Does anyone here have any recent experience of the Maud strain bees? Are there still any in their pure form and what are they like? Should they be all black, are they prolific or not, are they gentle etc etc?
Thanks
Steve
Printable View
Does anyone here have any recent experience of the Maud strain bees? Are there still any in their pure form and what are they like? Should they be all black, are they prolific or not, are they gentle etc etc?
Thanks
Steve
Are those the ones B Mobus used to work with?
Yes that's my understanding.
I once (a goodly number of years ago) got a couple of colonies from a guy near Inverness who said they were descendants of Bernard Mobus' Maud strain - whether they were a decent representative of that strain I can't say. That was in the days before I thought in any depth about the bees I kept and where they came from - my first couple of years of beekeeping were like that. I'm ashamed to say that I put them into two top bar hives I'd made and neither colony made it through the winter. While I had them I didn't notice them as being particularly gentle or having any other noticeably good or bad characteristics. Never had them long enough though. One thing was certain - they weren't suitable for those blasted TBHs and needless to say I've never put another bee in them. The biggest regret I have in beekeeping is subjecting those bees to those hives.
Oh and Steve Polyhive is the man to speak to about the Maud bees as I believe he worked with Bernard.
Steve knows him I think
Phew! Steve's still speaking to us after that.
There's a long tale there. If only all imports heading for sensitive places went into Top Bar Hives.
Didn't some Maud bees find their way to Colonsay?
Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk
Does Andrew A watch this forum?
Yes, from time to time and on an if-i've-got-time-in-my-busy-schedule basis.
Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk
Aye you'll not find someone who has less time for TBHs than me. A hard lesson learned there. Although I believe Madasafish uses them with some success - good luck to him.
We tried up to six tbh and two tbh nucs for three years here. And don't any more. Even sheltered & insulated, fed the same if needed and monitored/treated for varroa (bit of a palaver) the colonies fared much worse than the Commercials - same apiary, sister queens. And the mice adored them...climb the nice angled legs and nip under the roof into the cuddly wuddly insulation. But at least not in the hive, eh...perhaps not but they could chew the corks.
Top Bar hives are fine:
IF
1. You ignore the rubbish posted by the Natural Beekeepers of this world: mostly they live in places where any fool can overwinter bees in a hive that has holes in it and expect them to survive. I did my research and amended the designs. and insulated.
2. You don't want much honey.
3. You like lots of hard work to get a little honey.
I am converting to Langstroth
I would be interested in the history of these maud bees if anyone has a bit of background on them
pigeon nest moved again by high wind both out of nest but this time one has been eaten by something
put the other little chap back and added a few stabilising branches he/she seems ok
I would be as well as I can't get those images of French AMM arriving in Craibstone in the 1930s out of my head!
Look to be nice quiet bees.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7F5u7Uqt1U
Scroll to 1.05 for the package of 'abeilles vivantes'
Good little video must have been before sound though
I though that was the old camera noise like chaplain films :)
This is a modern mini cine camera
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mobius-Pocke...+action+camera
Aren't the Maud bees a strain of AMM that was developed by Bernard Mobus? And if so they post-date that video by some decades? I'd like to know more about their history as well.
My guess is that Mobus worked with what he found there and improved it.
I doubt he brought bees with him from elsewhere as that ol' Bibba reluctance to move queens from one area to another goes back to the Beo Cooper era.
I would be curious to know if the descendents of those abeilles vivantes were in the mix.
They were AMM so probably acclimatised reasonably well.
Wing scanning would not distinguish a French AMM from a Scottish or Irish one.
Some types of DNA analysis would
Wing morphometry goes way back.
They used to project slides of mounted wings onto a wall and measure the angles with a thing called the 'bibba fan'.
I jest you not as Frankie Howard used to say!
Mobus was more or less mid 60s to late 80s I think.
Scotland was his territory, Craibstone area I think.
I own one book of his, Mating in miniature.
Hi Jon
I think that area might have been very well hybridised by then
A R Cumming and Margaret Logan writing in "Beekeeping Craft and Hobby" 1950
"Choice of bees .. it is important to give some thought to the race and still more to the strain of bee to be used...
the British Black Bee was in common use all over the country (nice description follows) then...
This bee is now probably extinct as a as a pure breed although in some parts of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland the ordinary hybrid now used is probably three quarters Black.
To replace the Black bee, Italians, Dutch, French and Carniolans were introduced, and most of our mongrel bees are now a mixture of many races Dutch and Carniolan bees are much like the old Blacks. They are docile and prolific but so much given to swarming that they are often unprofitable, French bees are frequently very vicious, but they are usually very good workers. Their tempers make them most unsuitable in apiaries near frequented places.
Italian bees of a good strain ..prolific..gentle..easily handled .. commonly kept by honey farmers an good Italian crosses are very strongly recommended.
Of late years, Caucasians, very gentle bees with grey instead of yellow bands have become very popular. An early tendency to use great quantities of propolis appears to have been bred out and Caucasians from a good breeder may well be chosen. It is, however, impossible for the amateur to keep a pure race over a period of years, and young pure bred queens should be bought in from time to time.
Most beginners will be well advised to procure bees bred in their own neighbourhood ...."
Hope I haven't gone too far off topic here but the areas of Aberdeen and Inverness etc were very hybridised by imports right from the early 1900's onwards and the French bees seem to have have a reputation for bad temper.
The statement by Cummings that "it is impossible for the amateur to keep a pure race" shows how hybridised the area was
B. Mobus would not have fallen into the amateur category though
The French bees in the video looked quiet enough judging by the beekeepers prototype Sheriff suit and Trilby.
Hard to know if there is any research behind the comment 'the bee is now probably extinct as a pure breed' or perhaps the author was just propagating the myth spread by Brother Adam to suit his/her own agenda.
