Here's a thing....

[Castor]

Hello Team,

Now here's a thing. I'm based in Gloucestershire, down a bit from the left hand end of Hadrians Wall.

I have been on four different forums over the past couple of days trying to locate some A.M.M. to bolster the native genome in my neck of the woods.

I have had roughly twenty responses - and it is noticeable that the only ones that were actually constructive and not arguing the toss have been from Scotland or Ireland, both north and south.

So my question is, are English beekeepers more argumentative than Scottish or Irish ones?

Castor.

[gavin]

Nah. We have some that are so argumentative they've imploded and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Self-cleaning behaviour.

Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk

[Rosie]

Castor, it's because you left the best forum till last. Are you a member of BIBBA. There will be a new yearbook out this year with the contact details of all BIBBA's queen rearing groups. Most of them can't keep abreast of demand so they supply queens and other genetic material to members first.

[drumgerry]

Castor I sympathise. There's one particular forum that's so argumentative it was making me feel ill every time I visited or god forbid tried to participate. So much so I give it a very wide berth now. This is the only beekeeping forum I take part in now and almost without exception we're a friendly bunch. We're also very welcoming of those not fortunate enough to live in Scotland! . Pluuuuuus....we're mostly quite keen on native bees and have some of the best informed people on the subject - we are pretty lucky it must be said! All that and we like a good laugh! What more could a beekeeper want?!

[fatshark]

Other fora … not just argumentative … abusive as well



Of course … none of that sort of nonsense here. Firstly, we're all gentlemen (or gentlewomen … or in at least one case a gentleman posing as a gentlewoman) and secondly the admin's are ban-happy so we daren't disagree.

Have you tried the Stratford BKA? They're not too far from you (certainly relative to Hadrian's Wall). There is an active Amm group there with Peter Edwards and Terry Hitchman.

[Castor]

Thanks for the comments people. A nice reception, thank you.

I'm pleased to hear that the native bee is high on the agenda. Some of my local colleagues have looked at me askance as they order yet another Carnie Queen.
My bees seem to be tending, generation by generation, towards the black. I don't know where the genes are coming from - maybe there's a covert AMM breeder somewhere near me - so I thought I would add some known AMM or near AMM to the equation and see if we can't create a self-sustaining local population.

BIBBA? I gave up on BIBBA! - I spent a year as a member, received several quite interesting magazines, sent several emails to BIBBA officers and got not one response. I got a couple of "read" receipts, but then I gave up. I don't have time for complexity..... Like all of us, I expect they are busy people.

Nice to be here guys...... :-)

[Jon]

I will have Amm queens for sale from mid June.
At the moment I am grafting from one of Aoife's Galtee queens I got last June and another I got from Pat D, the chairman of the Native Irish Honeybee Society.
I have a load of colonies set up producing Amm drones which are unrelated to these.
Like you castor, I don't know why there is such an imbalance between supply and demand with Amm as weather notwithstanding, queen rearing is not that complicated.
Micheál Mac and Aoife sell about 300 per year, only within the island of Ireland, and Micheál commented at a NIHBS meeting that he could sell 5 or 6 times that amount if he had the capacity to produce them.

[Jon]

Some of my local colleagues have looked at me askance as they order yet another Carnie Queen.

You will have to be very careful with crosses as it is well documented by people like Ruttner that the Carnica x Amm cross is amongst the most aggressive.

[Feckless Drone]

[QUOTE=Castor;25654]Some of my local colleagues have looked at me askance as they order yet another Carnie Queen./QUOTE]

PAH! Some of us on Tayside are fated to get A. m. carnica Qs without ordering/trying. But then some of us feel lucky if its carnica and not ligustica that roles up. But the revolution is coming - oh, I've comeover all UKIP-like about european influences

[Jon]

I have heard quite a few local beekeepers talking about ordering bees from Scotland this year. I wonder are any of those imports getting sold on when they are supposed to be used for restocking. Who is checking? They don't have ear tags like cattle.