Colonsay reserve approved!

[Jon]

Hi Phil

“I will however respond about the rearing of local black bees in Scotland. I have discussed this type of bee with many older and extremely experienced beekeepers who indicated that they would not wish to work with them again.

Unless these older beekeepers are about 100+ years old their comments on 'black bees' will not predate the introduction of imports into Scotland so what they are describing may well be black hybrids or black mongrels as opposed to AMM. Or may even just be 'misremembered' nonsense as I find the older beekeepers are the source of almost all the old wives tales prevalent in beekeeping. If you are back at the UBKA Conference next March I will be delivering a talk called 'Myths in Beekeeping' which will rake over all these well engrained beliefs which do the rounds - to try and separate fact from fiction. There is video on this site somewhere showing Black bees from France arriving into Scotland in the 1930s. Comments like this from older beekeepers are pure gossip. And there are commercial beekeepers with a vested financial interest in promoting imports in spite of the fact of the damage they do to local breeding programmes. It is important to understand who may have a prejudice when they seek out your ear.

It has been my experience however that those who appear to have this bee are very unwilling to produce them in quantity and disseminate them to others. I personally have tried on occasions to purchase a stock and have always been unable to do so.”

I keep AMM and I reared 50 mated queens from 30 apideas this summer, 45 last summer when it rained for 3 months and about 50 the summer before. The problem here is not lack of willingness to share. The problem is lack of people doing queen rearing. How many of the older beekeepers you spoke to rear their own queens in an organised way, ie involving active selection from the best stock. If Scotland is like N. Ireland it will be virtually none of them.

The issue here is the need to promote, support and encourage local queen rearing initiatives.

Instrumental Insemination brings about a greater potential of success in the professional’s hands.

This will never produce queens in volume and is more suited to rearing expensive breeder queens where you have complete control over both the maternal and paternal side of the genetics. It is time consuming.

The experience I have had with a friend’s bees, which, after wing morphometry appeared to be Amm,

This is one of the main misconceptions about morphometry. It cannot 'prove' a bee is AMM even if the wings are 100% in the correct quadrant of the scattergram.
Wing morphometry can however demonstrate quite clearly that a colony could not be AMM, ie, if most of the wings are in the wrong quadrants and the '% AMM' is very low. In this case it is very likely a hybrid. Those using scattergrams to select breeder queens will soon find that most colonies increase the % as the selection process is selecting for wing pattern irrespective of any other underlying genetics. This is clearly explained in this paper by Robin Moritz.

[prakel]

Without wanting to drift too far from the good news which this thread highlights I do think that there is an issue with regards to why amm, reared and mated in the UK appear to be so hard to source. I did try (researching their availability etc is what actually brought this forum to my attention in the first place). In fact I've just finished my second full season on the waiting list of one of the English breeders who's not too far distant from my own location. It seems odd to me that no one has made any noticeable inroads into supplying amm queens (which based on the theory that I often see repeated, should actually be easier to get mated than some of the other types) on a commercial level.

[drumgerry]

The problem is lack of people doing queen rearing. How many of the older beekeepers you spoke to rear their own queens in an organised way, ie involving active selection from the best stock. If Scotland is like N. Ireland it will be virtually none of them.

The issue here is the need to promote, support and encourage local queen rearing initiatives.

Which takes me back to why the hell the SBA were supporting the awarding of £200k of funding for bee imports! I can think of no more than a handful of people in a twenty/thirty mile radius of me doing anything like selective breeding of queens and then only on a very small scale. Sooner or later we're going to come to the realisation that things need to change and that some funding/vision/direction needs to come from up top (ie the SBA). Until then I'm doing what I can in my own locality to develop an AMM strain suitable to my environment - including buying this year a full II kit and starting to use the blighter from next summer onwards.

