Jimbo your £200K spend gets my vote
Jimbo your £200K spend gets my vote
Unrealistic I'm afraid. The cash is to try to keep a Scottish Food and Drink industry afloat and research funds come from a different pot. That pot already gave £500,000 to the fund for the IPI projects (Scotland's share of that pot largely comes to Dundee University). Some things to remember. Commercial beekeeping is of some importance (culturally if not economically) and isn't in a good shape at the moment. Government probably were trying to do the right thing based on the evidence available to them. The lobbying by the bee farmers was certainly directed at getting cash for imports; the main SBA contribution in my view probably did not argue against this. I'm with much of the opinion on this thread, but don't wish to be divisive any more than is necessary. However it seems crucial to me that the SBA members get a chance to speak clearly on how hard, if at all, the organisation should be doing something to shift beekeeping as a whole in Scotland away, well away, from the position it is in now.
That's up to you. I would not have a problem with it.Originally Posted by The Drone Ranger
If you accept the premise of that Jensen paper I linked to above, there are not very significant differences between the remaining AMM populations.
ie, there is unlikely to be such as thing as a Scottish AMM, or an Irish, English or a Welsh variant.
The problem with AMM is finding pure race samples which have not hybridised with Ligustica or Carnica.
Wing morphometry helps here, but it is only a rough and ready tool, and it becomes redundant once it is used as a selection criteria for queens as you will inevitably be selecting for wing pattern very strongly as opposed to selecting for all the other AMM characteristics.
-drone floodingOnce the queen is installed what method exists to stop subsequent daughter queens from out crossing with unsuitable drones
-II
-isolated mating sites
-lobby against the imports. (at a minimum don't fund them!)
I agree. That would be a big step forward.the only route out is to stop importing and allow bee populations first to normalise then allow queen sales across Scotland not just from the next door beekeeper
The main step is to stop stirring up the gene pool with fresh waves of imports.
Gavin I'm not sure I get the cultural importance of commercial beekeeping. It strikes me as an "industry" quite removed from the day to day lives of most Scots. But the critical thing to me is this - if commercial beekeeping cannot be carried out in a sustainable manner and its operators choose not to adapt to a sustainable business model then perhaps it needs to be allowed to die a natural death and its employees find other sources of work. Harsh perhaps but I don't see it like upland sheep farming for example where depopulation of rural communities would happen together with environmental changes were it not given some support.
And although I'm in sympathy with Jimbo's alternative uses for the £200k I believe we're facing a central, unremitting problem which needs to be addressed above all others - there's no bees! Well there's none available to people who want some. For example, we say to beginners to buy locally and when they try to do so are usually told by associations that everyone's had a hard winter and no-one has any for sale. I believe this is the biggest problem we face and the one which needs to be addressed.
I don't particularly see a problem with sourcing genetic material from elsewhere in Scotland or indeed the British Isles. I don't think we're in a position to be choosy enough to insist on only using genetic stock from a particular area.
Hi Drumgerry
That is the first step because if new beekeepers can get bees without imports then that's at least in the right direction
I worry about people getting ill tempered cast offs from someone who has no breeding expertise whatsoever but is "local" (like me LOL! )
So you are right, Local associations are the route for bee buying, because in some areas varroa free or AMM, bees bought from a UK breeder would be bad news
In other areas bees bred in Scotland by a commercial breeder or two would be improving the situation, Perthshire Angus etc
Only the local associations know and if they are the first port of call for bees they can either supply or buy as needed
Gerry, if I could trim the first couple of minutes off this one I would (from way back in the days when I still used Marigolds), but after the introduction the rest of the video shows what the government (central and local) consider to be the commercial side of beekeeping in Scotland. The 'iconic Scottish product' which Murray mentioned is widely recognised. That year local authorities and Scottish Enterprise funded 'restocking' which was not in the public view as much as the current one. Completely NZ carnies I think. This time (note: now and next spring too not just a 2013 thing) it appears to be a mix but heavily Amm from the Pyrennes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8181979.stm
Google for 'Scottish Heather Honey' and you'll get a fuller picture.
Where would your average punter buy his Scottish heather honey for his (or her) cranachan?
So I'd like a sea-change in attitudes to importing stock in Scottish commercial (and some hobby) circles, but I'd like that to happen in collaboration with bee farmers. The big guys are perhaps not all wedded to imports as you might imagine, so talking is important.
