Well, not quite balmy, Jon, but I'm sure it is not as harsh as Belfast or parts of Scotland, and i do bring all colonies down near to home into a very sheltered valley for winter (microclimate), not so good out over the hills in winter...different world weather wise, back in the spring when the east of the country was getting plenty of days with temperatures up to 20c we were getting plenty of days at 7c with rain and fog.Originally Posted by Jon
Thing is, if enough people got involved we could produce all the queens we need with minimal need for import.
Tricky to convince people to change management practices though, and its also wise to remember wintering success with small units varies a great deal depending on the season, don't be lulled into a false sense of security by how easy it is some years as others will be a complete failure. Obviously the larger, more populous an overwintering colony is, the greater chance of success, but also the biggest investment and the most to lose.
BIBBA is just a collection of members. If any member wants help to produce 1000 queens I am sure the committee will support them. Unfortunately we don't have unlimited funds and we would also need to be sure of the stock that was being used. No doubt marketing through Bee Improvement Magazine would be offered and we have helped with setting up costs in the past but as far as I know they have usually been small operations. If anyone has any initiatives they want the committee to consider they just need to let us know. There is a meeting coming up in about 2 weeks so it can be discussed then. We currently encourage group working and have groups in lots of places now and they are growing in numbers but there would have to be a step change to fill the void that an import ban would cause. We are also helping to set up a mainland sanctuary for Colonsay bees in case of a disaster on the island. BIBBA's policy recently has been to encourage people to improve the bees in their area whilst helping to make bees available for those who wish to parachute better stock in. There is a tension between these two philosophies but my own view is to let the members on the ground decide how they wish to go about supporting Amm or near Amm and help them any way we can.
Now the conference is over I am hoping to get some new initiatives off the ground.
If you want to breed Amm you really need to start with Amm.
Even then it is very hard to stop introgression from the other subspecies and Buckfast.
The bee improvement from local mongrels will produce a better bee but it wont be Amm.
But keeping the thread on topic, it should be possible to produce a lot more queens locally, which would reduce the need for imports and that can only be a good thing.
The only viable way to produce decent quantities of queens is to use some sort of mini nuc, home made or otherwise, unless you have access to hundreds of colonies of bees with which to make up 2-3 frame nucs for mating queens.
I still meet people who argue that Apideas don't work or are 'too complicated for the ordinary beekeeper.'
Whatever number of units you own you should be able to produce more than 2 queens per unit in an average summer.
I got 4 mated queens out of a couple of my apideas last season and I am sure Pete manages that on a regular basis with his system as he can start earlier and end later given the more favourable climate in Devon.
Easy for Celtic fringe beekeepers to say when the background populations are largely amm, but improvement of local bees is the best the rest can hope to manage without II (which is far too daunting for the average beekeeper).
I was very impressed by Jo Widdicombe's presentation at the bibba conference, to my shame I didnt take notes, but he quoted research which showed that the genetic make up of the sampled bees across Britain turned out to be around 45% pretty evenly, North, South, East and West, wherever samples were taken. This figure would probably hurtle upwards very quickly through the simple measure of stopping imports, given the apparent mating advantage of amm drones. Basically, all we need to do is ensure our queens are home mated and everywhere will soon have close to amm bees. Personally I'm not too bothered about a little introgression (we're too far down the road to help that anyway in most areas) as I believe advantageous genes (even from "unwanted" stock)will endure, and to parachute in foreign amm throws the baby out with the bathwater in that our objective is surely to preserve the diversity of local bee genetic resource for future generations.
By my calculations I averaged a nudge under 2 successfully mated queens per mating box this season, must do better!
Last edited by mbc; 06-10-2014 at 10:11 AM.
I am not alone then!
We had a really good summer apart from August.
I had a few mated before the end of May and they were still mating last week. I found 7 or 8 Apideas with eggs when I got home from Llangollen.
We were told off for talking at the start of Jo's talk so that likely put you off taking notes!
Hi jon,
Many many years ago, as I'm sure I told you when I was more active, I got breeder queens for the buckfast bee and had the intention of supplying the country with buckfast bees. UBKA at the time wanted in on the act (incorporating it into phase 3 of leader) and attempted to recruit me for that purpose but it just was not feasible given travel and time plus I was not going to do it free of charge and UBKA pocket the profits.
The operation came to an end after a year and a half simply due to the amount of work involved in filling apideas, grafting feeding etc plus holding down a full time job and playing my part in raising 2 young children. I had about 20 hives then so plenty of bees to play with and it was just too much work for one person
I quickly learnt that this queen breeding lark for profit was for those with plenty of time on their hands and an understanding wife so that ended it.
In a way you are lucky as you do have lots of spare time and can work bees 24/7 and I am sure rely on many of the club members to give you support and a helping hand when needed. I could be wrong, but the limit for one person reasonable well organized I'd estimate to be around 150 apidas , more than this then things start to get on top of you and you dont have time to turn around. Apideas are very time consuming when you have a need to examine the or find a queen which is one reason why I am keen on my system that I showed you. The bottom line is that to raise 1000 queens you would need another full time person to help
good luck
Phil
Are we talking here about over-wintering in Apideas, or multiple cages within Nationals - or maybe even multiple 2-frame nucs ?
This is something I'd very much like to do, and any opinions on the best tried and tested methods to use would be appreciated.
LJ
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