queen rearing. How many of the older beekeepers you spoke to rear their own queens in an organised way, ie involving active selection from the best stock. If Scotland is like N. Ireland it will be virtually none of them.

The issue here is the need to promote, support and encourage local queen rearing initiatives.




> Instrumental Insemination brings about a greater potential of success in the professional’s hands.


This will never produce queens in volume and is more suited to rearing expensive breeder queens where you have complete control over both the maternal and paternal side of the genetics. It is time consuming.




> The experience I have had with a friend’s bees, which, after wing morphometry appeared to be Amm,


This is one of the main misconceptions about morphometry. It cannot 'prove' a bee is AMM even if the wings are 100% in the correct quadrant of the scattergram. 
Wing morphometry can however demonstrate quite clearly that a colony _could not_ be AMM, ie, if most of the wings are in the wrong quadrants and the '% AMM' is very low. In this case it is very likely a hybrid. Those using scattergrams to select breeder queens will soon find that most colonies increase the % as the selection process is selecting for wing pattern irrespective of any other underlying genetics. This is clearly explained in this paper by Robin Moritz.

----------


## prakel

Without wanting to drift too far from the good news which this thread highlights I do think that there is an issue with regards to why amm, reared and mated in the UK appear to be so hard to source. I did try (researching their availability etc is what actually brought this forum to my attention in the first place). In fact I've just finished my second full season on the waiting list of one of the English breeders who's not too far distant from my own location. It seems odd to me that no one has made any noticeable inroads into supplying amm queens (which based on the theory that I often see repeated, should actually be easier to get mated than some of the other types) on a commercial level.

----------


## drumgerry

> The problem is lack of people doing queen rearing. How many of the older beekeepers you spoke to rear their own queens in an organised way, ie involving active selection from the best stock. If Scotland is like N. Ireland it will be virtually none of them.
> 
> The issue here is the need to promote, support and encourage local queen rearing initiatives.


Which takes me back to why the hell the SBA were supporting the awarding of £200k of funding for bee imports!  I can think of no more than a handful of people in a twenty/thirty mile radius of me doing anything like selective breeding of queens and then only on a very small scale.  Sooner or later we're going to come to the realisation that things need to change and that some funding/vision/direction needs to come from up top (ie the SBA).  Until then I'm doing what I can in my own locality to develop an AMM strain suitable to my environment - including buying this year a full II kit and starting to use the blighter from next summer onwards.

"Sustainability" was quoted as a key factor in Scotland's Bee Health strategy in Phil's letter to the SBA magazine in reply to one of mine (alluded to by Phil above).  Continued support for imports makes a complete joke of that.  The *only* sustainable way forward is to develop bees suitable for our environment and to breed them here.  Not Slovenia, Greece or New Zealand - here in  Scotland!  The only suitable candidate for that is AMM in my opinion.

I should say credit to Phil for replying on the forum.  A damn sight easier than the month long turnaround of the magazine!

----------


## mbc

> It seems odd to me that no one has made any noticeable inroads into supplying amm queens (which based on the theory that I often see repeated, should actually be easier to get mated than some of the other types) on a commercial level.


Its the nature of the beast.
Supplying large numbers of mated amm queens from a slowly evolving breeding program is a very different prospect to buying a few buckfast/carniolan/ligurian breeder queens from established breeding programmes in Europe and multiplying them and selling their progeny.
Every mated queen sold from a one man band breeding effort is potentially waving goodbye to the next few seasons best breeding stock.  Breeding bees is similar to breeding anything in that you get a bell curve of success, some rubbish, most middling and some top performers.  Obviously its not on to sell the rubbish and it takes time to evaluate the rest, most queens sold are sold as soon as they show a good brood pattern, long before any serious evaluation of the stock can be made.
The quality of improvement achieved with some of these bees, I'm thinking of the carnies in particular, has been underwritten for a long time by centrally funded breeding programmes far in advance of anything directed at amm.
Perhaps if we in Britain put some serious resources behind bee breeding, in a hundred years or so quality amm breeding stock will be so ubiquitous the price and availability will be comparable to imports.  In the mean time, as Andrew Abrahams wrote in his excellent reply, well meaning individuals trying their best still have to pay the mortgage somehow.

----------


## prakel

> Perhaps if we in Britain put some serious resources behind bee breeding, in a hundred years or so quality amm breeding stock will be so ubiquitous the price and availability will be comparable to imports.  In the mean time, as Andrew Abrahams wrote in his excellent reply, well meaning individuals trying their best still have to pay the mortgage somehow.


Yep. But of course if those serious resources aren't put behind bee breeding, which is probably the likely way that things will pan out, then in a hundred years time people will be having the same conversation.

----------


## Trog

I suspect that if one individual were to be given lots of government money to breed a specific type of bee there would be endless threads along the lines of 'Why was £xxx wasted on so and so's breeding programme when it should have gone to xyz's?'  ... or eradicating varroa .. or acarine ... or nosema ... or whatever a particular beekeeper's/area's problem is!  There's always an individual or project more worthy of the money handed out or cause championed by an organisation.

Re the idea that the SBA 'supports imports' I feel there's a world of difference between supporting something and realising that there's nothing that can be done to stop a perfectly legal activity so therefore not opposing it - which is what I gather from what's been said actually happened.

----------


## drumgerry

To be fair Trog I never said the SBA supports imports in that last post of mine. What I said was "the SBA were supporting the awarding of £200k of funding for bee imports".  Bit of a difference wouldn't you say?  The SBA seems to have a bit of a sit on the fence policy as far as I can see.

Like Prakel says if nothing is done to change how we go about things then beekeepers will be having the same conversation in 100 years time.  A sad prospect in my opinion.

----------


## Trog

Wasn't aimed at you in particular, drumgerry - there's been a lot of complaining about money given for this, that and the other, which could in various folks' opinions be better spent.  As far as I can see the SBA exec takes a pragmatic approach to things that cannot be changed and tries to encourage better practice where things can be changed. Dialogue rather than opposition.

To take an example: I would rather nobody smoked cigarettes, for a lot of very good and personal reasons.  It is, however, legal for folk to do so and by default for me to have to breath in their smoke while walking along the street, etc.  I would be wasting my time lobbying for cigarettes to be made illegal so save my energy for more worthwhile things that I CAN do something about.

Fair enough?

----------


## Phil McAnespie

Dear All,
Due to the pressure of beekeeping commitments I am unable to elaborate on my previous comments but would like to pass on very quick bullet points.
•	The beekeepers I was referring to are extremely well versed in apiculture but did, I would surmise, have bees affected by imports from early in the century and in Scotland. I would imagine that there are extremely few, which were not.  However they commented, as others have that some were extremely nice to work with and others not.  Their opinion was that they would not go back to them as they found their build up to be slow albeit excellent for clover and heather.  “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”.
•	The situation in Southern Ireland is very different from Scotland.  Imported bees have come into Scotland for over a century and there are few areas, which will not been affected considerably.  However many of these bees are excellent producers and have acclimatised to the respective areas.  Thus the comment about I.I. as being probably one of the methods at present to preserve the purity of Amm stock if queens are allowed to mate on the wing.  Given that the beekeeper is selecting the drones then nature doesn’t get the opportunity of selecting the fittest which is one of many issues.  I agree this is not a good cost effective mechanism but helps the purity.  To be able to flood areas with specific races of drones is great if achievable (i.e. Ireland) but in Scotland is difficult.
•	I agree that wing morphometry is only a starter for ten but few beekeepers have the availability of exact science technics.  Given the huge affect of imports in Scotland where is the exact pure Amm standard to evaluate against.  I speak as a layman scientifically but with a little legal knowledge.  This has issues for the Colonsay situation as well.
•	 From experience Amm availability in the Scotland is extremely difficult as Prakel confirms.  Again Southern Ireland has many benefits in this respect.  Well done and keep it going.
•	In respect to Drumgerry’s post, about the SBA support for the £200k funding.  The subject was related to funding being given to farmers in Scotland for losses due to the extreme winter.  The bee farmers were afforded this support and due to EU and UK legislation they have the right to bring in stocks from legislated countries.  Given the fact that bee farmers earn their living and support workers from beekeeping they have to be considered. That together with the relationship, which has developed between the Scottish Government, Bee Farmers, SASA and the SBA it was a sensible and pragmatic to agree to this situation.  In an article I quoted the well known saying “God grant me the Grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed etc ----.“ I know that the King Canute story is meant to convey his stupidity at trying to stop the tide, however from my reading it appears that it was the opposite that he was conveying. (When his orders were ignored, he pronounced: "Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless and there is no King worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven and earth and sea obey eternal laws," (Historia Anglorum, ed D E Greenway)   
Sometimes you have to know your limitations!! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13524677
However that doesn’t mean that people can’t try to apply for funding from different sources for specific projects.  I appreciate though that imports make it very difficult to achieve the goal.  In this respect it seems strange to say, but it is easier for local associations to get funding than the SBA.  That doesn’t mean that the SBA doesn’t care.  
As a token of my respect for this subject, I am flying over to Athlone for the NIHBS conference on 10 November 2013. Maybe Jon e could meet and discuss further.
Thanks also to Drumgerry for the comment about my response. I agree that it would be better if I was allowed to reply to comments in the same month they were issued.  I can speak to the editor and try to arrange this.  Due to time pressures I cannot get onto the forum near as often as I would like or should.  Please however contact me by email if there is a link to which you are looking for me to comment on.  The forum is a great tool and one which Gavin and his colleagues are looking after well.

----------


## Jon

Will be pleased to meet up again Phil. I am doing the final presentation of the day in Athlone titled 'Setting up a queen rearing group'

I do my beekeeping in the north of Ireland and the background bee population is very mixed here. The situation is much better in the Republic.

With regard to queen production, I am going to try and scale up a bit next year so do give me a shout in June if you are still looking for queens. Micheal Mac Gilla Coda is planning to scale back a bit and would like some of the rest of us to take up the slack.
We already have three queen rearing groups working closely in Down and Antrim and there are another 3 or 4 set to begin operations in 2014. The Native Irish Honeybee Society ran a training day on 3rd August and we had 21 invited beekeepers present for the day with a view to training them up to start up their own groups. These will all be working with native stock.

Check out the website. There is info about the conference.

PS. And re. the alleged slow buildup. I was at a NIHBS meeting on 7th April this year and some of the guys had supers on already.

----------


## Jon

> Every mated queen sold from a one man band breeding effort is potentially waving goodbye to the next few seasons best breeding stock.


You have me sussed. I can hardly bear to part with them!

----------


## Trog

> You have me sussed. I can hardly bear to part with them!


