# General beekeeping > Native honeybees >  Black drones

## Rosie

I have a question that has been worrying me for some time.  The discussion involving CSD genetics on the "Yet another Puzzle" thread made me wonder if this is the place to air it.

I have been trying to maintain my near natives for a number of years and sometimes fighting a losing battle due to the exotic races (mainly Greek Buckfast crosses) that were constantly being introduced into the surrounding area.  Fortunatley I was able to move a couple of years ago to an area where the vast majority of beekeepers cooperate together to keep compatible strains (which happen to be natives or near natives) so my task has suddenly become much easier.

However, I now have a mixture of stock of varying hues and wing venation although they all exhibit native behavioural traits such as small brood nests and responsiveness to weather and floral conditions.  Despite this mix of genetics and colours the thing that puzzles me is that I can't remember ever seeing any of my drones with yellow markings.  They are all black all over.  I appreciate that a pure native queen can only lay black drones even though she may have mated with yellow ones but my queens themselves must vary in purity.  Even if there is some reason that all my drones are black then I would still expect to see yellow drifters.

My questions are: do other people notice the same phenomenon and does anyone have an explanation of why it should happen?

Thanks in advance

Rosie
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## gavin

Hi Rosie (with the 'tache!)

Is it just that Amm really is variable in colour - shade of brown I mean - and that all of your bees are largely Amm?  Some have talked of dark Amm heath bees and less dark types more adapted for spring and summer forage further east.  I'd be interested to hear if you see differences other than hue between the stocks.  Do some build up for the later summer flows and others earlier?  Some show some of the Amm traits such as pollen all round the brood nest more strongly?

But maybe I'm jumping the gun.  When you say 'mixture of wing venation' do you mean variable within the parameters of Amm or well outside it?

all the best

Gavin

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## Rosie

Hi Gavin

My bees do vary in their behaviour in the way you suggested.  I have pollen below the brood in some colonies but not others.  Some have pollen scattered within the brood.  Some build early enough to take advantage of rape whilst a few take until the heather flowers but are very good at it.  Only one built up too quickly this year for my liking and swarmed early. When I tested its wings they showed what I thought was Carniolan influence.  I have attached some wing scan results to give you an indication of their variability.  Colony 1 has some yellow in the workers but they all have black drones.

col 29 May 2010..JPGcol 1 2010..JPGcol 28 May 2010..JPG

Colony 28 has about the least AMM-like venation of all my colonies tested (apart from the one with carniolan influence).  Colony 1 is the best and all the others fall between the two of them.  Colony 29 is an exception as it has no wings with high cubital index but plenty with positive discoidal shift.  I suspect it's a strain that differs from my others as the queens in that bloodline are almost always long and slender with huge workers of variable size.  I sent some to Albert Knight once and on opening the box he spotted one that was so big that he at first thought that I had inadvertently sent the queen.

All the best

'Tachie :Smile:

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## Jon

Hi 'Rosie'
I have seen quite a few scattergrams just like your colony 29, split about 50/50 between positive and negative DS with a low CI.
The bees are usually quite yellow.
A friend Tim has quite a few colonies with a scattergram like this. 
I collected a prime swarm of really black bees with him at the end of May and the scattergram looked like your colony 39 as well.
My theory is that  colonies like this have some Buckfast influence.

I have also noticed that a yellowish bees colony often has very black drones.
I think I read somewhere that there are several genes which control colour and black tends to be dominant.
Gavin should know the answer or I want my money back.

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## gavin

Is that one of them down round about 5,323,001 bases from the top?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mapview/...=7460&chr=LG13

(I'm kidding by the way, you can have your money back)

I see that _csd_ is on chromosome 3.

All you _csd_ freaks can click on csd when the page opens and there are lots of things to look at in there, including the actual sequence.

G.

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## The Drone Ranger

Rosie said

"thing that puzzles me is that I can't remember ever seeing any of my drones with yellow markings. They are all black all over."

I am wondering about this a well and because I don't have AMM bees I wondered if the people who do only see pure black drones or if they also see thin grey bands(not yellow) on their drones

I am looking for easy breeding shortcuts without mini bee massacres

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