Your gallery of 2D plots

[Roger Patterson]

Alex,

Looking at the queen I have two observations:-

1.The unclipped wing looks a bit frayed, so guess she may be quite old, therefore she may have been superseded, hence the change in temper.

2.The marking looks as if it has been daubed on and this could lead to supersedure, as often happens if it partly covers the head or wings.

I think the grouping of the plots is quite good, but am a bit suspicious of them being towards the right. I'm wondering if you have the crosswires in the right place.

As already mentioned points 0 and 3 are often too far to the right, and if you haven't addressed this it would have the effect of increasing C/I that would have moved the plots upwards, but it seems as if you have that cracked, so let's look at D/S.

You need to look at points 2,4,6&18, I find 2 and 4 are usually in the right place and easy to deal with, but 6&18 need to be in the right place, otherwise you can easily be 2-3 deg out. I try to get them inside the cell and in a position where they are the furthest distance apart, which I know is not easy, but needs to be consistent. I find that 6 is usually about right, but 18 gives me problems. I suggest you rename it and have another go.

With that number you must expect there to be some way outside and this can be for a number of reasons, drifting, distortion, plotting error, queen mated with a couple of non Amm drones etc. I always go back and check these and often find an error.

In general I think you have quite a good plot, but may need refining.

Roger Patterson.

[gavin]

Hi Alex

Nice looking bees, nice looking hives, and lovely wee daughter too. Looks very like Enid lending a hand? The concentric rings of brood tell a tale of stop-start brood raising as well as bees building up with a well-organised brood nest.

First of all, Roger's observations. Yes, the queen looks old and supercedure is a possibility. If that happened you'll see the new queen when you look in in the spring. However I don't think that there was much wrong with the paint. If the paint induced supercedure it would have happened before she got old, and she is old. I'd agree with Roger that it would be worth checking the details of the plots in case the software has picked the wrong spots.

The bees look definitely Amm-ish. The plot suggests that they are more Amm than anything, but maybe there is a bit of something else in there too. Maybe some of the bees have a conspicuous halo of pale hairs around the thorax and look a bit gingery? Young bees are a bit like that but it could also be a sign of some other race, maybe Carniolan.

OK, so they may not be pure Amm but they are more Amm than anything else. As it is difficult to keep a pure line of anything when you have very few colonies, you might be better to just go with this line and her daughters for now. If you want to have something more pure then maybe Enid or someone can help you with eggs or queen cells at some time in the future.

About the deterioration in temper - could have been the conditions and doesn't have to be supercedure and mating with hybrid drones. See what the new season brings. As to the colony cycle traits they differ a lot within races. New queens, for example, usually head colonies which raise brood later than established queens.

Are you hoping to build up your colony numbers, or just stay with a garden-friendly couple of hives?

best wishes

Gavin

[AlexJ]

Roger,
Thanks for your advice, I reviewed the wings and moved point 6 to the inside edge of the radial cells which improved the plot slightly. I’m quite confident the wings are correctly marked – would it help if someone posted a correctly marked wing (Morphometry procedures and standards?) to assist those new to the technique.

Gavin,
Your comments are much appreciated; we had planned to try and raise queens from this stock given their first class behaviour prior to September. While we were surprised by the change in temperament, circumstances dictate we will increase from this stock. We have kept a sample of bees to take hair measurements etc. at a later date and will keep in mind your comments on the colour of the thorax hair.

We have made tentative enquiries with fellow bee keepers to source queens for the coming season with a view to increasing stock. We’re in no rush as we hope to keep Amm through selective and responsible queen rearing in keeping with our local area.

We are planning to build up colony numbers but as always, work, availability of sites and existing bee keeping activity in our area will dictate ultimate numbers in the short/medium term.

Alex

[Roger Patterson]

Gavin,

I have to disagree on the paint. It does look blodgy on my screen, and possibly on the wing root. As it appears to have come from a swarm it looks as if she has recently been clipped and marked, so it may be supersedure due to the paint.

I think if there was much Carniolan there the C/I would be much higher.

I agree with you they certainly look more Ammish than anything, and you and me agree on the possibility of wide variation.

Alex,

The shape of the cell ends where 6&18 are varies a lot and I'm not sure we always get the crosswires in the same place. Peter Edwards and myself have done some DrawWing workshops together and one of the points we make is that different people get different results from the same plots. The last one we ran was in November, we copied the same scans onto 14 machines and got a wide variety of results.

Would you mind copying those results to several of us who would be prepared to measure them so we can compare? I think this would be a good one to do it on because there is basically a nice tight bunch with a few scattered ones.

I'm not sure if you could email the file or it would have to be on a CD. Perhaps those who are prepared to measure can indicate, but I'm happy to do it. It might help solve one of the problems we all have.

Roger Patterson.

[AlexJ]

Roger,
The file sizes are too large for me to send by email. If you are R.A.F. Patterson in the BIBBA members book I'll send a disc.
Alex

[Jimbo]

Hi Alex/Roger,

Thanks to Kitta I have discovered Dropbox. If you both goggle it and sign up you can transfer and share large files. Dropbox is free unless you sign up for the optional more space

[Roger Patterson]

Thanks Jim and Kitta,

That could be really useful.

Would anyone else like to try Dropbox and measure Alex's scans?

Roger Patterson.

[AlexJ]

Hi Alex/Roger,

Thanks to Kitta I have discovered Dropbox. If you both goggle it and sign up you can transfer and share large files. Dropbox is free unless you sign up for the optional more space

Much appreciated Jimbo - I'll set up the account today and forward the link to anyone who wants to examine the wings.

[Jon]

Col57..jpg

Alex.
Your plot looks similar to this one of mine.
The queen which produced this plot is a daughter of a pure Galtee queen mated at an apiary with 12 colonies producing Galtee drones.
I swapped one of my own queens for this one last summer.
there is some suggestion that there may have been some crossing with Buckfast brought in by a neighbour near to the apiary where it was mated. However, there is no yellow banding in any of the progeny so I am not so sure.
Some of my own queens produced offspring with a DS of up to -14 but I don't think it matters how far negative the DS is, as long as it is negative.

[busybeephilip]

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

P