A prime example would be the 600 colonies of NZ Carnica placed 10 miles away from Ron Hoskins and his varroa research project.
Hi Prakel
Many years ago I was on holiday near Lulworth Cove it's a lovely spot
I don't know where I stand on moving queens around the country it's not something that worries me particularly
Bees have been moved around and not on a small scale for a couple of hundred years at least
Migratory beekeeping is something that has a big effect on the static bee population
Most years that will be Carniolan this year a lot of Italian
It's fairly certain that the existing bees kept by ordinary beekeepers like me will already have some proportion of both these types in their mix
The objections I have are:-
1)They are imported
2)they come for a crop that is grown because of subsidy
There is no doubt though that they are productive gentle bees so there is no issue there
I admire the efforts of bee breeding projects and see them as a force for good generally
They do depend on location and if they are in the wrong place they can't succeed
If someone was to set up an AMM breeding program here they would fail
There would be no point in pointing the finger at other beekeepers commercial or otherwise
Ron Hoskins is not on an off shore island he is in Swindon for goodness sake
Presumably that's why AI is being used,he should not have been affected much
We can't give everyone who fancies breeding some bees their own Island
How much would II kit cost - we have extremely sophisticated ones at uni that cost a few thousand but they are well above spec for queen insemination. Could an association club together (or even a few neighbouring associations ??) to purchase the necessary injectors etc ? Then a few people could get trained up to carry out everyones artificial matings in an area ? Solves the problem of non-wanted drones mating with your queens and you could sell mated queens to interested third parties.
Hi Greengumbo,
Last time I looked it was over a £1,000
Gerry bought the Schley II kit a few months ago so could probably enlighten us.
From what I read, and from my experience of UK weather, an import ban would basically either reduce UK commercial beekeeping in size - due to lack of replacement queens in bulk in spring when needed- or dramatically increase their costs - which would have the same effect.
Perhaps someone might like to argue I'm incorrect?
I'd think you may be right, but how sustainable is this business model of bringing in foreign bees to harvest seasonal nectar ?
There are still North American beekeepers who 'depopulate' their hives each fall, harvest every bit of honey possible, and restock their boxes each Spring with packages from further south.
I'm sure this would be a profitable model in Scotland if there are 50% grants available to subsidise bringing in the packages.
One is here...yes, Ludlow does have two set-ups funded by and owned and insured by the Association and four trainees (I'm one) who were half funded by the Association. Microscopes were initially loaned but now have two set-ups bought from Brunel. However, I am currently somewhat dubious that enough hands-on is possible to become good enough at it, over a significant distance to the "lab", with breeder queens and drone mothers all over the place, as volunteers, with loads of other stuff to do in the season and an extremely complex selection process. The model here was that local big set-ups had non-compatible bees and aggression was increasing. Some of that is undoubtedly down to poor handling but some is due to bad matings. So yes, II does make sense but is proving slow (year 3 just finishing).
Where we are, to the north, it ought to be possible to do things in a more traditional way more similar to Rosie's local groups - cross your fingers please for the tendering process, it ain't fun one tiny bit.
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