New BIBBA website

[drumgerry]

You didn't answer my question DR! Do you really think we've had hundreds of years of selective breeding from the best of the available bees?

Not really sure why you've got such a burr in your knickers about AMM to be honest. I can only speak personally and what I don't want to see continue are imports. And it makes simple sense to me to focus our efforts on the bees which have their native range in Scotland. I don't see anything else that makes sense. Should we be breeding Italians or Carnies? And if so why?

Not sure that, as you say, hybrid bees are by definition adaptable to their environment. Crosses take traits from their parents which may not always be the most useful ones either for themselves or for us. Cross a Collie with a Jack Russell and you may get a dog that wants to herd rats!

Predictability is better assured with pure breeds and for me the only sensible choice is AMM.

And as to the concepts of local and native. I don't think those terms are especially helpful on occasion as of course holes can be picked in them as you have done. As to the Romans - they didn't hang about in my neck of the woods! They passed on through and I doubt they were dropping off clay pots of yellow bees on their way!

[Pete L]

As to the Romans - they didn't hang about in my neck of the woods! They passed on through and I doubt they were dropping off clay pots of yellow bees on their way!

I would not put anything past those Romans Gerry...always thought they were a sneaky bunch. Found this......
Apiculture was of vital importance in the Roman Empire, because its triumphant armies were known to tote beehives when invading foreign territories.

[The Drone Ranger]

You didn't answer my question DR! Do you really think we've had hundreds of years of selective breeding from the best of the available bees?

Not really sure why you've got such a burr in your knickers about AMM to be honest. I can only speak personally and what I don't want to see continue are imports. And it makes simple sense to me to focus our efforts on the bees which have their native range in Scotland. I don't see anything else that makes sense. Should we be breeding Italians or Carnies? And if so why?

Not sure that, as you say, hybrid bees are by definition adaptable to their environment. Crosses take traits from their parents which may not always be the most useful ones either for themselves or for us. Cross a Collie with a Jack Russell and you may get a dog that wants to herd rats!

Predictability is better assured with pure breeds and for me the only sensible choice is AMM.

And as to the concepts of local and native. I don't think those terms are especially helpful on occasion as of course holes can be picked in them as you have done. As to the Romans - they didn't hang about in my neck of the woods! They passed on through and I doubt they were dropping off clay pots of yellow bees on their way!

Sorry Drumgerry
The intention is not to annoy or upset anyone
I'm definitely not wearing fur in my knickers

To answer the breeding question ,where to start, that's the problem, so yes I do think beekeepers have been selecting from the best for hundreds of years,
Now what their idea of the best was would have been affected by their method
You might have kept bees in hollow logs or hi tech skeps in which case swarminess and bad temper would be less important but I'm sure the vicious ones were the first killed and the honey taken
Bees which were not selected would swarm each year and produce just enough surplus to get through the winter.

After the appearance of fixed frame beekeeping Bee breeding really took off
Henry Alley writes in his book that he started breeding in 1862 and selling queens from there on

In almost every activity whether it be cows, cats or carrots there are breeders dedicated to improvement
Now with bees it's the same there are professional bee breeding operations who supply the market with queens
The argument that the following year they are succeeded by inferior offspring would apply equally to potatoes or indeed to any open mated AMM

Once you have crossed your collie and jack russell its game over you can take the progeny and breed from them, you might get something that looks like a collie but it will always have jack russell in there

Breeding from a hybrid bee and selecting black ones is just that.
There is no moral high ground.
It's not returning things to how they were in some mythical point in the past.
If people want to do it that's fine if not that's fine as well
I hear people complaining that migratory beekeeping is ruining their breeding efforts
The same people pick up their hives and move them to the heather

[Peter]

DR To answer the breeding question ,where to start, that's the problem, so yes I do think beekeepers have been selecting from the best for hundreds of years

Skep beekeepers culled the best stocks and kept the mediocre ones!

[drumgerry]

My point about the Romans Pete is that they didn't settle in much of Scotland and although Tacitus reports they ventured into the North East they didn't stay. Hence my flippant point of dropping off colonies of yellow bees as they passed.

