Your gallery of 2D plots

[Jon]

Hi Phil.
Good to get another man from Ulster on the forum. Can't let these Scots have it all their own way!

what races of bee would be involved if you found positive DS and a CI under 2.0 ?

It's hard to say as I have only seen data from Carnica and AMM.
I tend to use wing morphometry to exclude queens which have mated with non AMM drones, ie where the scattergram has a lot of points outside the AMM box. I would guess a lot of these drones are just from local mongrel stock or possibly Buckfast type bees.

[gavin]

You Ulstermen are most welcome to argue about morphometry and the like if you wish. We seem to have fallen fairly quiet for now.

[Jon]

Autumn is upon us and winter approaches which means that the bee nerds are turning their minds to morphometry.

col61.jpg

The queen heading this colony is from one of the first batches I grafted on 3rd May.
I requeened this colony with her in the middle of July so the bees sampled should all be her own offspring unless the odd one has drifted in.

In the sample of about 40 bees I noticed that 6 bees had a bit of yellow in the first segment. I scanned these separately as I thought they might produce different results but all 6 wings fell within the AMM limits.

This queen is a granddaughter of Galtee stock.

[Jimbo]

I had a colony last year that had this yellow banding in the first segment. I seperated the yellow from the black bees and did the morphometry and got the same result which was over 90% Amm.
No yellow banding seen in this years colonies and by selective breeding and mating at an isolated breeding site I have increased the number of colonies with high Amm results. If I can get these colonies through the winter I will be in a good position next year for producing Amm queens for local beekeepers

[Jon]

I have increased the number of colonies with high Amm results.

That's good to hear. I have another dozen or more still to sample and have high hopes for a few of them.
I still have several colonies headed by very good 2010 queens which I would like to graft from.

[Jon]

Another of this years queens.
A sister of q61, daughter of q57

col.68.jpg

[gavin]

It almost looks like you are trying to always have one bee outside the box Jon. Your post on 16th Dec last year seemed to have a Mars Bar winning plot. Did Jimbo deliver?!

I have a bag of fun-sized Mars Bars in my porch and the Guising/Trick-Treating season seems to have gone by without bands of kids entertaining us at the door. Anyone want to win a 2011 prize?!

Just remember that perfection in a plot - rather like in a potato sitting on a paper plate in a flower show - isn't a target worth getting too excited about. Get most of them in the box and you have Amm. Get them all in and you are either lucky or have inbred bees, not necessarily a good thing.

G.

[Jon]

Get most of them in the box and you have Amm.

I agree, and my colonies have only a couple of feet between them so I am sure the odd bee drifts into a neighbouring colony.
The one I just posted also has 5 bees with a yellow segment and they all fell within the amm box.

Assuming temper and other behaviour is ok, either of those would be a candidate to graft from next year.

I declined Jimbo's Mars bar last year as it would probably have arrived deep fried and battered.

I only grafted one batch from that colony 44 with the perfect scattergram and most of them went to members of the queen rearing group. I kept two daughters and one was killed on introduction and the other was superseded within a month. The supersedure queen was mated at the end of September and seems to be doing well. I still have the original queen 44 in a colony in my garden and will graft from it next year. It didn't make any attempt to swarm which is a good sign and is going into winter as a big healthy colony. Roll on 2012.

[gavin]

Roll on 2012.

Absolutely!

The yellowness - I presume - means that you can't rely solely on any one trait as there are Amm hybrid offspring around, maybe generations down the line, but largely Amm in their make-up. Select on one trait and you might get near Amm but you can miss Amm hybrid derivatives. The more traits you look at the fewer such hybrid derivatives get through the net. I really should have a better look soon at the stocks we've gathered up at the association site - and an Amm-looking swarm that arrived in my apiary too (the previous stocks for mine were mixed).

I declined Jimbo's Mars bar last year as it would probably have arrived deep fried and battered.

Last week I had a foray to Stranraer in the pouring rain. I missed the best road coming back and so diverted right through the middle and, passing a chippy, my stomach reminded me it needed food. I went in for a single fish (the smell in the car has barely dispersed now, I'll not do that again in a hurry), and the two lads who went in right after me gave their orders.

'Deep fried Mars Bar' said the bolder one. Me, the guy behind the counter and the bloke's mate all seemed to think: Hang on, isn't this just something we hear about in comedy shows? His mate sounded incredulous, 'I've never seen one of those' (neither have I), and the man behind the counter did a brief double-take then proceeded to take a Mars Bar out of its wrapper, dip it in batter, then into the fryer. I got my order first and headed out, telling the Mars Bar guy that I'd love to have stayed to see what it is like but had a long drive home. You see some funny things in the isolated corners of Scotland.

There's me destroying this focussed thread with stories of culinary exotica.

[Jimbo]

Nothing wrong with a deep fried mars bar. Keeps me in a job sorting out the publics clogged up arteries!