Colonsay reserve approved!

[Jon]

Are you talking Antarctica? Gets my vote.

[prakel]

Are you talking Antarctica? Gets my vote.

Well yes, Antarctica also falls outside of Sicamms map....

[prakel]

I would love to see how that map was drawn up and what evidence was used to create it.

Someone here must know Dorian Pritchard, maybe they could ask him.

[Jon]

Wherever logic went into drawing the line on the Sicamm map, you would not have found anything other than AMM to the North and to the West.
Bees would have been moving North as the ice sheets retreated and suitable forage plants established themselves.
I would think it is a fair assumption to assume that there were bees in Devon before there were bees in Inverness.

The Irish Sea, unlike the North Sea or the English Channel is a deep natural Barrier over which swarms could not have flown so Ireland was likely populated later as well.
Our paleo botanist speculated about how bees might have arrived in ancient times, ie thousands of years ago rather than hundreds when humans would have been moving bees about.
A swarm on a floating object such as a log would have been one possibility.

Someone here must know Dorian Pritchard, maybe they could ask him.

Peter knows him. I have heard him speak. I think Gavin knows him as well. He is a fixture on the Bibba/Sicamm speaking circuit and writes frequent articles in the Bibba magazine.

[prakel]

So it should be easy to get a detailed answer from him (as the copyright holder).

[The Drone Ranger]

I think Dorian Pritchard's article for the SBA mag was overstating the case for AMM

I don't know either Phil or Andrew but I would say Andrew came across perhaps a little ungrateful for the support he has had from the SBA and might have to buy more than a few beers to put that right.
It's perfectly reasonable to suggest that the over promotion of AMM while there is in fact no supply chain might be counter productive
That's my view anyway

[prakel]

It's perfectly reasonable to suggest that the over promotion of AMM while there is in fact no supply chain might be counter productive
That's my view anyway

I agree. Seems fairly pointless to me. Pipe dreams of banning imports are best kept private until such time as a viable alternative is available for those people who don't wish to work with localized mongrels.

[Jon]

It is one of life's great mysteries as to why Bibba has not managed to produce a supply chain of Amm or near native bees at this point.
I mean, it is not that difficult to do some queen rearing and create a few surplus queens.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Beekeepers need to be shown how to find a queen and replace it with a better one.
...
Sometimes it is because the person is squeamish and may have given the queen a name, like you would with your Labrador, ...

That's me. Queen Spud is my favourite and long may she reign. (But she's good-natured and I always see her.)
Kitta

[drumgerry]

Pipe dreams they might be on the Jurassic Coast Prakel. But we may have a rather radical political change coming here starting next year where lots of things will be up for grabs!