# General beekeeping > Native honeybees >  Catherine Thompson's research

## prakel

Did anyone here attend the lecture by Catherine Thompson at the BIBBA AGM? There's a tantalizingly brief mention in Chris Slade's bee blog but as he always makes a big deal of the fact that he can't read his own notes it might be nice to hear a report from someone else.

----------


## Rosie

I was there.  I made a few notes would would have liked copies of her graphs to study at home.

Kate's talk was mainly about ferals which she had collected with a net at the nest entrances.  She showed a map of the locations where they had been collected from and, sadly, none were in Wales where ferals seem to abound. The nest entrances faced all directions but SE was the most common.

She tested them for genetic markers and disease load.  Her conclusions were briefly that feral genetics reflected the background population of managed populations and did not show any tendency towards the AMM end of the scale.  Managed colonies of native breeders showed much more AMM genetics than either ferals or the background populations.

Ferals and untreated managed colonies both showed more DWV than treated colonies and 50% of the ferals she studied died out during the project.  She concluded that the view that all ferals are recent swarms which will eventually die out due to varroa is probably true.

The DNA tests were done with 12 bees from each colony and the standard she used for comparison was from samples taken from Colonsay.

----------


## Jimbo

Hi Rosie,

Any ferals from Scotland? or any results from the Scottish managed hive samples that had a lot of pure Amm in them

----------


## Rosie

Jimbo, the map she showed of the feral sites did not show the Scottish border and, although I tried to work out where it was the slide was removed before I could manage it.  However, if Scottish bees were included in the ferals they will all have been close to the English border.  I can't remember if she even showed where the purest managed ones were and suspect that information was not included in the stuff she was able to reveal.

Sorry I can't be more help.

----------


## Jon

> Her conclusions were briefly that feral genetics reflected the background population of managed populations and did not show any tendency towards the AMM end of the scale.


Estimating the Density of Honeybee Colonies across Their Natural Range to Fill the Gap in Pollinator Decline Censuses
RODOLFO JAFFE et al. 2010




> In Europe honeybees sampled in nature reserves had genetic diversity and colony densities similar to those sampled in agricultural landscapes, which suggests that the former are not wild but may have come from managed hives.


Her findings are reflected in this study which found no difference between ferals and the background population either.

----------


## Rosie

Although disappointing Jon I don't think any of us are surprised by this.  It demonstrates how important it is for us to go all out to preserve the stocks that were saved before varroa struck.  Wild sources of Amm have all but dried up - at least in England and I suspect elsewhere too.  I wish Kate had taken samples from the "Celtic fringes" though because they might have had a better chance of being genuine as they would have been operating closer to the extremes of the honey bee's natural range where Amm traits are more important for survival.

----------


## Jon

Steve
I never see ferals in my area, just recently escaped swarms in chimneys or roof spaces.
They don't last long.
I sent Kate samples from two of my apiaries. I must e-mail her to see if she can let me know anything about them.
from what I can gather wing morphometry is dead in the water unless you are talking about a population where beekeepers have never selected based on wings.
Remember the little coop map with the 100% AMM claim based on wings?

I had a really interesting conversation last week with a guy from the far western extreme of Donegal.
They have 70 colonies of dark bees in the area and varroa has not arrived yet.
I was unaware that Ireland had any varroa free areas left.
The mites arrives in Sligo/Leitrim in 1998.
No outside colonies have come into the area in living memory and the guy I spoke to is the only beekeeper under 65
There are still feral colonies in the trees.
I spoke to one of the other NIHBS reps about this and we are going to go down and take grafts in a couple of months or ideally get a mated queen to bring back home to graft from.
He said the bees have never been surveyed either.

----------


## Rosie

I don't think wing morphometry is as dead as you think but I take your poiint that it's easy to rely on it too much.  Around here we use it after all other criteria have been satisfied and it's used to confirm that the queen had not had a bad mating.  I hope we can continue to use it like that for a number of generations.  Even Kate stated it works at the pure end of the scale but is not good at detecting how mongrelised a mongrel colony actual is.  That Coop thing was corporate hype and was never taken seriously by any of the queen rearers that I know.  We were all waiting for the DNA results but we've given up now.  I am not just disappointed that we are still waiting for the results but the standard used was Colonsay.  I had hoped it would have been indisputable stocks such as museum samples.  Because we can't see any reports we can't tell how a Colonsay standard compares with all the previous work done by Pedersen etc.  Also how do local natural ecotypes differ from Colonsay?  Stocks that Kate thinks are not pure might just be another amm variation so at this stage I feel just as much in the dark as I ever did.