"Sustainability" was quoted as a key factor in Scotland's Bee Health strategy in Phil's letter to the SBA magazine in reply to one of mine (alluded to by Phil above). Continued support for imports makes a complete joke of that. The only sustainable way forward is to develop bees suitable for our environment and to breed them here. Not Slovenia, Greece or New Zealand - here in Scotland! The only suitable candidate for that is AMM in my opinion.

I should say credit to Phil for replying on the forum. A damn sight easier than the month long turnaround of the magazine!

[mbc]

It seems odd to me that no one has made any noticeable inroads into supplying amm queens (which based on the theory that I often see repeated, should actually be easier to get mated than some of the other types) on a commercial level.

Its the nature of the beast.
Supplying large numbers of mated amm queens from a slowly evolving breeding program is a very different prospect to buying a few buckfast/carniolan/ligurian breeder queens from established breeding programmes in Europe and multiplying them and selling their progeny.
Every mated queen sold from a one man band breeding effort is potentially waving goodbye to the next few seasons best breeding stock. Breeding bees is similar to breeding anything in that you get a bell curve of success, some rubbish, most middling and some top performers. Obviously its not on to sell the rubbish and it takes time to evaluate the rest, most queens sold are sold as soon as they show a good brood pattern, long before any serious evaluation of the stock can be made.
The quality of improvement achieved with some of these bees, I'm thinking of the carnies in particular, has been underwritten for a long time by centrally funded breeding programmes far in advance of anything directed at amm.
Perhaps if we in Britain put some serious resources behind bee breeding, in a hundred years or so quality amm breeding stock will be so ubiquitous the price and availability will be comparable to imports. In the mean time, as Andrew Abrahams wrote in his excellent reply, well meaning individuals trying their best still have to pay the mortgage somehow.

[prakel]

Perhaps if we in Britain put some serious resources behind bee breeding, in a hundred years or so quality amm breeding stock will be so ubiquitous the price and availability will be comparable to imports. In the mean time, as Andrew Abrahams wrote in his excellent reply, well meaning individuals trying their best still have to pay the mortgage somehow.

Yep. But of course if those serious resources aren't put behind bee breeding, which is probably the likely way that things will pan out, then in a hundred years time people will be having the same conversation.

[Trog]

I suspect that if one individual were to be given lots of government money to breed a specific type of bee there would be endless threads along the lines of 'Why was £xxx wasted on so and so's breeding programme when it should have gone to xyz's?' ... or eradicating varroa .. or acarine ... or nosema ... or whatever a particular beekeeper's/area's problem is! There's always an individual or project more worthy of the money handed out or cause championed by an organisation.

Re the idea that the SBA 'supports imports' I feel there's a world of difference between supporting something and realising that there's nothing that can be done to stop a perfectly legal activity so therefore not opposing it - which is what I gather from what's been said actually happened.

[drumgerry]

To be fair Trog I never said the SBA supports imports in that last post of mine. What I said was "the SBA were supporting the awarding of £200k of funding for bee imports". Bit of a difference wouldn't you say? The SBA seems to have a bit of a sit on the fence policy as far as I can see.

Like Prakel says if nothing is done to change how we go about things then beekeepers will be having the same conversation in 100 years time. A sad prospect in my opinion.

[Trog]

Wasn't aimed at you in particular, drumgerry - there's been a lot of complaining about money given for this, that and the other, which could in various folks' opinions be better spent. As far as I can see the SBA exec takes a pragmatic approach to things that cannot be changed and tries to encourage better practice where things can be changed. Dialogue rather than opposition.

To take an example: I would rather nobody smoked cigarettes, for a lot of very good and personal reasons. It is, however, legal for folk to do so and by default for me to have to breath in their smoke while walking along the street, etc. I would be wasting my time lobbying for cigarettes to be made illegal so save my energy for more worthwhile things that I CAN do something about.

Fair enough?