It's a common feeling; however I've come round to the view that since bees' swarming behaviour is designed to avoid the risks of all the colonies being concentrated in one place (with attendant problems of competing for forage and the risk they could all be wiped out by, for example, fire, poisoning or disease), we should maybe learn from them and sell/pass on as many as we can in order to spread the colonies and genes over a wider area.  Who knows?  If disaster strikes our apiary, the beekeepers who benefited might remember and let us have a nuc or two of our favourite bees' descendents!

----------


## Trog

[off-topic] ... so nice to see the 'real' Canute story being quoted for once!!  :Cool:

----------


## Jon

> It's a common feeling; however I've come round to the view that since bees' swarming behaviour is designed to avoid the risks of all the colonies being concentrated in one place


In an ideal world you would keep a queen for a couple of years and you would then know enough about it to assess it as a potential breeder.
Problem is, the queens in apideas are moved on a couple of weeks after they start to lay so there is no way of knowing how good (or bad) the queen could potentially be. If they are grafted from a good queen, you know the mother but the grafts taken will be half sisters fathered by the various drones the breeder queen mated with. These daughters in turn mate with the drones in the local area which introduces a second variable.

II can greatly reduce the potential variation, you select drones from quality queens,  but is not really a technique for volume production of queens.
It is a good way to avoid hybridization to produce potential breeder queens.

----------


## drumgerry

> Wasn't aimed at you in particular, drumgerry - there's been a lot of complaining about money given for this, that and the other, which could in various folks' opinions be better spent.  As far as I can see the SBA exec takes a pragmatic approach to things that cannot be changed and tries to encourage better practice where things can be changed. Dialogue rather than opposition.
> 
> To take an example: I would rather nobody smoked cigarettes, for a lot of very good and personal reasons.  It is, however, legal for folk to do so and by default for me to have to breath in their smoke while walking along the street, etc.  I would be wasting my time lobbying for cigarettes to be made illegal so save my energy for more worthwhile things that I CAN do something about.
> 
> Fair enough?


Trog - of course your position is fair enough!  It's just that I disagree with it!  No animosity or ill feeling - it's just that we disagree.  And I did wonder if your comments re the SBA and imports were in connection with what I said but happy that you were making a general point rather than one in reply to me specifically.

So...Phil and yourself have said that the support of the SBA for the £200k subsidy is a pragmatic response to a difficult situation (to paraphrase a bit and please correct me if this doesn't reflect what you think).  I would contend that instead it is an easy, don't rock the boat response.  Pragmatic suggests there are no real alternatives and we just have to make do and get on with it.  Again I disagree.  I think there is a viable alternative - to take steps now to ensure a *long term* sustainable future for Scotland's bees.  What we have just now isn't working in my opinion.  For example beginners have real difficulties getting bees and the commercial beekeeping sector seems to struggle in anything other than a mild-ish winter.

Like I said my response to this situation is to do what I can at an individual level.  I am rapidly losing faith in anything real being done by the SBA/BIBBA/the Scottish Government for the forseeable future.

----------


## Trog

Fairy nuff.  What do you think the SBA should be doing now; in 5 years; in 10 years? If the bee farmers had gone out of business this year without the subsidy, could we amateurs have made up the shortfall in pollination/honey? Could we amateurs have made up the serious shortfall in colony numbers?  Just wondering ...

Various governments helped out farmers and crofters who lost sheep in the severe winter.  I wonder if there's a sheep forum somewhere where folk are saying it was the farmers' fault for stocking the wrong kind of sheep?

----------


## Trog

Wondering further ... if the bee farmers HAD gone out of business would there have been a huge number of spare colonies (ie the surviving ones in their possession) on the market for amateur beekeepers to snap up? Now, there's an interesting thought.

----------


## drumgerry

I've said this lots of times before both here and in the SBA magazine.  I think the SBA should be lobbying for funding to put in place an infrastructure which can help put Scotland on a self sufficient footing for bees.  In the way that Germany and Switzerland have state funded (or at least state help for) eg. queen breeding stations.  Not something which is going to happen overnight.  But to make it policy and to divert some resources to pursuing it as an objective.

And I don't think sheep farmers and crofters would have been importing replacement stock from Greece/New Zealand/Slovenia would they?!!  So a completely different ball game.  I'm not anti-commercial beekeeper.  I'm anti the way they (or most of them) go about it.  If they (or most of them) operated on a sustainable footing rather than being completely dependent on queen/package/nuc imports I'd be their biggest fan.  And has anyone ever quantified the pollination role of commercial colonies?  Would for example the soft fruit industry collapse without them?  I think not.  Don't most of the polytunnel fruit growers use imported bumbles anyway?  What difference to OSR crops or pollination of heather without commercial beekeepers?  Not a lot I suspect.  Unless someone can persuade me otherwise....

----------


## Trog

Dunno, Drumgerry.  I've noticed, however, a huge difference in the amount of fruit (apples, currants, rasps, etc .. and even the garden brambles) I get, and the quality of it, when we have more bees rather than fewer.  In a year when we had no bees in the apiary, the fruit crop was terrible all round.  I think numbers of colonies on site at flowering time do make a big difference to the crop.

----------


## mbc

> Like I said my response to this situation is to do what I can at an individual level.  I am rapidly losing faith in anything real being done by the SBA/BIBBA/the Scottish Government for the forseeable future.


Surely the fact that the Scottish Government has taken the time to legislate this new 'order' for Colonsay is a step in the right direction and a positive confirmation that they take the plight of the bees seriously.

----------


## drumgerry

I agree with you Trog!  Bees are good for fruit!  But at a commercial level how much of a difference are we talking?  And would it be missed all that much?  I may be wrong but isn't most of the Angus/Perthshire soft fruit under cover and so more suited to bumbles?

Yep MBC it's a great first step but my concern is that it'll be the last.  From what I can see "the Government" believes what they're told by the "experts" and acts accordingly.  What I would like to see is a cohesive set of policies aimed at a sustainable future for our bees rather than a series of responses to those who shout the loudest.  It's been a good result this time but the subsidy to the bee farmers shows that won't always be the case.  

And for those who were wondering (maybe no-one!) a while ago I said I would get in touch with my MSP (a certain Richard Lochhead) about all of this.  Well I framed an email along with my OH Lucy (who is interested in this as much as I am fortunately!) and to date we have had no response.  I guess what we were saying isn't what he wants to hear in light of how pleased he seemed with himself about the announcement of the bee farmers subsidy.

----------


## The Drone Ranger

> Hi Phil
> 
> 
> Unless these older beekeepers are about 100+ years old their comments on 'black bees' will not predate the introduction of imports into Scotland so what they are describing may well be black hybrids or black mongrels as opposed to AMM. ].


I think that's wrong Jon (sorry)
Many old beekeeping books written by very respected beekeepers describe methods of subduing the bees which we would find unnecessary and bizarre with the majority of bees including hybrids and admixtures of all types.
The bees you are breeding may well be gentle but that is the product of selection not race

----------


## prakel

Interesting point DR re the old books. With regards to selection it might be fair to suggest that the old time skeppists were possibly managing against the selection of calm bees -in a similar way as I imagine that todays let alone beekeepers may unwittingly be doing. Personally I believe that there's no doubt that a colony can be trained (for want of a better word) to accept people walking past or working close by which in itself may account for some of the 'but they kept skeps in their gardens' comments which we hear. Opening that same colony can however result in a very different response. 

As for Phil's oldtime beekeepers, I don't think that they need to be over 100 years old, all they need for their views to have some validity is to have worked with strains of the same amm which other modern day Scottish beekeepers are using

edit: For clarity, none of the above is suggesting that calm. productive amm with an early (if deemed important) build up can't be selected. But in order to improve bees it must first be important to know any existing limitations. Personally I see no reason why productive amm can't be raised, if it wasn't possible then I doubt that certain north country bee farms would still be using them. But this brings us back to the large scale breeding/supply of amm which mbc, who uses these bees, believes is going to take substantial (public?) investment and a hundred years. That's got to be a commercial no-brainer if ever there was.

----------


## Black Comb

I know nothing about the operation on Colonsay, but won't they be susceptible to in-breeding?

----------


## Jon

> I think that's wrong Jon (sorry)
> Many old beekeeping books written by very respected beekeepers describe methods of subduing the bees which we would find unnecessary and bizarre with the majority of bees including hybrids and admixtures of all types.
> The bees you are breeding may well be gentle but that is the product of selection not race


That's what I was trying to say DR. Imports have been arriving for  so long that the vast majority of comment re. 'black bees' is bound to refer to mongrels or hybrids unless the observations actually predate importation.
And nothing subdues a bee more than killing the colony like the skeppists used to do in days of yore, probably with pure AMM.
Comment in ancient tomes may just be a description of bad practice of the day.
As MBC pointed out in a previous post, there will be a natural distribution regarding aggression or any other characteristic within a pure race population of any of the sub species.
That is where selection of bee improvement comes in as you want to breed from your best.
The Galtee bees are very gentle and over two decades of selection has gone into that.
Roger Patterson from East Sussex frequently claims that you can reduce aggression in a couple of generations by selecting from the docile and culling the aggressive colonies - but this only applies if your neighbours are not stirring up the gene pool all the time with imports.
With hybridisation, crossing two docile races can produce an aggressive hybrid and that is the root of the problem which will be caused by the current mass import of ligustica into a non ligustica area. 
Gavin has reported lots of yellow banded offspring appearing in the offspring of his dark queens.
Is there going to be compensation for those who have breeding programmes set back like this? Doubt it.

----------


## prakel

Out of interest, although a slight deviation from the thread, does anyone here have a timeline for the German carnica project?

----------


## drumgerry

That's the sort of info I'd love to have Prakel.  Calum might be the one with the gen on that.  And while we're about it can anyone point me in the direction of some info on how the Swiss/German mating station system works?

----------


## Peter

Three charges seem to be levelled regularly against native bees: temper, low productivity and slow build up; the last two possibly being related in areas growing OSR.  Here is my take.
Most of my bees are what I would describe as near-native (and getting more so each year), reasonably fast to build up, and giving an average crop of just under 70lbs per colony based on the number fed the previous autumn.
Temper is undoubtedly related to the amount of introgression from other races - which is very high in this region.  We overcame this by rearing a large number of queens from good-tempered colonies then went around re-queening one apiary at a time (I have 23 so the process took some time).  All queens were killed if there was any bad temper at all and the colony re-queened.  This was done regardless of their performance - and it is not easy to kill off queens when the colony has just produced 250lbs of honey!
The effect of all this was to flood a large area with good drones so that any queen flying to mate would stand a very good chance of meeting up with near-native drones carrying the right genes for temper.
Each year we have then reared more queens and continued to replace any undesirable ones.  Except for last year when we moved house and the bees had to take a back seat, we have continued this process since 2005.  It will have to be on-going because of the area in which we live.
At the same time, we have selected for productivity and early build-up (productivity is scored against other colonies in the same apiary to avoid skewing the results due to available forage).
The improvement in temper was achieved very quickly - just by removing the bad ones the whole situation changed almost instantly in just one generation.  It really is so easy to achieve.
Of course, for any breeding programme the secret is detailed record keeping with traits being scored on, in our case, a scale of 1-5 where 5 is best.
Our Excel Stud book now holds assessment for 1228 queens and 5299 separate assessments (not every assessment covers all the traits).  The spreadsheet is available free on our association website).

