New BIBBA website

[Black Comb]

Even if you parachute in "pure" amm then open mating will degrade the line. Unless you live in an isolated area, most beeks do not.
I think Jon has got it right.

BTW, how reliable are the measurements for purity when set against DNA testing? Do discoidal shift, morphometry, white cappings, etc. really prove a bee is amm?

[The Drone Ranger]

Is that the thinking behind the AMM survey BIBBA are they attempting to find suitable stock?
Has there been any progress with that

I see your point about breeding Steve, it might be counter productive (in certain circumstances)

Are the majority of beekeepers in Britain effectively excluded from this program to re -introduce AMM ?
Could this mean it can never succeed ?

Hi Black Comb I think the wing selection can end up just that so the Carniolan breeders have found the bees can have the right wings but not be particularily pure.

It's the only tool most people have though so they would need to use it
DrawWing and Morphplot make that so simple (largely due to the instructions which Peter Edwards provides)

[Jon]

Steve, I agree with what you are saying about the risk of undesirable crosses producing aggressive bees but as you pointed out in the second part of your post, crossing ecotypes between different lines of a subspecies does not run that risk. You have some good stock to work with, so do I, but most people don't. You can do what Roger Patterson does, ie improving the background bee population starting from mongrels. That is a valid approach for bee improvement but has very little to do with AMM, even if you do happen to be selecting for characteristics associated with AMM as Roger does. The fallacy here is that some people think they can backbreed to recreate AMM from the background genetic soup. I have read that a couple of times in the Bibba magazine so this fallacy is obviously well engrained in some sectors.

The other approach is to get a group of like minded people together to form a group and start propagating queens from good quality stock sourced from as locally as possible. This source could be the Galtee valley, North Wales, Colonsay and a couple of other places. Work in a little local genetics if you like if you are confident in being able to pick out predominantly AMM colonies from your background population. This approach will produce results far more quickly. If you believe that AMM as a sub species is threatened and is in danger of being eliminated through hybridisation, it is the only way to go if you want to get AMM established again in what would have been its historic range.
To make an analogy, The RSPB ran a campaign to protect the white headed duck which was being eliminated all over Europe by hybridisation with the Ruddy Duck, a North American species.

Starting up a group is not difficult. Most beekeepers are fence sitters with regard to bee race. If you start up a group based on AMM and the participants get better queens out of it they will be very happy. When people see how the bees are to work with it soon dispels all the propaganda against the native bee re aggression and other traits. The bees sell themselves as they are miles better than what people have at home.

Even if you parachute in "pure" amm then open mating will degrade the line.

You can get around that to a large extent.
If you graft from a pure race queen and requeen other colonies with her daughters, as many as possible, these colonies will produce pure race drones irrespective of what the daughters have mated with. Concentrate these in one place and you have the basis of a mating station.

how reliable are the measurements for purity when set against DNA testing? Do discoidal shift, morphometry, white cappings, etc. really prove a bee is amm?

Noone knows until a comparative study is done.
To say that a wing morphometry study such as the coop funded uk survey 'proves' that bees are AMM is nonsense yet that is the line put out by Bibba and the Coop. I think that will prove to be a huge mistake in the long run.

[Rosie]

Even if you parachute in "pure" amm then open mating will degrade the line. Unless you live in an isolated area, most beeks do not.
I think Jon has got it right.

BTW, how reliable are the measurements for purity when set against DNA testing? Do discoidal shift, morphometry, white cappings, etc. really prove a bee is amm?

I don't follow that Black Comb. It sounds to me like you think Jon has got it wrong. If you live in, say, a buckfast dominated area life isn't a simple as just parachuting in the bee of your choice.

As for assessment of race that's another minefield. Selection for wings alone is obviously not a good idea and, as far as I know, is not practised anywhere. DNA analysis is probably more reliable but it all depends on where you found your standard material, the skill of the scientists who decided which markers to use and how many samples you had. People I know make judgements on as many traits as possible and are always on the lookout for improving the confidence of their methods. Top of my list, for example, are gentleness and frugality. I find wing analysis very efficient for checking for bad matings but do not rely on it too much for selection. I am sure we would make much more use of DNA analysis if it were available to us at an economic price.

Steve

[Rosie]

.
To say that a wing morphometry study such as the coop funded uk survey 'proves' that bees are AMM is nonsense yet that is the line put out by Bibba and the Coop. I think that will prove to be a huge mistake in the long run.

I am with you there Jon. The Coop funded research was a DNA-based one but some early wing morphometry results were released because the DNA work had been so severely hampered by the academic process. I fear such ill-conceived actions are the inevitable result of economic interests of sponsorship but, in the real world we have to live with it. I am surprised though that people would take early results so seriously when a large company is involved. I am still waiting for the real results but when they come out I will still be sceptical because I know that a lot of people with good stock failed to send samples.

I look forward to the day when BIBBA or some similar organisation can arrange to provide an economic DNA service to ordinary beekeepers. In the meanwhile we should all be tying to do our best with the methods to hand and, in particular, stop introducing exotic new stock.

Steve

[Jon]

I find wing analysis very efficient for checking for bad matings but do not rely on it too much for selection.
Steve

Spot on. But there are many still hooked on using it for selection. The interpretation of the data from the coop project has not helped here.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi Jon
only one thing really when you say about bad temper being tagged to AMM unfairly
Mostly I find its the AMM fans that level that claim against hybrid bees

Lots of bees of all types can have bad temper and although that can be fixed quickly it could take a long time to eliminate entirely
That is more a function of a closed breeding system than any breed or cross
Professional bee breeders can supply bees of any race including Buckfast that are both productive and gentle.
I think

[Jon]

All the well known bee pure race sub species are gentle. Buckfast as well.
Aggressive hybrids is not an invention of mine.
It stems from a genetic effect called heterosis, commonly known as hybrid vigour.
It has been documented and measured under experimental conditions by people like Ruttner.

[The Drone Ranger]

All the well known bee pure race sub species are gentle. Buckfast as well.
Aggressive hybrids is not an invention of mine.
It stems from a genetic effect called heterosis, commonly known as hybrid vigour.
It has been documented and measured under experimental conditions by people like Ruttner.

Hi Jon
I'm not saying you invented it or that it's right or wrong
I know you have gentle stock but I am also certain that native stock need not be gentle and that past beekeepers didn't invent that either
What I am trying to say is that there is no open mating system where any one bee is better than another as a starting point
Old Brother Adam went to great lengths to investigate this as well and identified crosses he felt were worse than others
That looks fine till you think "well what strain of Caucasian was he using" etc
Just the same as you could convert a whole apiary to any breed in two generations you could eliminate bad temper but unselected stock will always be undoing your efforts
That unselected element could be of any type
In any area where you had control of mating you could get to good behaviour without any recourse to AMM or Carniolan or any other pure breed

It seems logical to me that a hybrid bee with its genetic diversity would adapt to almost any beekeeping environment
I like the enthusiasm and drive of the AMM purists more power to your elbow as they say
I just don't see what problem they are solving

Bibba from what I Am reading might have the same dillema

[Rosie]

Spot on. But there are many still hooked on using it for selection

You might be right but I'm not aware of any. It's certainly not encouraged - even by morphometry training courses run by BIBBA. Wing morphometry is seen as one tool amongst many.

Steve