Has a marker been identified for avm ?

[SDM]

As in the title, I'm wondering if it could be fixed into Buckfast bees given their 50% ish Amm heritage.

[Jon]

would love to have an answer to that as I see so much of it in my bees.

[SDM]

Well, you were my best hope of a straight yes or no.
It just struck me the other day, what an oversight it was by Bro. Adam not to include it in his bee.

[gavin]

Ged Marshall, UK breeder of Danish-sourced Buckfast, told me that he sometimes sees comets above and in his mating apiaries. Drone comets rather than celestial ones. Looks like what Amm does, Buckfast is able to do too.

[SDM]

That's encouraging, I wonder if it will turn out to be something all bee races can do, but don't need to in their native climes.
If it is an Amm only trait that Buckfast have carried over then I guess they'll find a marker one day.

[The Drone Ranger]

Wouldn't AVM ultimately be a disadvantage to bees except where there are many colonies in one spot
The likelyhood of a large enough number of colonies thriving year round that one spot might be slim
I read somewhere the minimum colonies could be 50 or 60 meaning you would need a good site with little competition
While a breeder trying to stop outcrossing would see benefits from AVM many purchasers might not want their queens mating within their own limited gene pool
Just a thought



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[SDM]

I think of it as an emergency option, for summers like last year when decent mating days were in short supply.
It certainly doesn't fit with the behaviours that ensure genetic diversity,.but it would be nowhere near as limiting as the years of back breeding that have been used to bring back relatively pure Amm and I don't see that putting purchasers off.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi SDM
Somewhere on the forum there was a bit of research on bees selecting larva to be raised as new queens and elsewhere some on selective mating with drones
I can see the larva selection making sense but I doubt that a flying queen has much control over which drones catch up with her
Things like supersedure and AVM seem to be anomalies
It's a good point that in poor weather the flexible response would be to mate at the nearest DCA or even in the vicinity of the hive
If it happens in AMM the argument goes that it evolved as a response to climate
That would lead you to say that Carnie or Italians would not exhibit that trait
A lot of AMM type bees in Scotland are French by descent so that could make a difference ?
It might be driven by change of environment for any race of bees rather than an evolved ?


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[Jon]

Whenever I see AvM it is in perfect mating weather on warm sunny windless days.
I think it is a trait of some but not all queens.
I have seen it at every mating site I have ever set up so it is not just specific to certain locations.
It could certainly create problems re inbreeding if there were only one hive.
Thinking about that, maybe the presence of a dozen hives on the one site could contribute to the phenomenon in some way.
That number of colonies so close together would never occur naturally.

[busybeephilip]

I have watched this AVM thing occur many times now with my own mating boxes, I am still not convinced that it is an actual mating event, in most cases the bees are flying low with none if any drones present in the gathering (there are no drones in my mating boxes). More likely a form of absconding behaviour. As everyone knows, this theory goes against the whole idea of breeding in bees or maybe I should say inbreeding. As we all know inbreeding in bees is just simply bad and bees have evolved a mechanizm to prevent this by queens mating with many drones of different genetics at distant mating sites. If AVM was a true mating behaviour then the Apis melifera melifera we know would suffer from serious inbreeding and would have died out many hundreds of years ago. I dont see how the presence of many full hives near mating boxes would influence this, or even if one hive was used with selected genetics for drones. I have many boxes well away from hives were this behaviour occoured. This only seems to happen when small mating boxes such as apideas are used, the bees could be aware of the smallness of their home and simply want to find a new home which is suitable for colony expansion - makes some sense as this happens when bees swarm and select a new home. One of those unexplained mysteries.