----------


## Jon

the Colonsay stock was all brought over by Andrew A from various places in Scotland maybe 30 years ago.
I agree with you that it is not necessarily a gold standard re UK Amm as I previously posted a video here from the 1930s showing those French Amm 'abeilles vivantes' arriving in the East of Scotland.
The Colonsay population is relatively recent and made up of bees from different locations.
It will have adapted and changed to the western maritime climate by now.
DNA from the bees in the Linnean collection would be a better test for Kate to compare with.

The Jensen and Pederson study you mentioned in the previous post pointed out that in any Amm regional population there will be huge natural variation - and the variation within populations is greater than between populations in different jurisdictions.
The author also put down some similarities between regions to an artifact caused by Bibba members swapping queens!

We don't have a lot of Carnica here. If I have a pure race virgin queen which mates and produces a significant percentage of yellow banded workers I know I have a hybrid colony without going any further. Wing morphometry might well show something but it is not really necessary in a case like this.
My colonies with all dark workers frequently are near enough 100% according to drawwing but I honestly don't think that tells me much any more.

----------


## Rosie

I have yellow bands cropping up all the time and, like you, I can easily detect them but we also have carniolan influence so we have keep our guard up.  Fortunately no wing morphometry has been done around here until 5 years ago and even then it was and still is used sparingly.  The only risk we have is with a single queen of Galtee origin that was brought in many years ago and that queen, no doubt, had been selectively bred using at least some wing morphometry.  Fortunately it seems we are keeping on top of the carniolan hybrids simply by squishing the nasty ones.   We see a definite correlation between wing pattern and gentleness although we do get an odd one with carni-looking wings and gentle behaviour.  I have never seen a sample of Amm wings that were nasty though.  I also know that if I bring in a colony with good Amm wings from another district they breed true without turning grumpy.

In a sea of misinformation and lack of knowledge I have to believe what I see myself and I see value in wing testing.

----------


## Jon

I think it has value in an area where no-one has used it before, ie for survey work in a relatively virgin area, but if it has been used as a selection criteria by beekeepers you are going to get a load of false positives as in the Moritz paper I have posted over and over again.
the other use is for identifying hybrids which might look and behave ok in other aspects.
Wing morphometry can tell you that is bee is _not_ Amm but cannot prove that it _is_.
If you select bees for Amm wing pattern and you select bees for gentleness you should not be surprised to see a correlation.
I know I am at odds with most of the Bibba folk over this but I consider wing morphometry to be pretty much a busted flush.
Kate's work strongly suggests that as well.
The people who defend it mostly have not assimilated that Moritz paper, or don't want to assimilate it.

----------


## Rosie

Kate's work showed a strong correlation between wing and DNA with pure samples.  It demonstrates to me that the method has not been overused in much of the country.  People tend not to rely on it any more in any case so am not sure which BIBBA folks you are at odds with.

----------


## Jon

Where were her pure samples from, was that the Colonsay stock?

----------


## Rosie

She did not say.  We are still in the dark regarding managed colonies although there are rumours that I am not prepared to repeat.

----------


## mbc

> I had a really interesting conversation last week with a guy from the far western extreme of Donegal.
> They have 70 colonies of dark bees in the area and varroa has not arrived yet.
> I was unaware that Ireland had any varroa free areas left.
> The mites arrives in Sligo/Leitrim in 1998.
> No outside colonies have come into the area in living memory and the guy I spoke to is the only beekeeper under 65
> There are still feral colonies in the trees.
> I spoke to one of the other NIHBS reps about this and we are going to go down and take grafts in a couple of months or ideally get a mated queen to bring back home to graft from.
> He said the bees have never been surveyed either.


Now this is the type of conversation that gets us amm geeks in a froth :Big Grin:

----------


## Jon

> Now this is the type of conversation that gets us amm geeks in a froth


Yes, I am quite taken with the idea and it is a beautiful area to visit in its own right.
I'll keep you posted.
Sounds promising but there could have been exposure to other subspecies long before the arrival of varroa.

