What is the thinking behind the cubital index morphology ?

[gavin]

There's also a green (even Emerald) Isle to the west of us parts of which sound much the same.

[Jon]

That spat on BKF between people who want to keep Buckfast and those who are keeping our native bee is counterproductive as people can keep whatever race they want.
You need to convince people of the benefits rather than berating them.
The background population in Ireland, especially south of the border, is native bee, with some introgression from other races depending upon where you are.
Keeping Buckfast means you will have to requeen every year or practice II if you want to keep pure Buckfast rather than Buckfast crossed with native bee drones which is not a good idea.
With the native bee, you can get people working together in local breeding groups and have queens open mated with reasonable results.

[brothermoo]

With the native bee, you can get people working together in local breeding groups and have queens open mated with reasonable results.

Whats the timescale for good open matings of a large area like belfast or a large town?
I know we have the mating area at minnowburn and apideas at that site have proportionally more chance of good mating but at what stage do you think beekeepers get to the point of good open matings from their own gardens/apiaries?

__________________
sent via tapatalk

[Jon]

It's hard to say as there is likely to be more than one drone congregation in the area so different queens may fly to different DCAs and each one may have a different mix of drones. Some of mine mate above the apiary as well.
I have had a few mate from apideas in my garden with good results but my garden is only 1.3 miles from the association apiary at minnowburn and 2.6 miles from my main apiary at the allotments.
The best way is to take a long term view and try and get as many beekeepers as possible keeping the same type of bee.
The Galtee project has been running about 20 years now and I think they have about 1000 colonies of Good stock in the Valley so open mated queens should meet the right sort of drone.

There are other factors as well which are weather related.
AMM drones and virgin queens are supposed to fly in cooler weather so you may have more chance of avoiding yellow drones at times like this.
The caveat is that there is a lot of stuff written about bee races which is anecdotal rather than peer reviewed science so that has not been formally verified as far as I know.

last summer my bees kept producing drones all summer but others reported that their drones got chucked out in June when stores got low.

[brothermoo]

So its a long term vision then, I suppose it is easier done with more people on board!

__________________
sent via tapatalk

[Dark Bee]

There's also a green (even Emerald) Isle to the west of us parts of which sound much the same.

Yes indeed there is and in the interests of fairness please remember there is a splash of orange there too, which adds colour and balance. It is one of the last strongholds of AMM, but has Italians, Carniolans, Caucasians and Dutch in varying percentages thrown into the mix for good measure as well as the Fastbucks. Our esteemed contributor from Belfast is of course quite correct when he said that people can keep whichever bees they wish and that education and not coercion is the correct attitude to adopt. What I find incomprehensible is the attitude of those involved with the Buckfast bees - have you read their webpages and seen the various posts of what presumably are minions eager to acquire some credibility. The pen is certainly mightier than the sword and if one cannot have a reasoned argument/discussion, then one has already lost.

[Jon]

The thing is if you keep a race which no-one else keeps in your area you will have to requeen almost every year as it will be impossible to rear pure race queens from open mating.
For beginners whose bees swarm and requeen themselves naturally this is a recipe for disaster as a gentle colony could end up very aggressive when it gets its new queen.
I think the Galtee group is a very good example for others to follow as a group of beekeepers is working towards a common goal of bee improvement in their local area.
You have to counter the propaganda as there are loads of Buckfast beekeepers who trot out the stale old propaganda about black bees being vicious. Mine aren't. Any pure race bees from a decent breeding programme should be fine to work with. It is the random crosses and the hybrids which cause all the problems.

[The Drone Ranger]

Well it was a long wet Summer last year followed by a hard winter
High winter losses

If the theories are correct then the bee population should have veered back toward AMM
It would be a shame if the imports were to push the balance back before anyone has a chance to measure the changes

[Jon]

Well it was a long wet Summer last year followed by a hard winter
High winter losses

If the theories are correct then the bee population should have veered back toward AMM

The native bee people make that claim over and over but I'm not so sure about it.
Locally, the losses were bad irrespective of bee race.
I know people with yellow mongrels who lost the lot but I also know native bee people who had bad losses as well.
The main factor this year was colony size. Nucs and colonies understrength in the autumn had no chance.

[gavin]

Same in Scotland as far as I can make out. The losses are more down to husbandry than anything. If you had Varroa properly under control, and had some autumn or late summer brood raising (location or feeding), and fed for the winter, and had top-up feed as required directly over the cluster, then the losses were moderate in full-sized colonies. The small ones suffered badly. Get any of that wrong and your colonies were toast, whether Amm-ish or Carnie-ish.

There is one thing I'd really like to know. Dark worker bees clearly fly in poorer weather than the S European types. Was their queen mating (and drone flying) also better last summer when mating windows were very scarce?