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Thread: All fur coat and no knickers ...

  1. #31
    Senior Member busybeephilip's Avatar
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    Hmmm.... selecting for water skating bees .

  2. #32
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Little_John View Post

    Sure - but has anyone in Britain been able to buy any ? I've only found one Irish breeder so far who is willing to sell, but his queens are 'collection only'. If you could help me source a couple of AMM queens at fair money, I'm all ears ...
    Give me a shout in June. I hope to raise a couple of hundred Amm queens this summer. They won't cost more than £30 each.

    Micheál Mac stopped exporting to the UK because of all the paperwork involved.
    I am in the North of Ireland so UK jurisdiction and no problems.

  3. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon View Post
    Give me a shout in June. I hope to raise a couple of hundred Amm queens this summer. They won't cost more than £30 each.
    Thanks Jon, will do.


    Micheál Mac stopped exporting to the UK because of all the paperwork involved.
    That explains a lot. I didn't appreciate paperwork was involved with imports from the Republic.

    Seems our political masters are fickle when it comes to arrangements with Eire - which is highlighted at census time, and when registering here for the Electoral Roll. Before joining the EU, one category of eligibility lumped together those people from Eire and Britain. After joining the EU the eligibility criteria became "Eire and Britain and those from EU countries" - as if our mandarins haven't yet woken-up to the ROI being an EU state. So Britain's relationship with the ROI is 'special' when it suits them, but not - it would seem - when it comes to importing bees. Bummer.

  4. #34
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    It is completely bonkers as it creates paperwork moving queens within the island of Ireland let alone GB.

  5. #35

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    Do swarms report at customs should they stray across the border ?
    VM


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  6. #36
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    There hasn't been a police/army check at the border in years.
    One benefit of the Good Friday Agreement.
    Obviously the bees respect their own jurisdiction unless they are entitled to both passports.
    A northern bee needs to have a grandparent born before partition in 1921 to be eligible for an Irish passport.
    Multiple supersedure doesn't count.

  7. #37

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    Back in the fifties I was stationed at RAF Ballykelly . We used to go to the borderland dance . The customs men often ambushed us on the return journey to see had any swag
    WW


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  8. #38
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    Ok lets see if this will fly.

    BIBBA have a hisotry of not performing. John Stoakely and I invited the powers that be at the time to Scotland and up they came gave their speil and were amazed by the morphometry of the bee samples on hand then went south again and never heard from again. Go figure.... then John sadly died very early.

    So........ why not set up a web site, have private access to it, and exchange eggs/virgins/queens. ?

    Just leave the talking shops out of the loop and get on with it?

    PH

  9. #39

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    Whilst I have a degree of sympathy for your point about BIBBA PH I think the issue is greater than just some like minded people exchanging a few queens between themselves. My opinion is that we need an organisation to be in place to make wholesale changes to the way we go about things. If you see the information Calum put up about how they operate in Bavaria then it's clear that another way is possible.

    Which brings me to the organisations that we actually have. BIBBA and the SBA. I think the reality is that those two are not inclined to any radical changes. A better example to follow would be the NIHBS set up by Jon and co in Ireland. If anything real is going to happen in Scotland (what happens south of the border isn't something I'm going to consider here) then we need a similar body. I'm happy to give my time to it but it needs a groundswell of enthusiasm and commitment if it's going to happen. The Scottish government in its ignorance takes on faith seemingly everything it's told about beekeeping by whomsoever seems to have thought up some get rich quick save the bees scheme. What I'm suggesting is that with an equivalent to the NIHBS in Scotland we could counter such misinformation and lobby for the changes necessary to give our native bees a fighting chance.

    Colonsay was a great start but so much more could be done!

  10. #40
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Go for it Gerry. It will draw attention to the damage done by imports to something which is native to Scotland.

    PH - Wing morphometry is a pretty much a busted flush and many Bibba members are still in denial about this.
    It is appealing because you can buy a scanner for £80 an seemingly use it like a home DNA test.
    Wing Morphometry only works to identify one pure race subspecies from another when there has been no hybridisation.
    This is how Ruttner devised it.
    If you have a population of bees which is somewhat hybridised/mongrelised ie like most of the UK population, the wing morphometry will not help you to separate out queens which have greater or lesser amounts of AMM genetics.
    I appreciate that in Scotland there will be areas which still have relatively pure AMM populations and Andrew's bees on colonsay have been DNA tested over and over.
    Kate Thompson looked at wings and looked at Amm microsatellite markers and there was no linkage, ie a sample which has 90% of the wings meeting AMM wing criteria is not necessarily more Amm than a sample which has 60% of the wings meeting Amm wing pattern. Sad but true. A lot of the NIHBS people are in denial as well as they have spent years gathering info and there are still rubbish articles on morphometry being published in both the Bibba and NIHBS magazines.
    Kate did a presentation about her work at the Bibba AGM and also at the Bibba conference in Llangollen but many don't want to hear what she is saying and prefer to try and pick holes in her work.

    When people use wing morphometry as a selection criteria the wings will conform more and more to Amm wing pattern with each subsequent generation but all you are doing is selecting for wing pattern rather than the rest of the underlying genetics.
    Last edited by Jon; 16-02-2015 at 06:41 PM. Reason: typos

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