----------


## Jon

Reviving this thread as there is an interesting update.
At the Gormanston conference last Month I spoke to my contact from Donegal, they guy who initially let me know Glencolumbkille was still varroa free.
He said he had a swarm in a bait box if anyone wanted it.
They still have ferals there as there are no mites.
One of our queen rearing group heads that direction most weekends and he picked up the swarm a couple of weeks ago.
The bait box had no frames in it so the swarm was on its own comb.
It was transferred to a hive but there was no brood visible so it may be queenless or more likely has a virgin.
I got a small sample of the bees which were very black with no sign of any yellow banding at all.

This was the morphometry plot and I would take this seriously as noone in the area had ever done any morphometry (ie no selection artifact as in the Moritz paper) and no colonies have been brought in for over 40 years apparently.

Glen CK.jpg

----------


## gavin

> Reviving this thread ...... and I would take this seriously ..........


The spirit of Jessie Smith sees a cat, freshly fallen from a great height and spread-eagled, with its tail erect.  A cartoon cat in fact.   :Stick Out Tongue: 

G.

----------


## Jon

Definite sign of a feline in there!
I hope this colony is queenright and survives over winter as I would love to take a few grafts from it and see how they turn out.

Kate has a paper out on Plos One.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%...l.pone.0105164

----------


## fatshark

I suspect there's another paper in the pipeline ... this one has no mention of the genetic relatedness of feral and managed colonies, but a few large hints in the intro and discussion. There's an interesting difference between the prevalence of DWV in the colonies reported here and the recent study by Furst et al., ... 100% here, 34% (if my increasingly dodgy memories serves me correctly) in the Nature paper.

Kate shows similar levels of DWV in untreated managed colonies and feral colonies. We know what happens to the  majority of the former in a bad winter ...

----------


## Jon

fatshark - your PM box is full.

----------


## fatshark

Apologies … now empty  :Wink:

----------


## gavin

> There's an interesting difference between the prevalence of DWV in the colonies reported here and the recent study by Furst et al. ...


Also BQCV is ubiquitous in her study - is that to be expected?

G.

----------


## fatshark

Not sure, but the commercials around here are talking about it as becoming a problem. I can't remember the numbers quoted by FERA in unofficial results from the random apiary survey (for BQCV).

----------


## Poly Hive

Murray McGregor says that his bees over time return to the dark strains. 

Mobus found the founder of his "Maud" strain err.. in Maud. 

Now whether you believe or not that the wing measurements are an indicator I found indications of AMM in Aberdeenshire, Morayshire and Perthshire. Given that the native wants to survive and the climate self selects I would gently suggest that there is hope yet. It's a case of looking. 

PH

----------


## Jon

AMM genetics is the biggest part of the background bee population in the UK, something around 40-60%.
Someone at the Bibba conference presented data, can't remember who it was but I think it was either Kate or the person who stood in for Giles Budge.
I would expect the percentage to be much higher in parts of Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
Andrew Abraham's bees on Colonsay seemed to have the least introgression from other subspecies.

Bear in mind those videos you have showing French AMM arriving in Scotland in the 1930s!

----------


## Poly Hive

Sure they are. Bernard stated often about the "French invasion" but he was still convinced that native AMM was here. 

PH

----------


## Jon

> Sure they are. Bernard stated often about the "French invasion" but he was still convinced that native AMM was here. 
> PH


I don't doubt that for a second and I think in the UK and Ireland we also had a fair number of French and Dutch Amm colonies arrive in the first half of the 20th Century.
That's not a problem for me.

BTW, Kate is absolutely convinced that Wing morphometry is only of use in populations that have not been hybridised, and given that most UK bees are hybridised, it tends to get used in the wrong way here. The technique was developed by Ruttner and he never intended it to be used to try and pick out 'more Amm' or 'less Amm' bees from hybridised populations. She found no correlation between the % AMM according to the wings and the underlying microsatellite markers. She said at the Bibba conference that the way it is used by the vast majority here is totally erroneous. Went down like a lead balloon obviously.

----------


## mbc

The whole idea of discovering some sort of lost tribe of bees is a bit misplaced in my opinion, all the good lines of bees which have been independently verified as desirable have been associated with a talented beekeeper, or a group, who have had to work on them to get them where they are, unless I'm missing the best legends!

