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Thread: New BIBBA website

  1. #101
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    DR. I am sure your 4 conditions could be met in various parts of Scotland.
    Clearly it is like pushing a boulder uphill if someone plants hundreds of Carnica colonies near you one year followed by hundreds of Ligustica the next.
    The advantage we have in Ireland is that in the North there are no commercial beekeepers and in the south the commercial and semi commercial beekeepers mostly use native stock.

    Starting with hybrids or mongrels could certainly lead to a better bee. Brother Adam demonstrated that you can tinker and improve.
    The thing is though, it has to be done in a controlled fashion and what you have with the commercial beekeepers in Scotland is total chaos with regard to stirring up the gene pool. It will never stablise to produce a population which breeds more or less true for the traits you want if there is a random injection of new genetics every year.

  2. #102

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    If the 4 conditions were met you would be home and dry you don't need to worry about Commercial beekeepers or anybody else

    greengumbo's post started me thinking
    Surely we are not trying to assert that some bees that were around in Viking times were better that the bees we have now after hundreds of years of selecting from the best.
    When was the golden age of AMM that we are trying to return to ?

  3. #103
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    The North Wales bees as advertised by FP are supplied by one of our local rearers. The background of these particular bees are partly from a Scottish strain that was supplied as native but, judging by their wings, were less pure than the North Wales background population. After bringing them here the beekeeper concerned set about improving their purity by importing good bees into the apiaries from other local queen rearers and making use of a remote mating site populated with selected drone mothers. I think the mixture of genetics has produced a gentle bee with plenty of vigour. Technical help was provided by a very experienced local queen rearer. I have been promised wing samples in the spring to see what they have to tell us. I am not happy that the bees are going to FP because we prefer to sell bees only to BIBBA members who can make educated decisions on where they should be located and what strategy should be adopted to suit the location. I doubt if FP cares a fig where they go.

    As for the apparent confusion over BIBBA's aims, it stems from the fact that we take our membership from anywhere in the UK. Breeding strategies that suit us here do not necessarily suit members in, say, East Anglia. In addition marginal districts or areas where the there is no local consensus and even animosity to even attempting to agree on a consensus, everyone is acting in his own interests. This makes it difficult for anyone to achieve any lasting improvement to the population. Even so BIBBA does not wish to abandon its members who find themselves in such an area and the work they do there might not suit areas like mine or Jon's.

    Here the background population is about 50% "in the box" according to DrawWing but certain apiaries have bees in the 90s. Our policy is to breed from our best and purest and encourage beginners to start with them so that the background population becomes purer. Our ultimate aim to to have an area where we can open mate freely and know that there will be no unwanted behaviour resulting from bad matches. We are a long way from the Galtee stage but there are so many of us aiming at the same outcome that I am confident that we will eventually be successful.

    I think that, had we tried to develop our own strain from selecting the best traits regardless of race, progress would be so slow that we would never see any significant improvements in our lifetime and as soon as we drop our guard it will all collapse to chaos again.

    Any BIBBA breeding groups in different areas will have their own strategies and BIBBA never tries to dictate to members or expel the ones that are out of step with others. They do, however, offer education and encourage exchange of genetic material between breeding groups although the latter has not been so evident in recent years. Don't think though that it does not exist or that it will not increase. The forthcoming conference will help make progress on both fronts.

    Steve

  4. #104
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Drone Ranger View Post
    When was the golden age of AMM that we are trying to return to ?
    That should read "When is the golden age of our indigenous bees going to happen ?"
    This is whats so exciting about the new energy and vigour surrounding native bee breeding projects, unlike ligustica and carnica bees, which have had considerable resources spent improving them for quite some time, the potential for improving AMM is still ripe for development, who knows where this will lead us.

  5. #105

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    Steve thanks for taking the time to give a detailed explanation of the BIBBA position

    I would have posted sooner but after reading mbc's post I was struck by a flying pig and rendered insensible

  6. #106
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Drone Ranger View Post
    I would have posted sooner but after reading mbc's post I was struck by a flying pig and rendered insensible
    DR, If you were able to sense the renewed enthusiasm in some districts for improving their local near-natives you would not be so surprised by mbc's comment. mbc lives in an area where many of the native bees were never compromised in the first place and they are into improvement in a big way. Here we are still sorting out the genetics of the background population but the enthusiasm of the locals is palpable.

    Steve

  7. #107

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    Quote Originally Posted by The Drone Ranger View Post
    Surely we are not trying to assert that some bees that were around in Viking times were better that the bees we have now after hundreds of years of selecting from the best.
    DR - are you seriously trying to say we've had hundreds of years selecting from the best of our bees?! Surely not! Selective breeding seems to be the preserve of the very, very few. Has it ever been any different?!

    Most people "breed" their bees using swarm cells from whichever colony happens to be producing them at the time and that I'm afraid ain't selective breeding. I would suggest that our bees are in fact worse than in those days as currently we have bees imported yearly which constantly degrade any natural adaptations to the local environment which might be taking place. At least homegrown bees in those days didn't have that to contend with.

  8. #108

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    And on the subject of II - I'm sure Galtee and anyone else who uses it (or is planning to do so ) sees it as a tool to complement a whole range of other techniques designed to breed for the selected traits.

  9. #109

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rosie View Post
    DR, If you were able to sense the renewed enthusiasm in some districts for improving their local near-natives you would not be so surprised by mbc's comment. mbc lives in an area where many of the native bees were never compromised in the first place and they are into improvement in a big way. Here we are still sorting out the genetics of the background population but the enthusiasm of the locals is palpable.

    Steve
    Absolutely right Steve, not even remotely funny what am I thinking flying pigs
    Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 25-10-2013 at 11:02 PM.

  10. #110

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    Quote Originally Posted by drumgerry View Post
    DR - are you seriously trying to say we've had hundreds of years selecting from the best of our bees?! Surely not! Selective breeding seems to be the preserve of the very, very few. Has it ever been any different?!

    Most people "breed" their bees using swarm cells from whichever colony happens to be producing them at the time and that I'm afraid ain't selective breeding. I would suggest that our bees are in fact worse than in those days as currently we have bees imported yearly which constantly degrade any natural adaptations to the local environment which might be taking place. At least homegrown bees in those days didn't have that to contend with.
    Well importing bees affects both hybrid bee breeding and AMM somewhat differently
    Hybrid bees are very by their nature very adaptable to any environment but of course when bees are moved into an area whether they are imported or not they affect the local population
    Fortunately that just alters the genetic mix of the hybrid by adding a bit more of something that was already there
    An Amm breeding program would become a hybrid breeding program as soon as those crosses take place
    Most of the AMM breeding seems to just be breeding hybridised bees anyway

    The questions I might ask are

    When I check my bees they are hybrid mongrels
    Yet the same results elsewhere are near native
    What would you say the cut off point is ?

    How local is local that's another puzzle to me
    when it's hybrids then the next county is no longer local
    AMM local is clear across the country

    How about native
    100 years after importation the non AMM are still imports
    a couple of years after importing AMM are native

    Which brings us to when was day zero when the whole country was populated by AMM bees
    was it before or after the Romans arrived

    There are a lot of inconsistencies
    Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 25-10-2013 at 11:17 PM. Reason: missing letter

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