----------


## Jon

The German conversion to carnica started decades ago. Calum may have chapter and verse.

Gerry, one of the German mating stations was an island in the Baltic. There used to be a video on the now defunct IWE site.
Virgin queens in mini nucs were sent via train and ferry to the island to mate with the drones there.
They were returned to the apiary of origin once the queen started laying.
It sounds like an expensive process.

----------


## prakel

> The German conversion to carnica started decades ago. Calum may have chapter and verse.


But how long did it take them to actually start making a noticeable improvement? Some members of Bibba were upholding the German's carnica programme as an example of what could be achieved back in the nineties so although their breeders are still working to improve what they have I think that it might be erroneous to suggest that it's taken until now to reach an 'acceptable' standard.

To muddy the waters a little, I've seen mention (on a carnica breeder's website) of how it's now becoming far more difficult in certain areas of Germany to get successful in-race matings due to the growing popularity of the buckfast.






> The experiment - beginning in the 50s to influence the German race through the dissemination of Carnica positively, failed according to our opinion.
> 
> The main reason for this seems to be the consistent decrease in the number of beekeepers, accompanied by the shrinking number of bee colonies and beekeepers. Most of the beekeepers belong to the first group described above against them, however, is a group of professionally oriented Buckfast beekeepers who correspondingly have a large number of bee colonies and often hold their colonies regional far apart. We think it s daring to believe that an uncontrolled and free mating of queens could bring the desired result.
> 
> The indigenous German bee is no longer dominated by the Carnica bee. The visual features of those bees leave no doubt that the Buckfast bee has influenced the appearance of the German bee. An uncontrolled hybridization of Carnica and Buckfast is unproblematic in F1-generations and indeed even positive. Thereafter, however, (F2-generations and others) the bees show many undesirable features in such colonies.


As I don't like quotes which aren't backed up I'm going to include a link to the site from which it's taken, but I recognize that it is a commercial site and as such I'm happy for Gavin/Neil etc to break or remove the link if they feel that is the appropriate thing to do.

http://www.apisjovita.de/index.php/e.../breeding.html

----------


## mbc

> Temper is undoubtedly related to the amount of introgression from other races - which is very high in this region.  We overcame this by rearing a large number of queens from good-tempered colonies then went around re-queening one apiary at a time (I have 23 so the process took some time).  All queens were killed if there was any bad temper at all and the colony re-queened.  This was done regardless of their performance - and it is not easy to kill off queens when the colony has just produced 250lbs of honey!
> The effect of all this was to flood a large area with good drones so that any queen flying to mate would stand a very good chance of meeting up with near-native drones carrying the right genes for temper.
> .


This largely mirrors my experiences, two steps forwards one step back for years while simply increasing from the best, and then suddenly giant leaps forwards as soon as I had enough surplus queens to afford to be ruthless with regard to culling queens showing uncalled for aggression or other undesirable characteristics.

----------


## The Drone Ranger

It's a good thing for bee keeping generally if the SBA president represents the broad bee keeping community.
AMM enthusiasts are a vital part of that community but only part, and you catch more flies with honey than vinegar
(Actually that is another myth probably)
Some types of bees are better suited to different circumstances and indeed different bee keeping methods 
That makes perfect sense to me and I can't see how anyone could object to that statement.
We have had discussions on here relating to the swarminess of Carniolans and after examining facts I have concluded that while they may be more disposed to early season swarming. That is in no small part due to the point in the season when they reach peak numbers of bees ie during oil seed rape
The commercial beekeepers know this and favour them for that reason and their good temper
Most people are like me they have hybrid bees, the jack of all trades, and they tend to adjust themselves to whatever environment they are in
No doubt having a wide spread of genetics gives them greater potential to adapt.
So selecting from the available hybrid bees may still be the best option for the vast majority of folk  :Smile:

----------


## Jon

Beekeepers need to be shown how to find a queen and replace it with a better one.
I am amazed how many people who have been keeping bees for a long time cannot actually do this.
Sometimes it is because the person is squeamish and may have given the queen a name, like you would with your Labrador, but more often they just don't know where to start with regard to (a) finding the aggressive queen, (b) rearing/acquiring a suitable replacement queen, (c) introducing it successfully.
There will be limited bee improvement if people tolerate aggressive colonies and don't work together to improve the local race of bee without stirring up the gene pool all the time.




> So selecting from the available hybrid bees may still be the best option for the vast majority of folk


The population would eventually arrive at a stable mongrel which would likely be an ok bee to work with as long as people don't keep introducing genetic material from different sub species. Most bee populations are given no chance to stabilise.

----------


## The Drone Ranger

Any queens with names like Wild Oscar or Psycho Sam have to go 
I can't believe folk get really attached to the aggressive types though

You are almost certainly right Jon because each aggressive hive (queen) produces lots of drones and if just one of those blighter's mates with the next year queens the whole apiary can suffer as it only needs a proportion of them to be nasty and the whole bee keeping experience suffers
On the whole all the bees in large commercial operation are very gentle but it does alter the population
Murray McGregor speaking to the Barefoot Beekeeper says he thinks the Carniolan drones from his hives improve the local gene pool
Not sure the recent Italian introductions can claim the same (in this locality at least)
If Oil Seed Rape production stopped then the pressure for importation would be very much reduced
Meanwhile anyone involved in breeding specific races would have more chance with Carniolans  :Smile:

----------


## drumgerry

I think temper problems are always going to be a factor whilst imported queens and hence unrestricted hybridisation is only a click or two of a mouse away.  To me the AMM thing is simple logic.  The buggers are designed in their pure form for the climate (or series of sub-climates) that we have in North West Europe.  Why would you want to keep introducing bees from dissimilar climates?  My take on it is that we have to choose a pure race of bee and then breed the bejeezus out of it.

And another point I wanted to make which arises from the Colonsay consultation responses - in particular the response by Dave Goulson.  He argues that AMM are not native to northern England, Scotland and the Western Isles.  My understanding from my reading of Ruttner is that they are.  His (Ruttner's) AMM distribution line includes mainland Scotland, the Western Isles and Orkney but excludes Shetland.  Anyone have any thoughts or links to research on this subject?

----------


## Jon

That seems like a contentious remark from Dave Goulson.
The bees excavated in the Viking dig at York are used as the standard for wing morphometry as they could not have been anything other than AMM.
The bees were dated at 975 to 1025 AD.

Page 11 of 'The Dark European Honeybee, Ruttner Milner Dews shows a range which includes the entire British Isles bar Shetland.

The York Viking dig is discussed on p39-41.

Archaeologists have a specific definition of 'native' with regard to UK flora and fauna and it is something like present since 5000BC so maybe that is where the confusion lies. Some regard anything which arrived since the last ice age as non-native. We have a paleo-botanist retired prof in our association who clarifies such matters for us.

----------


## drumgerry

975AD is native enough for me!  It was the map that Goulson produced in his consultation response which perplexed me.  The distribution of AMM on it is very different from the map Ruttner produced.

----------


## prakel

> 975AD is native enough for me!  It was the map that Goulson produced in his consultation response which perplexed me.  The distribution of AMM on it is very different from the map Ruttner produced.


It's the map which Sicamm use, but without the explanatory legend.

http://www.sicamm.org/WhatApis.html

----------


## Jon

I would love to see how that map was drawn up and what evidence was used to create it.
The border line looks like it runs straight through Belfast so I might have to move my colonies to the correct side of the Lagan to make them Kosher.

----------


## prakel

> I would love to see how that map was drawn up and what evidence was used to create it.
> The border line looks like it runs straight through Belfast so I might have to move my colonies to the correct side of the Lagan to make them Kosher.


Or start breeding true native pollinators :Smile: whatever they may be.

I wonder if there's a fair argument for stocking areas which lie outside of the honey bee's classic distribution limits with buckfasts, would that be fairer than imposing a specific race on an area.

----------


## Jon

Are you talking Antarctica? Gets my vote.

----------


## prakel

> Are you talking Antarctica? Gets my vote.


Well yes, Antarctica also falls outside of Sicamms map....

----------


## prakel

> I would love to see how that map was drawn up and what evidence was used to create it.


Someone here must know Dorian Pritchard, maybe they could ask him.

----------


## Jon

Wherever logic went into drawing the line on the Sicamm map, you would not have found anything other than AMM to the North and to the West.
Bees would have been moving North as the ice sheets retreated and suitable forage plants established themselves.
I would think it is a fair assumption to assume that there were bees in Devon before there were bees in Inverness.

The Irish Sea, unlike the North Sea or the English Channel is a deep natural Barrier over which swarms could not have flown so Ireland was likely populated later as well.
Our paleo botanist speculated about how bees might have arrived in ancient times, ie thousands of years ago rather than hundreds when humans would have been moving bees about.
A swarm on a floating object such as a log would have been one possibility.




> Someone here must know Dorian Pritchard, maybe they could ask him.


Peter knows him. I have heard him speak. I think Gavin knows him as well. He is a fixture on the Bibba/Sicamm speaking circuit and writes frequent articles in the Bibba magazine.

----------


## prakel

So it should be easy to get a detailed answer from him (as the copyright holder).

----------


## The Drone Ranger

I think Dorian Pritchard's article for the SBA mag was overstating the case for AMM 

I don't know either Phil or Andrew but I would say Andrew came across perhaps a little ungrateful for the support he has had from the SBA and might have to buy more than a few beers to put that right.
It's perfectly reasonable to suggest that the over promotion of AMM while there is in fact no supply chain might be counter productive
That's my view anyway  :Smile:

----------


## prakel

> It's perfectly reasonable to suggest that the over promotion of AMM while there is in fact no supply chain might be counter productive
> That's my view anyway


I agree. Seems fairly pointless to me. Pipe dreams of banning imports are best kept private until such time as a viable alternative is available for those people who don't wish to work with localized mongrels.

----------


## Jon

It is one of life's great mysteries as to why Bibba has not managed to produce a supply chain of Amm or near native bees at this point.
I mean, it is not that difficult to do some queen rearing and create a few surplus queens.