DR - not annoyed at you. I think we've both been on here long enough to have a civilized disagreement . Just a bit confused about your stance on AMM.

Of course selecting black bees for colour and nothing else is a nonsense. All you get are black bees. From what I can see though that's not what's happening and I think it's disingenuous of you to suggest otherwise. As to the queens people actually use - I think the general stamp of beekeepers tend to use queens produced from their own swarm cells. You think they're buying in highly bred superior queens by operations that think deeply about what they're producing. If people are buying in generally it's imports from the likes of Bickerstaffes and I'm not seeing the evidence of a superior breeding programme in those queens.

Of course there are breeders dedicated to improvement. We have some of them on here and I hope to join their ranks as the years progress. What I don't get is why you're so opposed to breeding for improvement in AMM. The questions remains - why breed from foreign races or hybrids when we have our own, dare I say it, native race already here. If as you say AMM breeders are simply breeding from hybrids I'm sure they (whoever they are) would have it otherwise and would take advantage of DNA analysis if it were available. Something useful that could be funded were the political will there to do so.

And interestingly it's an accepted thing in some breeds at least of cat (don't know enough about dogs to say) that you can bring in an animal to the breed who is unregistered and who displays the characteristics of the breed but happens not to have the paperwork. I know they do/have done this with Maine Coone cats with farm cats in Maine who looked and behaved like the breed. So you see it can be a flexible business and we don't need to be down on people who are trying to breed AMM using bees who display the physical and behavioural characterstics of AMM without them having been DNA analysed for purity.

I'm not seeing the moral highground being taken by AMM proponents as you seem to DR. What I do see is anger at continued imports. And for myself anger and confusion at why we allow them when our Bee Health Strategy uses the word "sustainable" and endlessly importing bees is the very definition of unsustainable.

[Rosie]

If people are buying in generally it's imports from the likes of Bickerstaffes and I'm not seeing the evidence of a superior breeding programme in those queens.

I can't comment on any specific importers such as Bickerstaffes but if you want to buy in a pure well-bred queen suitable for breeding from the cost can be (or at least was when I last looked) £300 or £400. The standard practice is to buy in a single expensive breeder queen each year and rear hundreds of open mated queens from it. These young queens will be pure (often Buckfast if the word "pure" can be applied to a Buckfast) but will be carrying semen from drones of other races. The queens are then exported to the UK where they head a hybrid colony despite being pure themselves. That means the behaviour of the colony is controlled by a gentle queen but its nectar collecting ability is governed by the hybrid vigour of the workers. This is a good formula and helps sell the importing habit. Unfortunately the next generation will be headed by one of the hybrid daughters and will be unpredictable, and, in my experience, often extremely defensive. Hence the the hapless owner is forced to requeen and buys another queen from the same source.

The system is unsustainable and in some areas the beekeepers can see it and are working together to end it. Some bee farmers and some amateurs are happy to have one good year from the queens, rather like battery hen farmers who buy in a new lot of hens each year and destroy all the old ones. It makes more profit for them than breeding their own pure-bred hens which will lay fewer eggs per year but will have a much longer productive period. No commercial egg producer would breed from their hybrid battery hens because the next cross will be inferior to the F1 cross they started with. Similarly, in my opinion, it would be fruitless to expect any success in bee improvement by using cheap imported queens.

Some amm people have managed to achieve the best of both systems. They keep 2 different lines of amms in distant apiaries and cross them together to take advantage of hybrid vigour without the risk of unwanted behaviour in future generations. They use the apiaries containing their own crosses for honey production and the other 2 apiaries for breeding purposes.

Steve

[mbc]

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

Lol.
What I was trying to get at, which I'm sure you realise DR, is that as with any stock improvement breeding efforts, there is a time when incremental improvements plateau out, and that this plateau is unlikely to have been reached in AMM due to the historical and present lack of resources behind the breeding efforts. One man bands and enthusiastic amateur groups just dont have the same impact as the national institutions which have led ligustica and carnica breeding efforts on the continent.

[Jon]

I think it is likely that there has been some introgression of genetic material into some or most of the AMM stock but it is possible to check if you have the time and resources.

