Drone rearing

[The Drone Ranger]

You know the funny thing is that all the beekeepers i have met so far indicate that they are in favour of having AMM in their hives I have not met one person yet who said the want buckfast, or any other bees now is that just me, Any beekeeper who admitted to having bees with yellow banding are looking to requeen with Amm queens.

Hi Greengage
I think the commercial beekeepers prefer Carniolans perhaps C4u might be the chap who can say for sure
I like carniolans they are good bees and generally well bred by the specialist breeders
These days they all cost too much so I raise my own near natives (of the EU) with the help of quality drones from the people who buy their queens in bulk lol!

Most places it really wouldn't matter Much if you spent loads on pure bred Queens because they would be hybridised in subsequent generations whether they were Amm Buckfast Carnie or Italian
In fact you might have more success with Carnies if the local drone pool is bias in that direction not sure if that would be the case? because the bees like to interbreed

[Greengage]

Looks like ill have to do a lot more reading and research, I thought this would be easy.

[The Drone Ranger]

Looks like ill have to do a lot more reading and research, I thought this would be easy.

Its very easy to raise queens from your own bees
Providing they are not riddled with chalkbrood or aggressive they will do just fine
I have wing scanned mine not that that tells you for sure what they are
They are a mixture of Carnie and amm(ish) types and generally pretty good regards temper and chalkbrood etc
If your bees were not very good either propolising or stinging etc you might get a couple of queens in to get you off on the right foot
The local drone population have a big part to play but if you start with a gentle queen the daughters have a good chance of being the same

[Greengage]

Great I have a lovely lady heading my hive at the moment so I hope to breed from here if they survive the winter which I hope they will.

[The Drone Ranger]

That's definitely what I would do Greengage
Over the Winter you might get some grafting tools and a few cupkit bits to put on a frame for grafting into
Mininucs are a bit dear Kielers are about £16 with the frame bars
There's plenty time to make a few nucs overwinter and they are just about as good for queen rearing
You need them anyway at some point to give the queen her own hive

[SDM]

The commercial beeks I know of all use Buckfast. I don't have the time with both yet to make a real comparison between my Amm(ish) bees and my Buckfast. There is definitely a rise in interest in Amm queens, but I highly doubt a bee that developed in isolation just after the last ice age is the most suitable for the rapidly warming climate and completely different flora/forage we have today. I guess as with a lot of today's beekeepers, the bees they keep are a fashion accessory.

[Greengage]

Interesting, those who know better say the biggest threat to Species is loss of habitat and invasive species, Just finished reading the sixth extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert which won the Pulitizers prize for non fiction interesting reading. We cannot aford to guess and in this age time is not on our side maybe too late even.

[Kate Atchley]

... I highly doubt a bee that developed in isolation just after the last ice age is the most suitable for the rapidly warming climate and completely different flora/forage we have today. I guess as with a lot of today's beekeepers, the bees they keep are a fashion accessory.

Amm spread northwards gradually after the last ice age, from what is now Spain, to occupy all of western Europe as far north as Finland and the Balkans. In the south the bees were in contact with the Iberian subspecies, in the south east, Ligustica, and on the eastern side, Carnica. So they do not appear to have developed in isolation, nor more so than any of the other subspecies.

You'll find a map within this paper: http://http://www.researchgate.net/publication/238074946_Biodiversity_conservation_and_current_th reats_to_European_honeybees._Apidologie_40(3)_263-284

[prakel]

Theres also a different theory as to the origin of our bees from a 2014 paper:

A worldwide survey of genome sequence variation provides insight into the evolutionary history of the honeybee Apis mellifera

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...0Y-uAyED8-5CgA

[Jon]

And a subspecies like Amm has huge genetic variation within it. This was pointed out by Jensen and Pedersen in the 2005 paper which looked at introgression into Amm from other subspecies and Buckfast.
You can select for what you want with Amm same as with Buckfast or any other subspecies.
The Beo Cooper line is that Amm make small colonies with workers which live longer yet a lot of the Galtee bees are kept in double brood chambers and that is probably due to 25 years of selection for a trait they want.
These bees have been repeatedly DNA tested for various studies over the years and they are certainly Amm. The Colonsay bees have also been tested over and over and are Amm. You need to work with what you have to improve it.

I have put a load of reference to Amm and bee breeding on the NIHBS site