You are managing a lot more than I am.
Bit worried about trying to sum up what I have learned from the thread so far but here goes
Bee breeding has only been moving in the right direction since movable frame hives
So whatever was in those Viking graves was probably not much good by modern standards
Nevertheless because AMM were around at that time they should/could/would be due a revival
Hopefully the Picts won't be granted the same status I don't fancy them roaming around Forfar
Although a couple of hundred years worth of misguided importation and hybridisation has gone on there are still remote pure pockets of AMM
Those remote pockets don't include Colonsay because those bees were taken there much more recently, however Colonsay has been given protected status
The Bee Farmers feel aggrieved that although they have had money to replace colonies lost they are still not heavily subsidised enough
The rest of us feel that without their activities life would be a lot easier anyway
With our existing hybrid bees you could eventually breed a good strain of bee in open mating as long as migratory beekeeping stops
Breeding hybrids with nice wings and fluffy bottoms is OK as long as you play nicely with other beekeepers
Buying a queen is not the worst thing a beekeeper could do but ultimately whether its Italian Carnie or AMM he will have wasted his money
That can be mitigated against if he always buys another one or a £2000 II setup or alternatively has his own Island
Breeding AMM would be a good thing, but for most of the beekeepers in Britain Unicorns might prove easier
Nobody likes imports, not because of their shabby wings, but because we fear the disease risks.
BIBBA only has a few breeding rules but they are difficult to understand
BIBBA only has a few rules and they are easy to understand just not to follow
People who live in remote islands should not throw stones at the SBA President
I am enjoying the read but I'm not sure if it is getting anywhere.
For me, I don't know and can't control what bees are delivered by post to the surrounding area so I just breed from the best (in my view) and cull queens that produce bad-temper. There's not much more I can do as a (reasonably serious) hobby beekeeper. I'm not sure I would breed a really winter-frugal bee as it might not have sufficient colony size for an early crop like OSR which wasn't around in the days before imports.
To take your points in turn:
We know from the literature that they did cull the heaviest skeps - which I would assume were the best.
Have you heard the expression 'the grass is greener on the other side'? Humans seem to have always assumed that others have something better - especially the British who have constantly believed that anything imported must be good (hence the collapse of our economy from time to time).
If it is more expensive then it has to be even better, doesn't it?
Who believes adverts?
Remember too that there was plenty of money to be made if you could convince beekeepers that you were able to supply something better than what they already had.
What they (the importers and their customers) did not know (or perhaps some did) was the harm that would be done by indiscriminate importing - and it still goes on, despite our current knowledge. Leaving aside the genetic damage, let us think for a minute about disease. We have always assumed that it is OK to import from another country if we have the same diseases here? Right? Wrong!
Recent work has shown that there are, from memory (I might have the numbers wrong), 27 strains of EFB identified so far in the world: the UK has, I think, 6 of these. Do we want the rest, some of which are more virulent than the ones that we have?
If I had my way then we would put in real biosecurity: we could start by learning from NZ and Australia. (Is it not ironic that NZ are wrecking our bees whilst preserving their own?) It is time that our government realised that monitoring and reacting when a problem occurs is not biosecurity - it is just job creation for Defra departments.
Peter Edwards
I'm in the same position Adam and I think are most other people are as well
One or two areas are unaffected by migratory beekeeping and have the right stock to take up serious AMM bee breeding
I think Jon, Rosie, mbc and all the the others involved in a serious way recognise that
The rest of us can make the best of the bees we have without feeling guilty about ignoring the call to arms so to speak
A little bit of banter helps clarify things more than the fierce disputes you get elsewhere which only divide the community
Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 26-10-2013 at 07:32 PM.
I agree Adam. Excess frugality is a bad thing. I don't like colonies which come out of winter on only 3-4 frames of bees as they will not be built up until the end of May, ie just in time for the June gap! There is a happy medium though, as Italians in particular are reputed to keep rearing brood right through the winter with the associated excess consumption of stores.
I was at a NIHBS meeting on 7th April this year.
One of the other committee members is a guy who runs 150 colonies of AMM and he had supers on a lot of them by that date.
I got a queen from him and also a Galtee queen mid June and introduced both of them to 2 frame nucs.
These built up very quickly to full colonies and they are colonies which will likely need the second brood box peak season.
They are both overwintering on double brood.
The point is that within AMM you have different ecotypes and there is a lot of variation.
You can breed for what suits your area.
This was noted in the Jensen and Pederson paper which looked at AMM across several different areas and jurisdictions (including colonsay)
There is as great a variation within a given AMM population than between any two AMM populations you might care to compare.
DR, you missed the most important point, ie that it all works better when beekeepers work together rather than as individuals.Bit worried about trying to sum up what I have learned from the thread so far but here goes
One thing to bear in mind is that subsidies for OSR will not last forever and in my opinion nor should they. I think there's a happy medium to be had with a bee which manages its Winter stores frugally and gets going again in Spring when conditions are right. The last thing I want to be doing in my clover and heather area is feeding a bleedin enormous colony in our too frequently wet summers.
I also don't think the getting of big honey crops is a simple function of colony size. It's one of the biggest criticisms levelled at AMM by some. That the queens produce small colonies which will only ever get modest honey crops for you. My experience is that big colonies don't always get lots of honey and it's often a smaller colony that wins out in pounds produced. And generally those are headed by previous year's queens (in their first full season) and have not tried to swarm. Interested to hear others views on this even if it is a slight deviation from the subject at hand.
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