Importing Irish Amm to Scotland - why?! Don't we have enough here? Is it just a question of access to stocks? Why do you think lowland Irish stock is adapted to short-season Highland conditions? We seem to know so little of the genetic make-up of bees in Scotland, and that is a great pity. If Ireland to the Highlands is OK, then were the old imports from the Netherlands OK too? What about Brittany, another nice Celtic land?! And if Brittany is OK, why not Amm from the Pyrennes?
These days I'm thinking locally adapted stock, based heavily on local Amm is the only thing practical for us in Tayside. Even with the use of a distant isolated mating site it would be impossible to keep anything 100% pure.
Gavin (still struggling with line returns!)
I appreciate what you're saying about heather honey Gavin. Not sure it's worth £200k and any future bailouts. It may cease as Murray puts it to be a mass market product but I'm not sure I'd consider that a bad thing. But I should be clear on this - I don't want commercial operators to go out of business. What I want is for them to put their businesses on a sustainable footing and for all of us commercial and hobby alike to get on the same page. A dialogue has to start but that has to be the central guiding principle.
And I could take a few examples of places in Ireland, Wales and England with climates very similar to many places in Scotland where it wouldn't be such a challenge for their bees to adapt. Thinking Connemara and Argyle, Belfast area and the Glasgow area - you get the picture. I think when we're talking about continental or Alpine climates it's a completely different ball game. Of course we should be confining ourselves to Scottish genetics but that's going to take some organising. So that should maybe be a central part of the sea change you/we are talking about.
The thing is, Bibba members have been swapping queens around all parts of the UK and Ireland for decades so the chances of one part having AMM very different from another is remote.
There was some mention of that in the Jensen paper as well.
There are ecotypes which are more adapted to early flows or late heather flows in some places and this is reflected in when colonies peak and swarm.
There are two main issues with imports, one is the problems associated with stirring up the gene pool by introducing several different sub species, and the other is the risk of spreading disease, especially the risk of bringing in a new pathogen.
Gavin, I seriously doubt if Scotland has a distinctive AMM.
Remember those old videos from the 1930s which showed AMM packages coming in from France.
Because it's the queen rearing season and I've got a couple copies of Snelgrove's "Queen rearing" I was reading this and checked out his chapter on heredity in bees
.
bearing in mind the first edition is 1946 he is describing the same problems as there are now with random crossing
Also he goes on to say which races his father tried including Italians Cyprian etc
A great thing that wouldn't happen now is on P124 where a small correction slip is bound into the book putting right an error
Anyway in the 1966 reprint which is my reading/working copy I discovered a small brochure which I had forgotten was there
Madoc Apiaries Tottington, Thetford, Norfolk --lots of hives etc for sale and bees here's an extract of the sales pitch
"Large and regular honey crops are the source of our main income our bees are bred for honey production above everything"
"We only use the Melcombe bee in our own honey producing apiaries and we only offer this one strain "
"....other strains and races inferior to the Melcombe"
1 Melcombe Italian Queen __ Apr/May 10/- __Jun onwards7/6
lots more prices for nucs etc
This would be prior to 1966 I believe and they only sell Italian queens (because they are the ones in demand)
On the plus side Snelgrove believed (wrongly I think) that once new introductions stopped the bees bred their way back to the separate races naturally
In particular back to the British Black as he would have considered it and this was a long time after the Isle of Wight disease so there were still plenty black bees in 1945 which at least looked the part
He also surmised that this could be hastened (correctly I believe) by queens introduced in sequential years ie first one is used to produce daughters who's drones are pure the following year
In that second year another unrelated pure mother who's queen daughters mate with the now pure drones --- sorted
Why is it never that easy ?
My 2 colonys + 2 Nucs came thro; the winter were doing ok when we had a mild spell in March after which it stayed cold till middle of May . The 2 nucs just got less and less bees and just away died with lack of bees
The 2 colonys became very weak just about at tipping point but have started to recover now but will be of no use for honey production or splitting will take a full season to recover unless I add frames of brood and bees.
Now i tried the full of Scotland and North England to purchase a nuc or some frames of brood and bees in April and May and as drumgerry said its been a hard winter and no-one has any to sell not even The B-e M-n not taking any more orders
I tried asking forum members with more than 12 hives for any to spare {Was prepared to pay top prices}still no bees to spare sorry.
Found out there,s not much help for the small time beekeeper in Scotland
So now I,m left with 2 colonys which i,m going to let build till next season
I was going to go way down south and get a package of imported bees to boost the the colonys and thought no lets try and source bee sort of local No chance.
If next spring I somehow have a similar situation I will have no hesitation to use imported bees. Within 6 weeks most of the imported bees will have died off and you will be left with your own strain (I think)(if your queen survives) maybe a few loose drones And a full season to look forward to
Not a happy chappy.
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