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Thread: Mixing or races/species

  1. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by Beefever View Post
    I think this is more to do with the amorous nature of their drones. So it can’t be down to numbers or else they would have been diluted long ago.
    .
    I understand the 'African queens' emerge 1/2 days earlier than other species ,giving them the edge ?
    VM


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  2. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by wee willy View Post
    I understand the 'African queens' emerge 1/2 days earlier than other species ,giving them the edge ?
    VM


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
    A bit of grafting and knock off the queen cells should fix that
    The drone population is not easy to sort out
    Feral colonies with Africanised bees are not so easily taken out by varroa so they have the genetic edge
    It's a steady march North by the drones

  3. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rosie View Post
    Hi Beefever. Thanks fo your thoughts on this. The study only covered carniolans and I supect most of the imports to the Uk have been Italians. However, I would turn your question on its head and ask why there is still so much Amm genetics in the UK and Ireland after such massive imports over such a long time.
    Your thesis is intriguing - maybe there is something to that ...

    For now, my money would be on our weather: short, sudden mating windows; more willing, cooler flying drones; that kind of thing. Nothing in the way of research to back that up, afaik, but I've heard this kind of thinking expressed many times over the years. Maybe mediterranean drones need an all-over suntan before they'll get off their arses ? It's certainly true of many of the blokes I've met from that part of the world.
    LJ

    Just stumbled across:
    Genetic differentiation and hybridization in the honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) in Switzerland. Gabriele Soland-Reckeweg

    "Some subspecies are particularly interesting for apiculture and have replaced indigenous subspecies in large parts of their native distribution areas. In Europe, the formerly most widely distributed subspecies used to be the A. m. mellifera, or black honeybee. Its population has declined and became fragmented by introductions of subspecies from south-eastern Europe."

    "In the present study, microsatellites were used to assess the impact of sympatric occurrence and conservational breeding programs on the amount of hybridization and to quantify the proportion of dispersers in male honeybees (drones). The results showed that an increased amount of hybridization could be assigned to sympatric occurrence, but nevertheless the last remaining population of the alpine ecotype in the breeding populations is significantly differentiated from the breeding populations of introduced subspecies despite decades of honeybee imports. " (which is pretty-much what you're saying ...)

    "Besides the impact of breeding management on the reduction of hybrid proportions, a natural hybridization barrier due to a reduced fitness of male hybrids seems to be involved. " (so this gene conservation phenomenon could well be due to not-up-to-snuff hybrid drones then ?) They miss the sun
    Last edited by Little_John; 03-03-2014 at 07:15 PM.

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