Dutch bees would have been AMM as well and would have been quite dissimilar genetically to Carniolans.
The author likely drew a false conclusion re. similarity as they are both dark bees.
Carnica and Ligustica are much more closely related even though the abdomen colours are different.
That would be more accurate if it stated that it is impossible for a beekeeper working on his own to keep a pure race. (Unless you are the single beekeeper on Colonsay)Quote:
The statement by Cummings that "it is impossible for the amateur to keep a pure race" shows how hybridised the area was
The Jensen and Pedersen paper covered some of this stuff.
Varying degrees of Apis mellifera ligustica introgression in protected populations of the black honeybee,
Apis mellifera mellifera, in northwest Europe
My reading of the paper is that any AMM population has a huge amount of natural variation within it irrespective of the jurisdiction.
ie, trying to distinguish a French AMM from a Scottish or Irish one would not be straightforward.
There is a COLOSS/IBRA paper just out, Meixner et al, which does an overview of methods of distinguishing between subspecies.
Standard methods for characterising subspecies and ecotypes of Apis mellifera
Hi Jon - yeah I've been reading those two on and off for a while now. I just wondered if I had missed a specific marker that would distinguish a French AMM from a Scottish or Irish AMM but I think it would be more an analysis of the microsat data rather than a simple "yes its irish or no its french".
The Meixner paper (as well as the whole BEEBOOK !) is great.
There was a lot of typing involved but I didn't want to change what was written because it shows how very influential bee keepers from the area were thinking at the time.
Cummings was the president of the Inverneshire beekeeping association Margaret Logan was a lecturer in beekeeping at The North of Scotland Agricultural College
They are always just opinions at the end of the day but they give a general impression that hybrids were the norm and buying in queens was considered a good thing.
Also that even in those areas of Scotland the Italian bee was the commercial beekeepers chosen breed an consequently new beekeepers were being rcomended that part Italian crosses were good bees to have
Often beekeeping books are written with the South of England as the focal point
I have a few where the East of Scotland is the authors area of expertise
Anyway thats a side issue wonder why there is no information forthcoming about the Maud bees ?
They might have their origins elsewhere
[QUOTE=Jon;22325]
They used to project slides of mounted wings onto a wall and measure the angles with a thing called the 'bibba fan'.
Actually a Herold fan - not invented by BIBBA. See: http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cus...asurement.html
Our chairman jokes that he has a bald spot because of the hours spent in front of a high powered projector measuring wings by this method.
Deafening silence about the maud bees. Someone must know something.
GG. From the Jensen paper P102.
ie, if the common ancestry is recent you would not easily be able to distinguish one AMM population from another.Quote:
The analysis failed to detect a clear phylogeographical pattern of
the Scandinavian, British, Belgian and French populations
of A. m. mellifera, irrespective of whether introgression
of A and C-haplotypes was taken into account (Fig. 5a)
or not (Fig. 5b). This is because the extant A. m. mellifera
populations mostly have the same spectrum of haplotypes,
consistent with a fairly recent common ancestry (Garnery
et al. 1998a).
Off topic again so cut
Re. Mobus and the maud bees:
This presentation is elsewhere on the Sbai site.
But the last slide is where we really want it to start!!
If you look at the presenters note on slide 14 of the presentation John mentions that the bees found in Peebles were from Bernard Mobus Maud bees
Mobus was a copious record keeper. There must be masses of information somewhere.
They must be gone otherwise somebody would have come along saying they were continuing the breeding ?
Well maybe I can contribute to this thread in a bit of detail.
Before I start I had a phone call tonight from the far south alerting me to this thread, I assume that some of the posters are aware of my site and that I can be contacted via there. www.poly-hive.co.uk
I am starting with the film. I took the film and had it put on DVD, as far as I know it was NOT filmed at Craibstone, but it was shown as part of the then SBA Expert course which Bernard ran. To give a glimpse of the mans abilities it went like this. Friday 7pm to 9-30. Saturday 9am to 9pm. Sunday same. Monday afternoon exam. Bernard apart from the odd film lectured the whole time. Personally I find it hard on the voice box to lecture for two hours. I thought the film deserved a wider audience so posted it on youtube so it sits there generating many positive comments, and probably has had more views now then it ever had on 16mm.
Maud queens. Bernard told me it was a queen he found in the village of Maud in Aberdeenshire and it was a colony which deeply impressed him. Believe me right now and here that it took a great deal to impress that man. When Bernard was forced to retire by the college I took on Craibstone, and the Maud strain, and his bees too. I bought 14 colonies from him. At the time Hamish Robertson was also running AMM and doing very well off their backs for all of that. My best result was (I hate to admit this but for veracity) the best crop I ever had was 320lbs of honey from a timber National. I would love to say otherwise but I have to be honest. The best Mauds were excellent. Any aspect you can think off they were up to or surpassed. However they had two critical weaknesses, which Bernard freely acknowledged. They were susceptible to Nosema and were not the best at over wintering. On the plus side they were excellent at superceding on the heather and their comb honey won me more than a few prizes of a red hue.
Sadly after I left Craibstone life got in the way of beekeeping and my last colonies some 15 or so were burnt by a farmer I curse daily.
So there you are that is what happened, and yes they were true AMM I did hundreds of wing measurements to prove it at at the time using the most modern methods available at the time.
Paper work. Not sure who wants what but there was very little that I found. On the other hand what was lost/ignored by the college was priceless. The original slides by Rennie? If that means nothing then I suggest some reading on Acarine. Bernard was doing his work when I knew him first in 1986 on a computer and when I took over at Craibstone in 1998 it had gone with him so it must have be literally a PC.
I hope this clears some of the historical fog.
PH
PH
Yes. Not going to discuss as still very painful.
PH