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  1. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon View Post
    NIHBS is working on a system of approved sellers of native stock.
    Excellent stuff... I think thats important as it shows ordinary beekeepers, who aren't too concerned with the ins and outs, that nihbs are working to make native stick accessible. I'm lucky to know you Jon, but others who have only facebook or forums to discuss pros and cons of amm will at least have the info to source the stocks they want

  2. #12
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gavin View Post
    Brilliant! It is about time someone started a scheme of approving sellers. Folk that sign up to certain standards and can guarantee that they don't use imported stock.
    I'm guessing the approval isn't going to be based on wing morphometry

    This is an interesting development … do the NIHBS plan to make this available outside NI?

  3. #13
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    3/4 of NIHBS is in the Republic.
    There are quite a lot of issues to resolve.
    NIHBS does not want people popping up all over the place selling native queens which in reality just happen to be dark bees.
    I have noticed some of the English mail order queen suppliers have already jumped on this bandwagon.
    We had a list of suppliers on the website last summer but some people were worried about whether certain folk should be on it or not.
    Another issue is around the purity of stock and legal issues if bees are advertised as Amm.
    I think we are most likely looking to adopt some sort of code of conduct where sellers sign up to principles of best practice and agree to have their stock checked from time to time.
    NIHBS is involved in projects in Galway and Limerick both of which involve DNA testing of samples so that should allow some sort of monitoring of the stock selected for breeding.
    With open mating you cannot give 100% guarantees even if the queen you are grafting from is Amm stock.
    A lot of people are very keen on the NIHBS honey stickers - produce of native Irish honey bees -and those using the label should definitely be signing up to a certain vision.

    label.jpg

    The thing about wing morphometry is that if you start with pure stock and test daughter colonies it will pick up hybridisation so it is useful for that.
    The problem is that the Galtee people and other breeders have been using it for years so that pretty much invalidates it as a useful tool based on the selection artifact described by Robin Moritz in his Limitations of Biometric Morphometry paper.
    Using wing morphometry on stock which has been hybridised for generations is absolutely pointless.
    Last edited by Jon; 01-03-2015 at 10:50 AM.

  4. #14
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by brothermoo View Post
    I think a source of information for newbees to find reputable sellers is worth a bit of commission.
    Leaving aside the Amm aspect for a while, this business of helping people find *reputable* suppliers is something that really needs attention, especially in a time of concern over a new pest getting here from continental and Mediterranean Europe. I see no sign that Poly Hive is the man to do this though. I'm thinking of the average new entrant into beekeeping, someone who doesn't even know about Amm and has very little guidance readily available on how to source your bees ethically.

    If you were to exclude from this list every established commercial nuc or queen seller who ever bought an imported queen or package from mainland/Mediterranean Europe and who *can't* demonstrate with official paperwork that the importation was legal, you'd be down to a very small number of suppliers. Even just holding suppliers (somehow) to no false claims of having 'British' or 'Scottish' bees would thin them out significantly.

  5. #15
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    Well well thanks for the vote of confidence Gavin.

    As for why? Well there are bee auctions so there is a demand for a sales venue. Not everyone can attend these auctions nor is the timing of them particularly helpful. When you look at the costs of using that system it is not cheap nor is it cheap using line ads in say Beecraft. As far as I know there is actually nothing at all in Scotland for example.

    I have read in the forums more than a few times the complaint that "I canot source xyz" so I thought to be of help.

    As for obtaining bees ethically, the usual source is from with in an association is it not, and where those bees come from is frankly anyones guess.

    PH

    Where my bees come from is common knowledge and I frankly do not see their relevance to a web site. My "web guru" is a very competent web site builder who has created both my business site and the PH one.

  6. #16
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Poly Hive View Post
    As for obtaining bees ethically, the usual source is from with in an association is it not, and where those bees come from is frankly anyones guess.
    Many associations here do it reasonably well. However many (most?) folk these days getting into beekeeping turn to other sources either because their local association isn't that proactive and visible or it isn't that good at generating enough nucs to meet the need.

