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Thread: And another thing......

  1. #51
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    Quote Originally Posted by crabbitdave View Post
    Hi Calum, do have any evidence to back this up, I only ask as I look after both black and buckfast and Italian's, I've found it more to do with how clumsy the beekeeper is, and the weather to how their temper is, the temper of the bees has not gotten any worse with subsequent generations, I do keep hearing it will from other keepers but when I ask them if how they know this it's always third party information.
    Thanks Dave
    Hi Dave, I have certainly met some awfuly aggressive mongrels here. From generation to generation the components of the buckfast will alter and this can leand to extremes. Especially where they are in an area where 95% of the other bees are carnica. In our "county" there are 1200 colonies, and most of the beeleepers breed their queens on site - unfortunatley not making use of the isolated queen mating site nearby.
    That being said, I have some colonies of Carnica (lovely looking queen) bees with orange - red rings that are very nice to work with.

    br
    Calum
    Last edited by Calum; 21-07-2014 at 07:54 AM.

  2. #52

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    Hi Lindsay

    Oil seed rape brings lots of bees to our area (in the early season) both commercial and from up the glens etc to get a honey crop
    That's swarming season and although I am using Snelgrove boards the new queens will be mating with "local" drones
    Actually a lot of the drones might be more local to Calum than me
    The traveling bees will be gone by July when I do some queen raising but a lot of the drones could still be lodgers locally
    I'm not sure how much the drone population is affected I expect commercial beekeepers keep drones to a minimum
    So I am not sure "local" really means much here, although it might do in other parts of Scotland
    I have been guilty of doing a Martha Carney - hanging on for a honey crop from from real stinkers temper wise
    It was a tempting mistake but a bad one because "one years seeds is seven years weeds" as they say in gardening
    I was reading one of old Brother Adams books though and he claimed breeding from ill tempered combinations (in the F2 as he says) did not produce ill tempered bees in subsequent generations
    I just weed them out myself
    Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 21-07-2014 at 10:13 AM. Reason: missing words

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