----------


## Mellifera Crofter

> Beekeepers need to be shown how to find a queen and replace it with a better one.
>  ...
> Sometimes it is because the person is squeamish and may have given the queen a name, like you would with your Labrador,  ...


That's me. Queen Spud is my favourite and long may she reign.  (But she's good-natured and I always see her.)
Kitta

----------


## drumgerry

Pipe dreams they might be on the Jurassic Coast Prakel.  But we may have a rather radical political change coming here starting next year where lots of things will be up for grabs!

----------


## prakel

> Pipe dreams they might be on the Jurassic Coast Prakel.  But we may have a rather radical political change coming here starting next year where lots of things will be up for grabs!


Well, as long as any changes don't leave me as a second class citizen with mongrel bees while others get to work at improving a stable pure race I don't mind too much :Smile:

----------


## Jon

> That's me. Queen Spud is my favourite and long may she reign.  (But she's good-natured and I always see her.)
> Kitta


Lets hope she is a floury queen rather than a waxy one.
You could call her Pinky after Kerr's Pink, my favourite spud.

----------


## Peter

> It is one of life's great mysteries as to why Bibba has not managed to produce a supply chain of Amm or near native bees at this point.
> I mean, it is not that difficult to do some queen rearing and create a few surplus queens.


First and foremost - internal squabbles.  Many in BIBBA believe that its original stated position (i.e. that you should breed from and improve only your local stock) is still the only way forward.  Dave Cushman followed that line to the end and believed that he might even be able to distinguish between lines down to a village level if he worked on the morphometry hard enough!  All of that would no doubt have been fine and dandy if we had not had so many imports over the years.

The imports left many of us with very little good native material with which to work, so we looked around  for native stock from the nearest possible location.  Much of my best stock came from Ben Gillman who worked with Albert in the East Midlands group.  (Albert also made grafts available to people, and who knows how much more he might have achieved if he had not lost his sight).  But those of us who have sought out stock in this way are accused by the purists of 'parachuting' in queens - and it has even been said that our actions in bringing material from another region is no different than importing from overseas.
Roger Patterson has taken the line that the most important thing is to get beekeepers rearing their own queens - regardless of the race, believing that we can convert them to native later.  Here many of us beg to differ.

Queen rearing is time-consuming and fraught with risk on a reasonably large scale - look at last year! - and it would be a very brave (or foolhardy?) man that tried to make a living from it.  There are more certain ways to pay the mortgage and feed a wife and children.  Even given perfect conditions, it is still not possible to raise queens very early in the season - and that is when so many want them.  Many bee farmers make a good living by building colonies early, then splitting them and adding an imported queen.  With the demand from beginners (all determined to 'Save the bees') over recent years this has been a good earner; but few beginners understand the implications of importing bees and so many are just not prepared to wait for home produced stock.

So while it may not be difficult to 'create a few surplus queens', it is very difficult to produce them on the scale of the imports each year (10-12k plus?) and to produce those early enough to compete with those whose consciences are overridden by monetary considerations.

I do not believe that we will ever get this sorted out on a national scale, so we can only work at a local level and hope to produce pockets of good bees that may influenece those in surrounding regions.  If that is what we are to do, then BIBBA seems to have a very small role to play - which is what it has already done for more than 50 years!

Much of this sums up why I resigned from the BIBBA committee.

What a pity that our NBU seems unwilling to get involved in saving native bees.

----------


## Peter

Was the line not drawn on average maximum temperature?

----------


## Jon

> First and foremost - internal squabbles.


Yep. Total disaster. Too many big egos and the result is total chaos.
I heard you had left the committee recently.




> Many in BIBBA believe that its original stated position (i.e. that you should breed from and improve only your local stock) is still the only way forward.  Dave Cushman followed that line to the end....


I have heard that from Bibba people and it is total ignorance. If you read about AMM, for example the Jensen and Pedersen paper, it states clearly that there is much more variation within a given AMM population than between AMM populations in different jurisdictions. Within the British Isles there should be no issue at all about moving queens about. People who argue that have failed to understand basic AMM genetics. Grandiose claims about what wing morphometry can tell us are total nonsense. Sorry Dave Cushman but you got that one completely wrong. 

Andrew sourced his queens from several places in the UK mainland. They did not evolve on Colonsay. The issue here is disease risk which is why I would hesitate to bring in AMM from outside the British Isles. Did you know that to legally import a Galtee queen from Tipperary to Belfast you have to fill in the same paperwork as importing a queen from Slovenia!! Strange but true.




> Roger Patterson has taken the line that the most important thing is to get beekeepers rearing their own queens - regardless of the race, believing that we can convert them to native later.  Here many of us beg to differ.


I would agree about the importance of teaching people to rear queens but why not locate at least one top rate queen to graft from. I can think of a dozen people in Ireland could sell you an excellent AMM queen.




> Queen rearing is time-consuming and fraught with risk on a reasonably large scale - look at last year! - and it would be a very brave (or foolhardy?) man that tried to make a living from it.  There are more certain ways to pay the mortgage .....


I am tempted. I have the mortgage nearly paid off. Not for the faint hearted though. Maybe better considered as supplemental income.




> Even given perfect conditions, it is still not possible to raise queens very early in the season...


We need to overwinter them in nucs or adapted mini-nucs with a smaller number of bees. There has been quite a bit of discussion on the forum about this.




> but few beginners understand the implications of importing bees and so many are just not prepared to wait for home produced stock.


Education, education, education




> I do not believe that we will ever get this sorted out on a national scale, so we can only work at a local level and hope to produce pockets of good bees that may influence those in surrounding regions.


Got to start somewhere.
3 years ago we had no queen rearing groups in NI.
Now we have three and I expect that number to rise to 6 or 7 by next summer.

----------


## Mellifera Crofter

> ... You could call her Pinky after Kerr's Pink, my favourite spud.


Thanks Jon - her daughter has just found a name.  She will not be sold in the spring.
Kitta

----------


## drumgerry

If the SICAMM line was simply drawn on average temperature then it's a nonsense to say it disproves the existence of AMM north of it as Dave Goulson contends in his response to the Colonsay consultation.

Peter I think I'm with you on the concept of "parachuting" non-local AMM queens in.  With imports as they have been for more than a century it's the only way to make a start for many of us.  Those BIBBA members who say this runs counter to the organisation's founding principals need to take a break from their navel-gazing and take a walk in the real world.

I'm a firm believer that the ease of importing a queen is one of the biggest disincentives to rearing/breeding your own.  I don't think things will ever change for the better on a Scottish or British Isles-wide basis till this option has been closed off.  Those who say our hands are tied by our commitments to the EU need look no further than what we did over Ash die back disease.  Biosecurity seems to be a good enough reason to prevent imports of one form or another and it wouldn't take much to argue for our bees in that connection.  Priorities would soon change if the commercial guys had to raise their queens themselves.  Right now there's nothing to motivate them to do so.

----------


## Jon

It will be a tough old squash if a named queen turns drone layer. Mine have numbers but I do have my favourite numbers.

----------


## Pete L

> Right now there's nothing to motivate them to do so.


 A few beefarmers do produce good numbers of their own queens Gerry, and some even over winter them so they have plenty of queens ready in early spring.

What is needed is more  beekeepers to do the same...big or small scale.

----------


## gavin

> It will be a tough old squash if a named queen turns drone layer. Mine have numbers but I do have my favourite numbers.


Same as my potatoes!

----------


## drumgerry

Completely agree Pete.  There's no reason the commercial guys can't do it - the convenience of importing is there though to stop them (or some of them)

----------


## Peter

> Completely agree Pete.  There's no reason the commercial guys can't do it - the convenience of importing is there though to stop them (or some of them)


Not sure that I agree.  There is a good reason in that at the time that is best for queen rearing anyone with a 'commercial' number of production colonies will probably be working 16 hour days managing them, extracting the spring crop etc.  Even on my small scale (around 150 colonies) there are many days when I just don't stop running.  9 day inspections would require me to look at around 17 colonies each day - 7 days a week - but that number increases when the weather works against you, so perhaps 25-30 is more realistic.  That is not too bad - until half of them have queen cells, honey needs taking off and extracting - and you get half a dozen orders for honey.  Not much time left for queen rearing!
If you also move colonies for pollination then it all gets even more fraught.  It would be fine if there was enough profit to employ staff, although that introduces a whole raft of work in itself.

----------


## drumgerry

Maybe a more realistic number of colonies might be in order for the commercial guys then Peter.  Harsh but they have to have businesses which are sustainable surely?  And aren't most of the bigger guys team operations anyway?  I still think they should be devoting a portion of their operation to queen rearing.  I appreciate that being a commercial beekeeper involves long working hours at certain times of year but that's the nature of the beast.

And I've said it before and I'll say it again and you can accuse me of being harsh if you like - if they can't make their businesses work in a sustainable way that isn't harmful to the rest of us maybe they need to go the way of the dodo.  To quote Metallica: "sad but true".

----------


## mbc

> I have heard that from Bibba people and it is total ignorance. I.


This a bit strong IMHO Jon.  
There is great merit in preserving as many local ecotypes as possible.  I applaud your subtle attempts at Irish amm imperialism, but to my mind it would be a great loss to British beekeeping if we were to identify only one good line of amm bees and multiply them anywhere well meaning people wish to work with amm.  There is no doubt at all that there was(and is) great variation in native bee populations, and while I'd go along with culling bad bees from breeding efforts all over, I think our overall position would be much more robust for the future if as many different types of our native honey bees as possible are preserved for future generations.
Any papers showing greater variation within a population than between distinct populations are a bit of a red herring IMHO as its obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes that bees within a population can follow a 'type' that can be quite different to purportedly genetically similar populations elsewhere ( I am quite happy to admit that even 'basic' genetics baffle me !).  The late Grif Jenkins of Cwrtnewydd used to have large brown  hairy bees which were undoubtedly native, off the scale with negative discoidal shift if morphometry is your thing, and used extensively by BIBBA members to establish amm lines elsewhere ( Derbyshire), Welsh amm imperialism was alive and well in the 20th century !

----------


## gavin

It is a complex one, this. I'd have no qualms about trying some of Andrews stock here, not because they're Scottish but because he sourced his stocks from different parts of the mainland and since then they've been in a closed system. But I would be reluctant to introduce Irish stock simply because there are still local types to be found here. Some are weak and unsuitable, some nasty (maybe due to hybridity, maybe not), some riddled with chalkbrood, and many not as pure as the purists might like - but they are variable and are worth selection from (whether or not they retain French, Dutch, Polish or whatever Amm genes). 

Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk

----------


## mbc

> What a pity that our NBU seems unwilling to get involved in saving native bees.