[Phil McAnespie]

Dear All,
Due to the pressure of beekeeping commitments I am unable to elaborate on my previous comments but would like to pass on very quick bullet points.
• The beekeepers I was referring to are extremely well versed in apiculture but did, I would surmise, have bees affected by imports from early in the century and in Scotland. I would imagine that there are extremely few, which were not. However they commented, as others have that some were extremely nice to work with and others not. Their opinion was that they would not go back to them as they found their build up to be slow albeit excellent for clover and heather. “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”.
• The situation in Southern Ireland is very different from Scotland. Imported bees have come into Scotland for over a century and there are few areas, which will not been affected considerably. However many of these bees are excellent producers and have acclimatised to the respective areas. Thus the comment about I.I. as being probably one of the methods at present to preserve the purity of Amm stock if queens are allowed to mate on the wing. Given that the beekeeper is selecting the drones then nature doesn’t get the opportunity of selecting the fittest which is one of many issues. I agree this is not a good cost effective mechanism but helps the purity. To be able to flood areas with specific races of drones is great if achievable (i.e. Ireland) but in Scotland is difficult.
• I agree that wing morphometry is only a starter for ten but few beekeepers have the availability of exact science technics. Given the huge affect of imports in Scotland where is the exact pure Amm standard to evaluate against. I speak as a layman scientifically but with a little legal knowledge. This has issues for the Colonsay situation as well.
• From experience Amm availability in the Scotland is extremely difficult as Prakel confirms. Again Southern Ireland has many benefits in this respect. Well done and keep it going.
• In respect to Drumgerry’s post, about the SBA support for the £200k funding. The subject was related to funding being given to farmers in Scotland for losses due to the extreme winter. The bee farmers were afforded this support and due to EU and UK legislation they have the right to bring in stocks from legislated countries. Given the fact that bee farmers earn their living and support workers from beekeeping they have to be considered. That together with the relationship, which has developed between the Scottish Government, Bee Farmers, SASA and the SBA it was a sensible and pragmatic to agree to this situation. In an article I quoted the well known saying “God grant me the Grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed etc ----.“ I know that the King Canute story is meant to convey his stupidity at trying to stop the tide, however from my reading it appears that it was the opposite that he was conveying. (When his orders were ignored, he pronounced: "Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless and there is no King worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven and earth and sea obey eternal laws," (Historia Anglorum, ed D E Greenway)
Sometimes you have to know your limitations!! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13524677
However that doesn’t mean that people can’t try to apply for funding from different sources for specific projects. I appreciate though that imports make it very difficult to achieve the goal. In this respect it seems strange to say, but it is easier for local associations to get funding than the SBA. That doesn’t mean that the SBA doesn’t care.
As a token of my respect for this subject, I am flying over to Athlone for the NIHBS conference on 10 November 2013. Maybe Jon e could meet and discuss further.
Thanks also to Drumgerry for the comment about my response. I agree that it would be better if I was allowed to reply to comments in the same month they were issued. I can speak to the editor and try to arrange this. Due to time pressures I cannot get onto the forum near as often as I would like or should. Please however contact me by email if there is a link to which you are looking for me to comment on. The forum is a great tool and one which Gavin and his colleagues are looking after well.

[Jon]

Will be pleased to meet up again Phil. I am doing the final presentation of the day in Athlone titled 'Setting up a queen rearing group'

I do my beekeeping in the north of Ireland and the background bee population is very mixed here. The situation is much better in the Republic.

With regard to queen production, I am going to try and scale up a bit next year so do give me a shout in June if you are still looking for queens. Micheal Mac Gilla Coda is planning to scale back a bit and would like some of the rest of us to take up the slack.
We already have three queen rearing groups working closely in Down and Antrim and there are another 3 or 4 set to begin operations in 2014. The Native Irish Honeybee Society ran a training day on 3rd August and we had 21 invited beekeepers present for the day with a view to training them up to start up their own groups. These will all be working with native stock.

Check out the website. There is info about the conference.

PS. And re. the alleged slow buildup. I was at a NIHBS meeting on 7th April this year and some of the guys had supers on already.