Hi Phil
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.
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.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.”
The issue here is the need to promote, support and encourage local queen rearing initiatives.
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.Instrumental Insemination brings about a greater potential of success in the professional’s hands.
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.The experience I have had with a friend’s bees, which, after wing morphometry appeared to be Amm,
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.
Bookmarks