They are involved, they actively promote their imported bees and even give recommendations to independent queen breeders to follow their spectacular foresight in managing to buy good queens from Denmark etc.

----------


## Jon

> This a bit strong IMHO Jon.


Sorry. I don't think I made my point properly. What I meant was there are people in Bibba who think that you cannot source a queen from another part of the UK under any circumstances. I have heard them at it!
Yet there are parts of the UK where there are only hybrids or mongrels, plus a variety of different recently imported sub species. Most of the UK in fact.
If you want to set up a breeding group based on AMM, the only realistic alternative is to source a few good queens from further afield, ideally as local as possible. The idea of starting from local stock and selecting to improve is fine but you will never recreate AMM by doing this - although you can read articles in the Bibba magazine which tend to suggest this is possible.
The background bee population in N Ireland is generally total rubbish, swarmy often aggressive stock. In the 1970s the Department of Agriculture encouraged beekeepers to restock with Buckfast. This was the same time they were giving grants to farmers to rip out all the hedges and replace them with fences. 95% of local beekeepers now have mongrel stock which is not subjected to any form of selection or improvement. In fact the colonies which make queen cells the earliest are usually those which are used to make up nucs, ie the swarminess is actively selected for.
How would you start to breed AMM from that background.
I have no qualms at all about improving my stock by introducing the odd Galtee queen or Galtee origin queen which I graft from.
The difference in quality is really marked.
But the 200 miles from Tipperary to Belfast is obviously too much for some in Bibba!

----------


## keith pierce

Anyone know who got one of  Andrews queens in Ireland, as I would love to make contact with them for some fresh genetics.

----------


## mbc

> Sorry. I don't think I made my point properly. What I meant was there are people in Bibba who think that you cannot source a queen from another part of the UK under any circumstances.


I see what you mean, my apologies.  
Of course sourcing quality material from outside to provide a good starting point to a breeding effort is acceptable.
I think one of the most valuable contributions beekeepers make( that is, beekeepers who raise their own queens), especially since varroa and the demise of wild populations of bees sustaining themselves, is each virgin that mates with the local drones throws a net over the best genetics in the air at the time and preserves them in her spermethetica for years to come.  It is up to us to identify the most advantageous genes and nurture them and expand their scope, and perhaps more importantly, identify the 'inconvenient' genes, those prone to excessive swarming or bad temper or low productivity and remove those from the picture.  Whats most convenient for beekeepers isnt always where natural selection takes the bees.
Perhaps the most satisfying thing of all about beekeeping for me is the feeling that things are noticeably changing for the better over the years and it is achievable to make noticeable improvements over a beekeepers lifetime.  The pity of it all is that it all seems to descend back to a mediocre status quo quite quickly once the man behind the job is gone.  Its good to think that there are many capable hands to continue with Michael Mac's work as he takes more of a back seat.

----------


## Mellifera Crofter

> Anyone know who got one of  Andrews queens in Ireland, as I would love to make contact with them for some fresh genetics.


How many beekeeping priests do you know? I've forgotten his name, but he's a priest, and he looks almost always amused.
Kitta

----------


## Jon

Sam Millar was there on Colonsay as well. He is a retired Presbyterian Minister.
Don't know if he brought a queen home to Co. Derry.

Kitta, there are loads of Irish clergy keeping bees, all denominations.

----------


## Jon

> I think one of the most valuable contributions beekeepers make( that is, beekeepers who raise their own queens), especially since varroa and the demise of wild populations of bees sustaining themselves, is each virgin that mates with the local drones throws a net over the best genetics in the air at the time and preserves them in her spermethetica for years to come.


That is a nice way to envisage queen rearing. If you have a 4 year old queen it should have a good cross section of the genetics in your area 4 years ago irrespective of any more recent imports or negative changes.

----------


## keith pierce

> How many beekeeping priests do you know? I've forgotten his name, but he's a priest, and he looks almost always amused.
> Kitta


 thanks

----------


## mbc

> That is a nice way to envisage queen rearing. If you have a 4 year old queen it should have a good cross section of the genetics in your area 4 years ago irrespective of any more recent imports or negative changes.


Given the peculiar parentage of drones the time span captured could span much further back than that.

----------


## Jon

My oldest queen got superseded twice this summer. The first time I rescued her to a nuc, from a colony where her daughter was already laying, and they superseded her a second time in the nuc about a month later. The first daughter has sadly produced about 10% yellow banded offspring but the second one and some of the queens from the grafts I hurriedly took look like having mated better.

----------


## Adam

I think if any beekeeper breeds from his best, then that's a great start.

BIBBA seem to have good aims, but they are too small and ineffectual and cannot compete with the amount of imports arriving each year. A serious plan, funding, distribution of breeder queens etc would all be required. 
What we need is action. Cue a Monty Python reference. I haven't seen one for a while  :Smile: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YawagQ6lLrA

----------


## GRIZZLY

K.P. Sam Millar is your man - he was on our course and both he and his pal - who's name escapes me went back over the water with a Colonsay  queen each. None to spare for me tho'.

----------


## Peter

> I think if any beekeeper breeds from his best, then that's a great start.
> 
> BIBBA seem to have good aims, but they are too small and ineffectual and cannot compete with the amount of imports arriving each year. A serious plan, funding, distribution of breeder queens etc would all be required. 
> What we need is action. Cue a Monty Python reference. I haven't seen one for a while 
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YawagQ6lLrA


It is easy to say that BIBBA should do this, that or the other, but as with most associations there are no paid staff!  The members (and especially the committee members) are scattered all over the country so it would be very difficult to organise some sort of central breeding station to distribute breeder queens.  It would probably make for a great deal of work from people who will not profit from it - in stark contrast to the profits being made by the importers.  Until the amateurs work together as a force it is unlikely that any great progress will be made.  BIBBA's first 50 years has been a disaster; the question is whether amateur beekeepers are willing to change that.  Many will sit holding their hands out expecting to be offered stock - but how many are willing to pay seriously good money for it - and then work to distribute locally?

I guess that it is not 'ask what BIBBA can do for you...'.

There is also a problem in that those who have the good stock are not necessarily willing to share it.

----------


## Mellifera Crofter

> Sam Millar ... is a retired Presbyterian Minister. ...
> Kitta, there are loads of Irish clergy keeping bees, all denominations.





> K.P. Sam Millar ... went back over the water with a Colonsay  queen ...


I'm sure you're right, Jon - but I thought that amused smile might narrow the field a bit. Sam it is. Kitta

----------


## The Drone Ranger

Beekeepers with more than a few hives should shoulder the responsibility of making sure their bees have good temper and I believe that most of them do realise this 
There is always the temptation to hang on to bad tempered honey producers
Hands up I did it this year with a hive which was steadily getting worse at each visit and paid the price by being stung to bits taking off the honey.
The real legacy of that bit of illogical thinking though will come back to haunt me where any queens that mated with the drones from that hive will have a proportion of ill tempered bees.
Grafting from one of those daughter queens stands say 10% chance of picking the wrong larva and producing a real bad tempered hive which won't show up till the new queen is laying
The good news is that if she only meets drones from good hives the temper might be fine
Of course her drones will probably throw up the bad temper when they mate with the next  generation of young queens 
As a lady beekeeping friend pointed out all she wants is for her young queens to meet "nice boys"

So there is the mechanism and it applies to hybrid bees and pure race bees in equal measure
This means that even in a single season you can bring about a great change in your bees and if you follow the same road each year they will be gentle as lambs
Each additional thing you try to select for leads to complications so if you are only going to do one thing I think it best to choose temper

Peter Edwards kindly pointed me toward his Stud Book which simplifies things for the more dedicated bee breeder and as with his other work comes with very good instructions.

If you are a beekeeper with one or perhaps two hives only then "parachuting in a queen" can only be a good thing but you need to realise the local drone population will mess things up for you as soon as your new queen swarms or is replaced in some other way 
Fortunately you will have the advantage that your new queen will have mums genetics and her drones will be "nice boys" and the local situation will have been improved by you.

This is the area of contention now 
There is no reliable large scale supply of AMM queens. There is however a ready supply of very highly bred queens with all the qualities you desire in a bee namely gentleness good health productivity fecundity low propolis production etc

Sadly they are not black, and they are wearing the wrong wings in public, but is it right to say to a beekeeper with a couple of hives that he shouldn't buy one of these queens.
If that beekeeper lives on the East coast of Scotland he might not have to bother because there will be plenty gentle drones in the air every summer from commercial operations and they will provide the "nice boys"
In some other areas where the local bees are of a more fierce type there is the option of forming a breeding group that would be particularly useful in areas where the crops sought by large scale beekeepers are not grown.
It still would benefit from finding gentle productive stock if not locally then from further afield

This is a long post and I'm sure most people reading it will know all this stuff already, but I wanted to say that each beekeeper plays a part in improving the temper of all of our bees 
There are no real saints and sinners here the chaps with line bred gentle Buckfast or Carniolan or AMM help to make beekeeping more pleasurable for us all and although much has been made of the possibilities of bad temper being caused by crossing the races it is not necessarily the case and should not stand in the way of producing better bees, starting with better temper
Buying a queeen should not be viewed as changing things for the worse because other than in AMM strongholds it probably is bringing about improvements
£40 a time will be disincentive enough for most people  :Smile:

----------


## Jon

> but how many are willing to pay seriously good money for it - and then work to distribute locally?


Galtee queens are 30 Euro each. 10% discount for members of Bibba, GBBG or NIHBS.

Is anyone  in Bibba producing more than a couple of dozen queens for sale?

----------


## mbc

> I guess that it is not 'ask what BIBBA can do for you...'.
> 
> There is also a problem in that those who have the good stock are not necessarily willing to share it.


This has been the major triumph of the Galtee group, disseminating their success around the green Isle and further afield.
I seriously think with the help of the internet, other like minded amateurs and groups (and possibly a few commercial beekeepers) all around the British Isles are on the brink of following this fine example and finally getting round to the holy grail of providing large numbers of realistic alternatives to imported queens.

----------


## prakel

> There is no reliable large scale supply of AMM queens. There is however a ready supply of very highly bred queens with all the qualities you desire in a bee namely gentleness good health productivity fecundity *low propolis production* etc


Do I want low propolis production? Not sure. Here's a photo from a very 'propolis happy' colony, it's not actually bad during the spring and summer when we're most interested in looking in but becomes very sticky during the turn of summer into autumn. I have another set of similar photos from the colony headed by the mother of this colony's queen.