    These other sources - the commercial ones - seem to me to be largely unregulated and often follow practices that could do with some improvement to put it mildly. I was motivated to ask the SBA to set up this forum because of experiences with one of them, sending (selling) unsuitable stocks with imported carnie queens from deepest England to a sensitive place in Wester Ross with free-living Amm ferals and where Varroa hadn't yet reached at the time. Others are selling bees and using imported stocks to support their businesses in various ways and not all is up front. Many bring in bees under the radar, and it is these sales that bring the greatest risk of new pests into the UK - cheap deals involving imported bees and don't ask too many questions.

    So I was partly reacting to Brothermoo's suggestion of pointing people to reputable suppliers. How you do that is exceedingly difficult and perhaps the best way to make steps in that direction is agreeing national standards for certification of some kind. Full disclosure to customers and also to the authorities on every shipment of bees, together with paperwork. Inspections that confirm the vendor has the capacity to generate the bees required for the sales made. Policies on when and where to source source bees. Policies on where not to sell bees for reasons of Varroa or local concentrations of one particular type of bee.

    At this moment in time the SBA is committed to asking people to not import and to avoid imported bees. Once the spread of SHB is better known there will be pressure to relax this policy. In the meantime getting the bee trade industry more ethical, honest, transparent and legal requires would be something well worth doing. That could only come about through a national scheme with standards, publicity and teeth involving the main organisations. Not sure many of them are up for that.

    It seemed that your proposed site was going to focus on Amm. Maybe I'm wrong there. Try it out by all means, but as Jon has said finding customers for the level of production around is usually not a problem. I don't see that a payment based site is going to be attractive for that sort of vendor.
    Last edited by gavin; 01-03-2015 at 02:05 PM.

  7. #17
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    My website costs about £3 per month to host. I have a paypal button on it which was free to set up and only takes a few minutes of cut and paste from the paypal website.
    Anyone looking to buy a queen can google using common search terms for purchasing a queen bee or they can google my name and they will find it easy enough.
    When someone buys a queen the button sends an autogenerated message to my e-mail with the purchaser details and address.
    Paypal take about £1.30 from a sale of £35 and the balance sits in my paypal account.
    I really can't see the need for websites pointing at websites and taking a commission for doing so.
    The other useful format for finding customers is Facebook and that is completely free.
    You set up a Facebook site, update it periodically and provide links from it to the paypal button on your website.
    It really is that simple and does not require a web expert or anything like it.
    Things have moved on in the wordpress website era and you really do not need any HTML skills to set up and manage a website.
    It is all based on templates.
    Your Poly-hive website is a bog standard wordpress template site.
    wordpress sites can be expanded to whatever size you want and can store a huge library of photos and video.
    If you are paying much more than £3 a month for hosting you are overpaying.

  8. #18
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Poly Hive View Post
    As for obtaining bees ethically, the usual source is from with in an association is it not, and where those bees come from is frankly anyones guess.
    It's not like that in our association. Our association runs a summer programme which includes a queen rearing group and the members use queens for making up nucs or requeening colonies. Beginners get nucs via the association and these are headed by queens grafted from Amm stock. There are several other local associations with similar programmes. We have 5 queen rearing groups in NI all working with native stock. Beekeeping works far better when people cooperate and work together. Beginners need to start with locally sourced native bees which will not become a nightmare a couple of generations down the line when they hybridise.

  9. #19

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    I can't imagine paying anyone to create a website for me to be honest. From a position of very little knowledge I created the Moray Beekeepers Assoc website on Wordpress and it remains pretty much as I created it despite me having left them some time ago. The best marketing tool bar none if you ask me is Facebook. That interaction with customers is priceless. And it's free. So I'm afraid I really don't see the point of your proposed site PH.

    As for an assured quality/accredited seller scheme - great idea but again it won't happen till hell freezes over with the current beekeeping powers that be.

  10. #20
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by drumgerry View Post

    As for an assured quality/accredited seller scheme - great idea but again it won't happen till hell freezes over with the current beekeeping powers that be.
    You need to get that Native Scottish Honeybee Society up and running and that body could oversee a list of approved sellers. A commitment to avoid any imports of bees and queens would be an obvious starting point.

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