----------


## Jon

I agree MBC. The Galtee bees are good because they have had 25 years of selection and improvement by people who know what they are doing.
The genetic studies which have been carried out on European AMM show that there is a great deal of genetic variation within the subspecies.
What we need to do is select for what we want from within a pure population of Amm. ie docility, nectar gathering potential and since the arrival of varroa, mite tolerant characteristics.
The old chestnut about finding a long lost strain of AMM surviving in a hollow tree somewhere is a pervasive myth and unfortunately the Coop study tends to perpetuate that. 
We have some great Amm in Ireland but they are under threat. I heard at our monthly meeting on Monday that the West Donegal bees now have varroa as some clown brought in a colony of Buckfast to the area last summer. There were loads of feral colonies in the area and presumably they will be gone within a year or two.

----------


## Poly Hive

Maybe and maybe not re the ferals. On my site there is a lightning struck ash and in it is a feral colony which to my ken is four seasons old. They are reasonable bees as they kindly swarm into my stack of spare kit and so I have worked them. Quite black too.  

I do like self hiving swarms, saves so much fuel and faffing about...LOL

PH

----------


## Jon

Stick a temperature probe in there mid winter and see if you have a live colony. Kate was always told the ferals were long standing, sometimes for decades allegedly, but next to none of them were alive when checked in mid winter. Dead outs get colonised very quickly once the first swarms are emitted next season
You keep Carnica don't you so you might expect any ferals in the vicinity to be dark.

----------


## Poly Hive

Happy New Year Jon and all, 

Oddly as I drove past that tree yesterday on my way back from doing the Oxalic I had exactly that thought. Are they alive and continuous or are they being colonised. There are other keepers in the area and they do lose swarms as my bait hives and my spare kit gets colonised pretty frequently. I ain't complaining really but it can upset the master plan on finding three supers occupied when they are meant to be ready to install. LOL

I do indeed use Carnica and am very happy with them too but they are not nearly as back as the swarms that come in to the bait hive sited very close to the tree. Obviously I have no idea whether they are neat and swarm into the bait hive, or the bait hive is picking up a random swarm. *shrug* Nice bees though all the same. 

The wife and I have just had a chat and we both know that tree well, and often when I am at the bees she walks the dogs down the road and always checks out that tree. She cannot recall a Feb when they were not flying. Our swarming starts late March to early April. On that basis they must be surviving. Actually getting a probe in might be awkward due to needing a ladder. I have a lazer heat gun so might be worth a go.

PH

----------


## The Drone Ranger

> Happy New Year Jon and all, 
> 
>  I have a lazer heat gun so might be worth a go.
> 
> PH


 Best set it on stun Mr Spock  :Smile:

----------


## greengumbo

Hi All - this paper might be of interest to those that can access it ! I think it is open access.

Oleksa, A., & Tofilski, A. (2015). Wing geometric morphometrics and microsatellite analysis provide similar discrimination of honey bee subspecies. Apidologie, 46(1), 49-60.

Identification of honey bee (Apis mellifera) subspecies is important for their protection. It is also used by queen breeders to maintain some breeding lines. In this study, we compared three methods of subspecies identification based on the following: 17 microsatellite loci, COI-COII mitotypes and geometric morphometrics of forewing venation. The methods were used to classify colonies and workers from a mixed population of A. m. mellifera and A. m. carnica. There was highly significant correlation between results obtained using the three methods. More than three quarters of colonies were classified to the same subspecies by all three methods. The agreement was highest between microsatellites and morphometrics. More than 90 % of colonies were classified to the same subspecies by the two methods. There was also relatively high agreement (75 %) between microsatellites and morphometrics when workers were classified as pure subspecies or hybrids. In particular, one pure subspecies was never misclassified as other pure subspecies. The results presented here show that morphometrics can be used for detection of hybrids between A. m. mellifera and A. m. carnica.

----------


## Peter

http://link.springer.com/article/10....592-014-0300-7

You can download the pdf.

Adam Tofilski uses geographic morphometry which, I think, does not show hybridisation as well as 'conventional' morphometry.

----------


## Jon

If you start with a pure race subspecies, Wing morphometry can detect hybrisation in subsequent generations as the cubital index and discoidal shift differ considerably between the subspecies. It is a useful tool in that respect. that's what the Tofilsky paper above mainly looked at.
If you start with an already hybridised population and use wing morphometrics as a selection criteria for subspecies purity - that's not going to be reliable.
Having a perfect set of Amm pattern wings does not prove that a bee is Amm whereas having a set of wings quite distinct from classic Amm pattern does indicate that the bee is certainly not Amm.
In this sense wing morphometry can be used to rule out colonies from a breeding programme but should not be used to select in.

----------