SAM_1783.jpg

----------


## The Drone Ranger

> Do I want low propolis production? Not sure. Here's a photo from a very 'propolis happy' colony, it's not actually bad during the spring and summer when we're most interested in looking in but becomes very sticky during the turn of summer into autumn. I have another set of similar photos from the colony headed by the mother of this colony's queen.
> 
> SAM_1783.jpg


Lol what are they making there some sort of bee art ?
You might be right though propolis screens are only £2 at Thornes and health food shops instrument makers and people who get cold sores are crying out for the stuff
Also you can guarantee your hive tool wont slip out of your pocket in fact you could park it on the side of the hive

----------


## prakel

> Also you can guarantee your hive tool wont slip out of your pocket in fact you could park it on the side of the hive


...and you're joking :Smile: !

----------


## Jon

> I'm sure you're right, Jon - but I thought that amused smile might narrow the field a bit. Sam it is. Kitta


I know Sam Miller and I know that quizzical look!

----------


## mbc

> Galtee queens are 30 Euro each. 10% discount for members of Bibba, GBBG or NIHBS.


Any figures on annual output ?

----------


## Trog

Prakel, what are your bees doing with a bird's leg and half a pelvis in their hive? Did they bring it back as a trophy??

----------


## The Drone Ranger

> Prakel, what are your bees doing with a bird's leg and half a pelvis in their hive? Did they bring it back as a trophy??


I thought that was a bit of mouse  :Smile:

----------


## prakel

> Prakel, what are your bees doing with a bird's leg and half a pelvis in their hive? *Did they bring it back as a trophy??*


Yeah, it was a passing bee-eater  :Smile: 




> I thought that was a bit of mouse


Seriously, I think that the Ranger has got it

SAM_1785.jpg

The point of this is that even queen attributes which have been held in high esteem for decades are not necessarily to everyone's liking. The propolis issue and the possible downside of breeding for low collection has been highlighted by Dr Spivak amongst others. A fine example of why we should think carefully, not only before introducing new stock (where ever it comes from) but also about what we choose to select against. Breeding groups may be a useful answer here in the sense that I imagine the interaction between members of an active group bouncing ideas around probably helps to reduce possible heavy handed decisions which could easily be taken by someone trying to work on their own.

----------


## Jon

> Any figures on annual output ?


300 per year.
Next year there will be more of us trying to up the supply.

----------


## The Drone Ranger

Hi Prakel
I see your point about co-operation and the lone beekeeper 
In the spot where I live there are a fair  few beekeepers but loads of beehives come to the rape and then disappear later when its over.
Honestly if somebody brought in a Carniolan Queen or two next to me it wouldn't have any effect there are hundreds arriving every year
One of the biggest commercial beekeepers said in a podcast that the local drone population was improved by his bees
That is probably true in my apiary because the bees I have will already be very Carniolan in character
If I was beekeeping next to Gavin I would try and not mess up his efforts of course
This year though a lot of Italian bees came in and I don't think anybody liked that idea too much 

It's not a good climate for Italian bees to thrive in and the season is too short.
Fortunately any unfavourable traits of excess stores consumption and late brood rearing may quickly disappear again because hybrid bees are likely to adjust quickly to their environment

----------


## prakel

> One of the biggest commercial beekeepers said in a podcast that the local drone population was improved by his bees


I believe that I've listened to it at some point in past. No doubt that good bees en masse can improve the local population, I think the issues that affect those of us working on a small scale start to occur when an unbalanced incursion occurs; just a few odd queens of maybe very different origins being moved into an area by one or more beekeepers.

----------


## Blackcavebees

I'll start with a disclaimer: I'm a convert to AMM and local queen rearing.  AMM suits my local conditions and climate: My apiary is on a cliff looking over Mull and part of Aryshire coast. 

EVERY beekeeper should be breeding to improve his stocks and not depending on swarmy bees to propogate a lottery gene pool. You get the traits you select for.  Andrew has a closed area for breeding.  While the rest of us are not so fortunate we can get together in queen rearing groups in a locale and flood the area with selected bred drones to stack the odds in our favour in DCAs and encourage AVM.  I'll take 12/15 bred drone matings as a success story - ok in open mating I've still got a small percentage of stripey bees but stocks are improving.

Why is it that most beekeepers do not breed bees? And why do commercial operations not develop sustainable queen rearing on a large enough scale, even if it means developing over wintering systems for queens in mini maxi nucs or over production colonies? The simple answer seems to be INCENTIVE. Now the economics are such that it is more profitable to import 12-15,000 queens early in the season from warmer countries. So now the incentive is economic, but what if that incentive changed?

Two weeks ago I visited a Honey Farm in Tennessee. For years they brought in new queens from Georgia and Florida (and I think California). Because of the africanisation of honeybees in some states they have developed their own queen rearing and breeding programme, and currently breed 1000+ queens pa for their own operation. Was it more costly to begin with? Yes, but the incentive switched from cheapest cost to one of breeding for sub species purity out of necessity.  OK, we don't have africanised colonies to deal with, but what will it take for large scale bee breeding to take place here? I hope it won't be disease, but we are sitting on a ticking bomb bringing in the quantities of queens that we do.

Meanwhile, I'm up to my oxters in mating nucs in the workshop, building away, getting ready for 2014 queen rearing season!

----------


## The Drone Ranger

Hi BlackCave
I agree with everything you say in your post
Best of luck on the AMM front
Clearly even a few non AMM hives in your area can have a strong effect on your breeding program
Oil seed rape is the single most powerful driver of imports I think because it appears so early and yields heavily
How could a commercial operation resist that driving imports
To some extent rape is only grown because of subsidy and has led to the potato/grain/rape three crop rotation
Perhaps we should positively encourage the existing queen sellers to offer AMM as well 
I think the difficulty of any pure race breeding program might be like my chickens
I have a run with a maran, a cream legbar, and an appenzeler, hen running around with an Arucana cockerel
If I hatched any of those eggs I would have none of those breeds If I went on and crossed those I might find a few that looked like a maran but they wouldn't breed true and perhaps even a whole lifetime of breeding I would not get back to one of the original breeds.

What I could do though is breed from the ones I had in a closed system, as you described and I could end up with something which was a stable hybrid
That is what the Cream Legbar in fact is similar to the Buckfast bee 
So if you follow that plan you can recreate something like AMM but it really is a different bee (I think Gavin is attempting this)
Because of where I am though closed mating is not possible so the 20 or so hives I am running at the moment are a drop in a genetic ocean
In the 1920s L E Snelgove pointed out that in two seasons a whole apiary could be completely converted to any pure race providing the mating area was closed to other drones
Crucially though that relies on pure bred queens with no hybridisation being available (luckily you only need a few in each of the years)
You lucky devil being on Mull  :Smile:

----------


## Jon

There must be a Mull in Co Antrim then!




> In the 1920s L E Snelgove pointed out that in two seasons a whole apiary could be completely converted to any pure race providing the mating area was closed to other drones


It's not complicated.
Get a pure race queen and requeen all colonies with her daughters in year one.
These produce pure race drones.
Year two get an unrelated queen which is your breeder queen you take grafts from.

----------


## Adam

> It is easy to say that BIBBA should do this, that or the other, but as with most associations there are no paid staff!  The members (and especially the committee members) are scattered all over the country so it would be very difficult to organise some sort of central breeding station to distribute breeder queens.  It would probably make for a great deal of work from people who will not profit from it - in stark contrast to the profits being made by the importers.  Until the amateurs work together as a force it is unlikely that any great progress will be made.  BIBBA's first 50 years has been a disaster; the question is whether amateur beekeepers are willing to change that.  Many will sit holding their hands out expecting to be offered stock - but how many are willing to pay seriously good money for it - and then work to distribute locally?
> 
> I guess that it is not 'ask what BIBBA can do for you...'.
> 
> There is also a problem in that those who have the good stock are not necessarily willing to share it.


Unless there is serious funding then I'm not sure what BIBBA can really do.

I do like the idea of using the Isle of Wight as a large breeding station.  :Smile:

----------


## Jon

Bibba has had serious funding from the co-op. Tens of thousands.
A lot of it went on the UK morphometry survey which 'proved' that the native bee was alive and well.
You will note there is a big black bee sitting over Roger Patterson's apiary in West Sussex.
The NI black bee must be from a couple of samples I sent in.
I would also hazard a guess that the North Wales black bee belongs to Steve Rose and the Rosneath bee must be Jimbo's!

The follow up, if it has taken place, is what interests me.



> The first round of testing which involved examining physical attributes such as abdominal colour, the length of body hair and the pattern of veins in the wings of bees in 117 hives across 40 locations will now be followed up with genetic analysis involving DNA testing.


It is long overdue that we have a serious comparison between morphometric characteristics and microsatellite DNA in order to see how useful (or not) morphometry is to native bee breeders.

If I had access to that kind of funding I would use it to establish breeding groups, a website to centralise sales, and an organizational structure which allowed for the production and distribution of breeding material.

----------


## Blackcavebees

> You lucky devil being on Mull


Not ON Mull, looking over the narrow sea at the Mull.  County Antrim coast. If I can't see Scotland it's raining, if I can then rain is on the way! 

With Jon as our inspiration and with his help we've formed a local queen rearing group and have identified a possible site between Larne and Ballymena we are going to try next year. No beekeepers within 7 miles except one who keeps AMM, and those have been requeened with Galtee daughters from our queen rearing with Jon in Belfast this year. Hopefully it works out well. You have to make the effort or everything will stay the same.

----------


## Jimbo

Hi Jon,

I sent lots of samples to Cathrine Thompson for the DNA analysis from samples I got from various areas of Scotland that showed good wing morphometry and have heard nothing since.
I currently have about 90 samples of wings from Ewan Campbell's Acarine study from various locations in Scotland to try and map Amm locations. There are Amm turning up everywhere in Scotland and in some locations I would not have expected. There is also a few pure carnica samples also turning up as well as the usual hybrids. I did not want to publicise the fact there are other Amm strongholds in Scotland until Andrew got his protection for Colonsay. The aim is to try and map the Amm areas more precise than just sticking an image of a big black bee on a map

----------


## Trog

I'm fairly sure you can't see the Isle of Mull from County Antrim, though I suppose you might see Ben More on a very good day if you were up a mountain yourself; you can see the Mull of Kintyre from Ireland as it's not far away.  M of K is on the Scottish mainland ...

----------


## The Drone Ranger

> Not ON Mull


Many apologies 
geography not a strong suit  :Smile: 
Only just found out Mr McCartney doesn't own Mull

----------


## Blackcavebees

> I'm fairly sure you can't see the Isle of Mull from County Antrim, though I suppose you might see Ben More on a very good day if you were up a mountain yourself; you can see the Mull of Kintyre from Ireland as it's not far away.  M of K is on the Scottish mainland ...


