"All fur coat and no knickers ..." - a common enough expression which actually has nothing to do with call girls, but which is generally taken to mean "full of show, but with no substance underneath".

Well - that's the expression which came to my mind this afternoon after visiting the SICAMM site. Like BIBBA, they seem very good at forming committees, stating objectives, writing reports, arranging conferences and so on ... but when it comes to actually supplying a few bees - it seems that all of these organisations are sadly lacking.

My bees are black - well, mostly black - there are the odd one or two gingery ones which stick out like a white man in Harlem, but whether this 'blackness' is based on AMM genes, who knows for sure ? And so I've decided to re-queen the whole apiary, using some Welsh Blacks I've manage to source, to at least get the genetics onto a known footing - but I'd much rather buy a couple of guaranteed-to-be-as-near-as-possible-to-AMM-queens, and start from that position instead.

I'd have thought that these grand sounding organisations would be making AMM stock readily available, perhaps even at subsidised prices ... ?

LJ