Here is a recent review by Meixner et al of all the techniques used to measure introgression and separate out the ecotypes; from Morphometry to the various types of DNA analysis.

Standard methods for characterising subspecies and ecotypes of Apis mellifera
Author(s) Marina D Meixner, Maria Alice Pinto, Maria Bouga, Per Kryger, Evgeniya Ivanova and Stefan Fuchs

This discusses mitochondrial DNA, Microsatellites and Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) in the context of bee subspecies.
It is a very good review for anyone with the time and the interest to wade through it.

There is a good reference list at the end as well.

DR.
Noone with an ounce of wit thinks you can backbreed to AMM from a mongrel or hybrid population of bees.
What you can so in this situation is improve and stabilise the mongrels as long as there is not a constant injection of fresh genetics from various sub species. This is what Roger Patterson has done with success with his local bees in West Sussex. He has bees which are calm to work with and productive. The traits he has selected for are those usually associated with AMM such as frugality and compact brood nest. These bees are not AMM but they are well improved bees compared to what he had before. The reason it works for Roger is that he has dozens maybe hundreds of local beekeepers working as a team.
I don't think anyone on the thread has made that claim for backbreeding although I have seen it in the Bibba magazine from people who really should know better.

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

This makes no sense at all DR. First cross (F1) hybrids are often extremely vigorous and productive for reasons which you can read about if you google heterosis. Benefits are often lost in subsequent generations as you are then into mongrels rather than F1 hybrid. That is why F1 hybrid seed is expensive and is why saving seed from F1 seed does not produce the same results.
Adding a bit of what is already there is not necessarily true. If your hybrids are AMM x Carnica and someone introduces Ligustica you will get something different.

But if you start with an AMM population which is almost pure with minimal amounts of introgression that is another matter.
If you have bees like that to work with you just select from your best queens and work away.
If open mating produces mixed worker populations these colonies are still 100% kosher for producing drones as the sperm in the queens spermatheca has nothing to do with the drones she produces.
The key thing here is being confident that your breeder queens are pure race.
I would advocate that anyone in an area of really mixed up genetics who wants to start an AMM improvement group should start by bringing in a quality queen to graft from. All her daughters will produce AMM drones so in year two you will have a much improved background situation to work with if you requeen enough colonies in the neighborhood.

EDIT
posted at the same time as Rosie.
We are saying the same thing using different examples.

[The Drone Ranger]

DR To answer the breeding question ,where to start, that's the problem, so yes I do think beekeepers have been selecting from the best for hundreds of years

Skep beekeepers culled the best stocks and kept the mediocre ones!

They might not have
People were just as smart in the past and in some ways smarter than now

But let's go with that and say since the introduction of modern removable frames people have selected from their best bees

In fact they were so inclined to improve their bees that they imported huge numbers of queens and bees from all over the place
They were not cheap to buy either so their was a genuine desire for better bees
Most old adverts stressed the honey gathering calpability
I think it's fair to say then that they were interested in improving their bees and actively engaged in doing so albeit that lead to hybridisation of the bee population of most of the UK
I agree with both Peters,Rosie, Jon and mbc (and most of drumgerry) Scottish wildcat X moggie
Is the next wave of hybridisation , imports and bee movements to be AMM ?
Fair enough my bees have a fair bit of that in them as well
Sorry jon meant to reply to the Hetrosis thing earlier I don't thing anyone buying a queen will be getting one which has a line bred pedigree but a wide gene pool helps with vigour anyway

[mbc]

But if you start with an AMM population which is almost pure with minimal amounts of introgression that is another matter.
If you have bees like that to work with you just select from your best queens and work away.
If open mating produces mixed worker populations these colonies are still 100% kosher for producing drones as the sperm in the queens spermatheca has nothing to do with the drones she produces.
The key thing here is being confident that your breeder queens are pure race.
I would advocate that anyone in an area of really mixed up genetics who wants to start an AMM improvement group should start by bringing in a quality queen to graft from. All her daughters will produce AMM drones so in year two you will have a much improved background situation to work with if you requeen enough colonies in the neighborhood.

.

This idea of pure bred drones from a queen who has mixed matings falls down as soon as these queens swarm or are superceded.