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Thread: New BIBBA website

  1. #171
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Drone Ranger View Post

    I don't see how that is consistent with commercial beekeepers moving bees round the country
    I suspect if there was less moving around of bees there would be less importation, hybridisation, disease risks etc
    Would it make good sense for commercial bees to be moved from Berwick on Tweed to Aberdeen on mass ie Chain Bridge
    Personally I dont see wishing to keep native bees as being in conflict with the idea of migratory beekeeping, either for pollination or chasing honey crops.
    I think as soon as we categorise Amm as a less productive bee only suitable for static beekeeping in marginal areas, then the game is lost.
    Britain is such a tight little island which imports over a third of all the food we eat, I think the onus is on people involved in food production to try and address this deficit. Thats not to say we should sacrifice quality in favour of quantity but that we should strive to be productive, and people should not try to hamstring our food producers with naive elitist ideas and actually appreciate and congratulate those who strive to do more.
    heather.jpg
    This picture shows bees efficiently trucked by articulated lorry from SW England up to Scottish heather and then distributed around by a fleet of unimoggs, awesome !( even better IMHO if they were native bees, but ho hum !)(picture originally posted on BKF by ITLD aka Murray Mcgregor )
    Last edited by mbc; 30-10-2013 at 01:07 PM.

  2. #172

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    Quote Originally Posted by greengumbo View Post
    Woohoo ! I have all of 3 blueberries ripening so might be ahead of the game Whether the redwings and fieldfares will beat me to them is another story.
    Hi greengumbo when do they flower ?
    Are bees remotely interested in them ?

  3. #173

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    Blueberries require bumblebees for pollination. Honey bees are unable to provide the required 'buzz' pollination.
    Peter Edwards

  4. #174

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    Hi mbc
    on the commercial beekeeping operations, if you support that activity thats fine
    But nobody can complain that their breeding programs have been torpedoed by an influx of foriegn bees and in the next breath direct hundreds of hives full of self same bees to somebody else's back door
    If you can make sense of that you will be doing better than me

    When I go anywhere with my wife she always has a firm opinion "it's this way we need to go "
    "i'm sure it's over here" etc
    BUT over the years I have learned that she is mostly wrong.
    In fact she has not the slightest talent for finding her way round nor any sense of direction whatever.

    You can't tell her this, otherwise she will tend to overreact

    So I have learned over the years to just ignore her advice on the basis that if you are trying to get somewhere its better just to follow your own path rather than be lead in circles by someone who hasn't a clue where they are going but thinks they have

    I will leave the readers of this thread to make a judgement about whether there is any logic in any of the arguments they have read or whether they might just find themseves following someones advice who is more clueless than they are

  5. #175

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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter View Post
    Blueberries require bumblebees for pollination. Honey bees are unable to provide the required 'buzz' pollination.
    Hi Peter
    There is another thread on here about Maud bees
    That might be something you could clue us up on ?

  6. #176

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    Sorry - no information. I would have thought that might have resided in Scotland somewhere.

    I had a queen from Orkney several years ago and I think it was Gavin (?) who suggested that bees from the Maud strain had been taken there many years ago, so it could be descended from those.
    Peter Edwards

  7. #177

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    On the subject of commercial migratory beekeeping - if I saw a lorry like that pulling up near me it would fill me with horror. Especially knowing that it had travelled such a distance. As it is I know that some of those bees are destined for the upper reaches of Strathspey. Who's to say what those bees are bringing with them? Bad enough they bring their Carnie/Italian/Buckfast drones.

    This'll be me repeating myself -again! - for those who weren't listening or weren't here at the time. My firmly held opinion is that most commercial beekeepers operate unsustainably and the picture of that lorry and the information that it has come from SW England further confirms what I believe. Plus of course the rather large government handout they're getting in Scotland. I also think this is related to the AMM issue like DR says. Not sure how support for the bee farmers and their annual imports of queens/packages/nucs reconciles with support for developing AMM as our indigenous strain of bees. Surely the two are mutually incompatible?

  8. #178
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Drone Ranger View Post
    Hi mbc
    on the commercial beekeeping operations, if you support that activity thats fine
    But nobody can complain that their breeding programs have been torpedoed by an influx of foriegn bees and in the next breath direct hundreds of hives full of self same bees to somebody else's back door
    If you can make sense of that you will be doing better than me

    When I go anywhere with my wife she always has a firm opinion "it's this way we need to go "
    "i'm sure it's over here" etc
    BUT over the years I have learned that she is mostly wrong.
    In fact she has not the slightest talent for finding her way round nor any sense of direction whatever.

    You can't tell her this, otherwise she will tend to overreact

    So I have learned over the years to just ignore her advice on the basis that if you are trying to get somewhere its better just to follow your own path rather than be lead in circles by someone who hasn't a clue where they are going but thinks they have

    I will leave the readers of this thread to make a judgement about whether there is any logic in any of the arguments they have read or whether they might just find themseves following someones advice who is more clueless than they are
    Lol.
    I'm not quite sure whether you're calling me clueless or accusing me of offering advice, either way I had to laugh at the "she will tend to overreact", very familiar !
    As to commercial beekeeping activities and breeding programs being mutually exclusive, I have a diametrically opposite view which is that it is only from broad bases of consistently monitored stock that the best breeding material will be selected.
    I also have an issue with the idea that commercial beekeepers are automatically going to be inconsiderate towards their amateur beekeeping neighbours, its not the money and film star lifestyle that draws people to keep loads of bees, its the love of them.

  9. #179

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    Hi mbc
    none of the above really I would say you are very clued up
    but look at it this way
    Say I wasn't happy with my hybrid bees
    I answer the call to arms and decide to become a BiBBa member and breed AMM bees
    I look for leadership and find some - the route I am led to take is local bees and breeding for maximum purity
    I then find the glorious leader arm in arm with a huge importer of bees
    Those bees surround my embryo breeding project threatening it's very existence
    so I move house to the top of a mountain on a heather moor
    My erstwhile leader then follows with a load of mates who put their bees on the heather
    I lose faith in the leader and buy a nice Carnie queen
    The wrath of the righteous decends on my head I am a wrecker ruining the gene pool ?

    I wake up in a cold sweat but realise it was all a hideous nightmare -- relief
    I haven't bothered with AMM I haven't wasted years trying turn the clock back to the dawn of beekeeping
    I haven't been led into the futility following the glorious leader
    Like the charge of the light brigade (should that be dark brigade) bad choices made by good people have unfortunate consequences

    I'm with Reggie Perrin " who ever heard of the persecution of the apathetic by the bone idle"

  10. #180
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    As CJ would have said, I didn't get where I am today by humouring carnica.

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