Quote Originally Posted by Calluna4u View Post
.Many go diving into bees before they are really ready. When people come visiting our bees they often remark how gentle they are (talking our Amm type stuff here), but I suspect most have no idea what truly gentle bees actually are.
I don,t think the best Amm is quite as gentle as the best carnica or Buckfast judging by some of the videos I have seen on youtube but they are not far off. The reason for that is likely that it is not seen as a commercial bee in many quarters and heavy selection for the desirable traits such as low aggression has not taken place. The Galtee stuff is very good natured.
Some of my colonies are more gentle than others but it is very rare for me to have a colony I have to requeen due to bad temper. It can happen sometimes with a supersedure queen.
Where you really notice the difference is with the beginners who bring in a Buckfast or a carnica to an area area where the background drones are predominantly AMM or near native.
You might just get away with good temper in the F1 but go beyond that and you could be dealing with something very difficult to handle. Not always, but very often in my experience.
A total beginner I know bought a buckfast nuc and a Carnica nuc mail order from Paynes a few years ago.
He had never kept bees before and had no training.
Issue one was he placed them just over a mile away from our association mating site which was not helpful.
As happens with a lot of beginners, he lost swarms later that summer and was making increase from casts he collected.
Next thing I heard he had officials from the Council at his house as the neighbours were complaining about getting stung.
That was first generation on from bees sold as Carnica and Buckfast.
The attraction for the beginner is gentle stock but if the colony swarms and requeens itself, which it will do as we are talking about beginners, then there are likely problems ahead.
One solution is to keep requeening with pure race queens but a better one might be to get involved with the local queen rearing group.
This guy joined our queen rearing group when he became aware of it and could not believe how gentle the bees were compared to what he had. He had already got the idea that bees need to be worked in a full space suit with guantlets up to the armpits.