I agree, but i never mentioned Isle of Mull. We call the Mull of Kintyre "the Mull" as it so prominant in the view from our house. On a good day it only seems a few miles away but having sailed over its a wee bit farther. Underlying point in my mind was that our weather and landscape conditions are very similar

----------


## The Drone Ranger

> I agree, but i never mentioned Isle of Mull. We call the Mull of Kintyre "the Mull" as it so prominant in the view from our house. On a good day it only seems a few miles away but having sailed over its a wee bit farther. Underlying point in my mind was that our weather and landscape conditions are very similar


Seems the old beetle pulled the same trick Lol!

----------


## drumgerry

Sounds like we need to be forming the NSHBS - the Native Scottish Honey Bee Society.  Instead of waiting around for BIBBA to get their act together we maybe need to take matters into our own hands like our friends across the Irish Sea did.  I'm up for it - anyone else?!

----------


## gavin

> Sounds like we need to be forming the NSHBS - the Native Scottish Honey Bee Society.  Instead of waiting around for BIBBA to get their act together we maybe need to take matters into our own hands like our friends across the Irish Sea did.  I'm up for it - anyone else?!


Yep!

One local was round last night with his Nosema samples which we'll put to good use determining the races locally.  Looks like Amm but I'm struggling with this scanner. Tonight's folk are arriving now ....

----------


## Jon

Gav. Make sure you talk to a few of the main movers and shakers in NIHBS when you are over for the conference.
There is no reason at all why Scotland could not set up a similar network.
All it would take is half a dozen people with the time and the inclination to get the society up and running.
NIHBS called an inaugural meeting on 20 November last year and it all took of from there.
There were about 90 beekeepers at that meeting and current membership is 350 and growing fast.
A committee with reps from the 4 provinces of Ireland was elected on the day and we meet every couple of months at a central (ish) point, Port Laoise.
We face similar issues although you also have the issue of the commercial beekeepers with their ever changing sub species imports to deal with.

----------


## mbc

> I did not want to publicise the fact there are other Amm strongholds in Scotland until Andrew got his protection for Colonsay.


This made me chuckle, well done Jimbo, power to the beekeepers !

----------


## Jimbo

There are other Amm strongholds in Scotland but I suspect the bees are not near as good as on Colonsay. Andrew has been selecting and improving the Amm over 30 years in a closed mating system. One discussion I had with him is he does not select and breed from  the top best colonies. He is past that stage and improves his colonies by taking out about 10% of his worst colonies. The ones that show poor mating, agression and poor honey production. I supose you could do that if you have got your colonies stable with the charateristics you want.
Drumgerry I'm up for it. I think the first job as Jon suggests is to see if there is a good correlation between wing morphometry and DNA analysis. If there is then we have a tool for easily identifying Amm. A wee project for a student at one of our Universities perhaps if the funding was applied for?

----------


## Jon

I think wing morphometry is useful for initial survey work where noone has ever used it for selection purposes, but once breeders start using it as a criteria for selecting 'pure' queens you will get that effect described in the Moritz paper, and perfect wing pattern will become a self fulfilling prophesy and not be a useful tool anymore for picking out AMM genetics.

Jimbo, I cannot for the life of me understand why the results from Kate Thompson's work are not yet in the public domain.

----------


## drumgerry

Ok where/when do we start?  I'd be up for a meeting of interested parties in somewhere central-ish.  Pitlochry or Perth or somewhere?  

I don't think we should overlook the strategic benefits such an organisation could bring.  I would hope that we could influence policy in a way that individuals can't to the benefit of our native honey bees.  And that's not to mention the practical benefits or an over-arching body to co-ordinate our widely dispersed efforts.

Jon - could we presume to ask you what benefits the Irish society has brought to all concerned?

----------


## gavin

OK, we're looking at the various traits that define the races on the  same samples that are being used for this Nosema study thing.  I'll post  the plots in the usual place when I've finally worked out how to get a  Canon PIXMA MG5350 to scan at the resolution the specifications claim is  possible.

Just wanted to add that representatives of four local  associations are meeting up in 4 weeks with the specific aim of getting  an isolated mating site into use this coming spring.  We identified it  three years ago and agreed its use, but none of the core group (members of ESBA and of Fife BA) had sufficient bees or time to make this work.   We're now in a better position and have two more groups willing to join,  so it looks like we'll get going next season.

Could this be the  start of a NSHBS, Drumgerry?  Maybe!  Want to come along?  Email me if  you'd like details - could even collect you on the way if you fancy  getting the train or bus down.  I suspect that we'll be more focussed on setting the ground rules for this mating site rather than setting up a Scotland-wide new association.  Maybe meeting 2 is the time for that?

I also had an email from Andrew on  Colonsay and in that he offered help with breeding stock to us get underway.   Wonderful!  Thanks Andrew.  We'll keep you posted on what we're up to.   One of the things we need to discuss when we meet is whether or not we'd  want to bring in Galtee genetics too.  But before that we need to  assess what we already have from selecting local stock.

----------


## drumgerry

Sad to say Gavin but I'm probably more interested in this than in the local association secretaries meeting!  So look out for incoming email!

I'll get back to you on the question of transport.

Well done to Andrew on his offer of breeding stock.

----------


## Jon

> Jon - could we presume to ask you what benefits the Irish society has brought to all concerned?


-some funding from the dept. of agriculture for conservation of Irish genetic resources
-links to projects with two local universities, Limerick and Galway
-series of 8 queen rearing workshops organised over the summer
-constitution drafted and approved by members
-website and Facebook page set up with a focus on native bee news and issues. Paypal used for membership and conference bookings.
-national conference organised for 10th November in Athlone with international speakers
-all Ireland varroa monitoring project underway with a view to selecting AMM with varroa tolerance
-possibility of sequencing the native bee genome via work with Galway university
-Science committee to deal with native bee issues set up - currently with 15 members including representatives from university departments
-350 paid up members at 20 Euro per year
-quarterly newsletter distributed to all members with articles on native bee and bee breeding issues
-regional structure being established with committee members from 4 provinces of Ireland, ie an all Ireland body
-queen rearing groups based on our native bee are being established, currently 3 in NI which should rise to 6 or 7 by 2014.
-positive coverage of NIHBS and native bee issues in the National press, TV and radio
-plans to scale up queen rearing outside of the Galtee Group.

Not bad for the first 10 months.

At a personal level I have got to know some of the best and most innovative beekeepers in Ireland.

Keith P can probably add more stuff to the list.

----------


## drumgerry

Jeez - slightly intimidating list there Jon!  But seriously, congratulations on those achievements in such a short period of time.

If we do happen to get something off the ground in Scotland we'll be doing well to get near to that!

----------


## gavin

> Not bad for the first 10 months.

----------


## keith pierce

> -some funding from the dept. of agriculture for conservation of Irish genetic resources
> -links to projects with two local universities, Limerick and Galway
> -series of 8 queen rearing workshops organised over the summer
> -constitution drafted and approved by members
> -website and Facebook page set up with a focus on native bee news and issues. Paypal used for membership and conference bookings.
> -national conference organised for 10th November in Athlone with international speakers
> -all Ireland varroa monitoring project underway with a view to selecting AMM with varroa tolerance
> -possibility of sequencing the native bee genome via work with Galway university
> -Science committee to deal with native bee issues set up - currently with 15 members including representatives from university departments
> ...


A label for the lid of our honey jars promoting the native bees     http://nihbs.org/?page_id=896#comment-25030
A net work of people supplying nucs of native bees.
A free swap system of queens between breeders for genetic diversity
A local ready supply of native queen cells, virgin or mated queens for beekeepers in trouble
Satellite native bee breeding groups starting up all over the country

----------


## Jimbo

Hi Jon
The wing morphometry on the samples I have came from about 80 beekeepers from all over Scotland with I suspect very few selecting for Amm when breeding so is a randon set of samples. If you get a result in the high 80-100% for Amm then if the wing morphometry software is correct then you can assume it is a Amm sample. I agree that when you start selecting your breeder queens from the wing results then you could be developing a colony with Amm wings but not nesessary AMM.
What would nail wing morphometry as a useful tool would be if it was checked againwith DNA analysis

----------


## prakel

> Bibba has had serious funding from the co-op. Tens of thousands.
> A lot of it went on the UK morphometry survey which 'proved' that the native bee was alive and well.


Does anyone here know where (or if) _this_ follow up funding has been implemented? Has anyone here benefited from the training or purchase of nuc boxes etc?




> Following the identification of a variety of viable native bee colonies across the UK, *we will now fund a new breeding programme to increase the availability of native queen bees to beekeepers*. The funding will support training to beekeepers with existing native colonies on queen rearing techniques and the purchase of nursery hives to support their production. The new colonies will be monitored by BIBBA to ensure that they retain their native characteristics.


http://www.co-operative.coop/Plan-Be...n/Native-Bees/

----------


## gavin

> What would nail wing morphometry as a useful tool would be if it was checked again with DNA analysis


Given that we don't yet have DNA systems that will give a rapid assessment of allocation to bee race (OK, theoretically, we may do, but practically, we don't), and the time lag between supplying samples and learning DNA results, I'd argue that we should be doing more with each sample now in a low-tech way.  In other words, let's use as many traits as we can to assess them while we have the bees in front of us.

Last night we were looking at:

- coloured rings and spots on the abdomen
- width of tomentum bands on abdominal segments
- length of hair low down on the abdomen
- body hair colour

When we can add wing morphometry to that, we'll get a better picture of the affinities of each colony.  As an example, one sample from a local beekeeper who encourages a bit of a mixture in his apiary looked superficially uniformly dark.  However, looking at the abdominal hairs showed a mix of longer and shorter haired bees, unlike a sample from another beekeeper where the bees all were dark, had narrowish tomentum bands and long, dark abdominal hairs (all Amm traits).  I'd put my money on the last one having an Amm-like wing morphometry plot, once I can get the scanner working.  I'll put stuff in the gallery when I'm done.

I suspect that we have quite a few colonies like that around, despite the importations over the years.  Are they good bees though?  Are they local 'survivors' that are too frugal, too slow to build up, too prone to chalkbrood?  Too tetchy?  Maybe.  More than likely some will be better than others from the point of view of health and productivity.

To expand a little on Jon's point, if you take bees that have been repeatedly selected for wing morphometry only, and you started with a mixed population, then any DNA analysis (assuming that folk really do understand the range of variation in 'proper' Amm) is likely to show that the material is hybrid.  If you are wanting to select against hybridity as much as possible, then use more Amm traits in your original selection to find less hybridised stock to start with.

----------


## The Drone Ranger

As the thread began with Colonsay reserve I suppose it's worth making the point that without general support from the beekeeping community it wouldn't have happened
Perhaps in fairness it was driven by the AMM enthusiasts and relied to some extent on passive support from the rest of Scotland's beekeepers 
It's probably wrong to interpret that as the general beekeeping population showing any a desire to keep AMM bees
Certainly lots of inexperienced new bee keepers are sold on AMM but people who have kept bees for years probably not
The comments made by the SBA President (who was an active supporter) have unfairly come under fire from the Amm lobby
The next time they need that passive support it might not be so forthcoming

----------


## gavin

Au contraire, DR, my reading of responses to surveys and discussions in local associations is that the majority of beekeepers are well-disposed to Amm, whether or not they think their own bees are of that type or whether it is feasible for them to keep lines pure.  But we don't really know.  I'd also posit that quite a few beekeepers go though a phase of buying/obtaining in 'stuff' from all over before coming to the realisation, eventually, that to make progress selecting your stock you need to let it settle down to one strain - and that is only realistic in Scotland with something near Amm.  A few don't, of course, but I see many that do.

----------


## The Drone Ranger

You might be right Gavin
I don't see much AMM interest in the few people I know
John

----------


## Jon

> Certainly lots of inexperienced new bee keepers are sold on AMM but people who have kept bees for years probably not


Well I would not consider Micheál Mac Gilla Coda as callow although he would likely play down the 83 years.
The Native Bee Society has some of the best beekeepers and bee breeders in Ireland on its committee.
And that youngster Keith Pierce could teach most people a think or two about queen rearing and there are a few older guys who are total experts as well. There are quite a number managing 50-100 apideas which is an indication they take queen rearing pretty seriously. 

My experience is that most beekeepers are fence sitters but are generally well disposed towards native stock if they see it is considerably better than what they are working with already.
We have 40-50 in the Belfast queen rearing group and they have been replacing some or all of the queens they have in their colonies at home.
They do this happily as they see the bees opened every week and know how they behave. For most beekeepers keeping bees in a home garden, docility is about 90% of what they are looking for and low swarming tendancy as well. Our bees in the breeding group are very docile and swarm preparations are rare. the only swarm this year was from a queenless colony I was using as a cell raiser which made a sneaky queen cell on the face of a comb. I missed the cell and had to retrieve a swarm with the virgin from a hawthorn tree beside the apiary.
I really notice the difference now when I handle other people's bees and often get stung up to hell's gates as I have got used to working with good stock.
The people locally who are pro Buckfast and anti AMM tend to be the older generation of beekeepers who started their beekeeping in the 1960s or 70s in the heyday of Brother Adam - and Department of Agriculture directives about replacing local stock with Buckfast.

----------


## Rosie

The picture in my part of North Wales is similar to Jon's.  I would say that about 90% of our beekeepers of all ages and experience support our local _amm_ initiative and vast majority of those are keeping local near natives or are actively trying to improve their purity.

Steve

----------


## drumgerry

I find here in Strathspey that most beekeepers, experienced and new, when asked are pretty keen on the concept of native bees and not importing.  Of course there are the curmudgeonly few who don't care which strain they use as long as they get them honey (temper being a lower priority I'd say).  In fact when we founded our new association here last winter people were only too happy to include a clause in our constitution stating our opposition to imports and our support for improving on our native bee status.

I honestly don't think your experience is a typical one DR.

----------


## Jon

> The picture in my part of North Wales is similar to Jon's.  I would say that about 90% of our beekeepers of all ages and experience support our local _amm_ initiative and vast majority of those are keeping local near natives or are actively trying to improve their purity.
> 
> Steve


Where have you been this past while Steve?
I thought you must have been trampled to death by all the goats and various beasts you keep in that polytunnel.

----------


## mbc

> The picture in my part of North Wales is similar to Jon's.  I would say that about 90% of our beekeepers of all ages and experience support our local _amm_ initiative and vast majority of those are keeping local near natives or are actively trying to improve their purity.
> Steve


Likewise in my part of West Wales.  
When I ran a queen rearing course with the local association the overwhelming unsolicited consensus was that we should breed from not only the best bees available, but the best most native bees we could identify.  This in an area familiar with imports since the 1950's when Holgate honey farm moved here from a then pesticide soaked England.

----------


## Rosie

> Where have you been this past while Steve?
> I thought you must have been trampled to death by all the goats and various beasts you keep in that polytunnel.


Fraid not.  I'm still alive and just about kicking.  I found that keeping up with all the posts and making the odd contribution myself was absorbing too much time so had to go cold turkey and wean myself off it.  I hope this doesn't get me back into bad habits :Smile: .  

Steve

----------


## gavin

> I hope this doesn't get me back into bad habits.


10 min a day or half an hour twice a week.  You know it makes sense!   :Big Grin: 

Sounds like you need a NWHBS too.  Or just completely refresh BIBBA, if that is possible.

----------


## Rosie

Hi Gavin

We've had some committee changes in BIBBA and I think you will notice a new and energetic association developing.  I must admit that 2 years ago I came close to starting a NWHBS (although I hadn't got as far as dreaming up a name) but I don't think it's necessary now.

Steve

----------


## Ruary

> -  -quarterly newsletter distributed to all members with articles on native bee and bee breeding issues
> -.


 Just to clarify a little:
The quarterly newsletter is 'The Four Seasons', originall edited by Claire Chavasse for the Galtee Bee Breeder's Group. This magazine was handed over to the NIHBS by the GBBG.

----------


## Beefever

*"but I don't think it's necessary now"*

I really, really, really hope so.

S'pose 50 years isn't too long to find your feet  :Smile:   eh?

----------


## Jon

> Just to clarify a little:
> The quarterly newsletter is 'The Four Seasons', originall edited by Claire Chavasse for the Galtee Bee Breeder's Group. This magazine was handed over to the NIHBS by the GBBG.


It's still a trial for a year Ruary.
I think GBBG will probably be happy for NIHBS to continue with it next year but if not, NIHBS will bring out its own magazine.

It is worth pointing out that the pioneering work of GBBG to improve local stock has helped tremendously as NIHBS was not starting from zero.

The 4 seasons was going out to less than 100 people so the circulation has increased a lot.
I have been putting some highlights from past issues on the NIHBS website.
There might even be one of your articles on there!

----------


## Rosie

> *"but I don't think it's necessary now"*
> 
> I really, really, really hope so.
> 
> S'pose 50 years isn't too long to find your feet   eh?


I must accept that criticism but we should not forget the excellent stuff that BIBBA has done in the past. The library of books they produced are invaluable and I suspect that without BIBBA, the plight of the native bee would be even worse.  Fortunately I sense a resurgence of interest and activity now and things are looking much better.  I think a lot of the criticisms of BIBBA have come from people who don't attend BIBBA's  conferences and training or read their books and magazine.  They seem to think that BIBBA was set up solely to give them native bees rather than help them with selection and  queen rearing.

I've already used up my ration of time for this week. I knew it would happen Gavin. :Big Grin:   Good job it's pouring down outside.

Steve

----------


## Jimbo

Hi Rosie,

I agree. It was BIBBA who assisted us in getting started in bee breeding although the group has now fallen away. Some BIBBA members called in to see us on their way to a SBA conference in Inverness a few years ago and gave advice on wing morphometry and reviewed some of the results we had produced. It was then we discovered we had Amm in our area. I attended a BIBBA run training for trainers course in Warwick for morphometry which was also part paid by BIBBA and following on from discussions at that course a bee breeding weekend workshop was arrange in Scotland by the SBA/BIBBA

----------


## Feckless Drone

The BBC website reports a new initiative whereby an MSP becomes the spokesperson/advocate for the protection and well being of endangered native species in Scotland. I emailed the Scottish Environment LINK trying to find out who spoke up for the native honey bee. The Great Yellow Bumblebee (Dave Stewart MSP), and the solitary bee Andrena Ruficrus (Richard Lyle MSP) have champions but not the native honey bee. I was asked if I wanted to nominate an MSP who might be approached - any ideas? I put the question out there trusting that members of this forum are bound to have names and knowledge of who might or might not be a suitably informed spokesperson with interests in this area and in the past some communications with our elected reps has taken place. So - ideas?

----------


## Mellifera Crofter

FD, I like the idea of having an MSP being a 'black bee champion', but I don't have a clue who to suggest - so I looked at a list of MSPs, and as there are so many, I limited myself to the two Green MSPs and out of those two I liked Alison Johnstone's biography - but then noticed that she already supports the brown hare.  Perhaps that doesn't matter because I also noticed that David Stewart, who is supporting the Great Yellow Bumblebee, supports two species.

So, I tentatively suggest Alison Johnstone to take on the native bee as a second specie, or David Stewart to take them on as a third specie.  Perhaps it would make sense for David to take on the black bee because bumble bees will also be affected by the small hive beetle should it get here.  I don't think solitary bees are at risk from the small hive beetle.

Apart from what appears on their biographies, I don't know anything else about my two suggestions.
Kitta

----------


## GRIZZLY

Do we have any MSP beekeepers ?.

----------


## gavin

Here's one bee-sympathetic MSP.  Richard Lockhead is another - he opened the Moray apiary.

http://www.peeblesshirenews.com/news...stated-stocks/

*Grahame gets busy to help beekeepers restore devastated stocks
*

Published: 23 May 2013 06:570 comments

THE announcement of a £200,000 fund to help commercial bee farmers prompted a group of individual beekeepers to contact Borders MSP Christine Grahame.

There are around 1,500 individual beekeepers in Scotland who to date have not received government help to restock after severe weather conditions diminished, and in some cases completely wiped out, their colonies.

Representatives from Borders beekeepers contacted Ms Grahame who now has asked Environment Minister Richard Lochhead to step in and help.

She said: "The Scottish Government has pledged £200,000 to help commercial farmers rebuild their hives but some Borders beekeepers don't qualify for funding."

"I have explained to the Minister that these hives are vital to the biodiversity of town and country and I am hoping he will agree to establish a scheme to provide one association per district with a modest grant for the purpose of breeding queens. This would be distributed thereafter to other associations in the district allowing colonies to be replenished by letting nature, and of course, the bees do the rest of the work."

Ms Grahame said: "A small injection of cash could really help these beekeepers restore their stocks. The money could fund artificial insemination of the queens then these queens would be distributed to other associations in the area. This will then guarantee a well mated queen regardless of the weather conditions and could contribute substantially to helping bee preservation."

----------


## Feckless Drone

> Richard Lockhead  Christine Grahame.


Yes, two possibilities. The Environment minister would of course be an important representative for the native bee - should be informed about many different (conflicting) aspects of beekeeping in Scotland. With a new FM on the way, then there may be some changes brewing so lets see what the situation is
next week.

----------

