Page 2 of 4 FirstFirst 1234 LastLast
Results 11 to 20 of 33

Thread: Inbreeding/Diploid Drone risk

  1. #11
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Belfast, N. Ireland
    Posts
    5,122
    Blog Entries
    94

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by gavin View Post

    If there are little bits of other races lurking in what otherwise seems to be pure Amm stocks selected out of the mix that most of us see, does it matter?
    G.
    It doesn't matter that much to me, but it would be nice to fix a population of amm or native type bees which breed true and dont throw up aggressive colonies such as Carnica/AMM crosses.
    I will be monitoring carefully the temperament of the colonies headed by queens from the Apideas which I brought away for mating.

    One of my new colonies from 33 which was mated with my own drones has a perfect pollen ring around the brood frames and a really black queen. I will clip a few wings later in the year when all her own brood has worked through.
    Last edited by Jon; 06-07-2010 at 11:05 PM.

  2. #12

    Default

    Hi All
    Being a southerer I do not want to rock the boat and its great to read a thread with some real challenging ideas in. Our local association had a Galtee queen a few years ago but we had big problems with aggressive colonies from her daughters, we also had very real problems in introducing them into local mongrel colonies, the bees would accept the new queen but almost without fail supercede her within six months. This problem combined with the aggressiveness, led us to abandon AMM and go for local mongrels that work well in our location, I am a BIBBA member and notice Roger P is also moving towards a local mongrel to try and overcome his queen problems, have'nt spoken to him recently so I do not know how he is getting on

  3. #13
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Tayside
    Posts
    4,464
    Blog Entries
    41

    Default

    Hi Kev

    I suppose that what happens to your stocks when there is uncontrolled mating depends to a large extent on what the make-up of these local mongrels really is. In my case my bees have been variable over the years but until the last couple of years just what is found locally. Some in the early years were close to pure Italians, but recently they have usually been close to Amm mongrels. Two years ago I had a very vigorous colony which was the most difficult to manage I've ever had. In other words it was ferocious. Those bees were *darker* than usual and came from a near-native mother. Later I found out that a large apiary a couple of km away had Carniolans. So if your association brought Galtee queens to a local area with a preponderance of Carniolans or some other incompatible race, then trouble would have been inevitable. In other local areas other bees may have predominated.

    Roger P is still keen on Amm as far as I am aware and is continuing to select bees that look like Amm from his local area. Peter Edwards also has selected what seem to be pure Amm in his area in a neighbouring county to yours.

    best wishes

    Gavin

  4. #14
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
    Location
    North Wales
    Posts
    639

    Default

    Hi beebreeder

    I speak to Roger quite a lot and think his approach is not quite as you describe. He thinks the queen problem he has identified is not confined to his stock so the problem is our problem and not just his. His main aim though is not to fix this problem but to breed from the bees that are the gentlest and show the most AMM traits. After some years of this he tested his wing venation and found that his bees had become more AMM-like in morphometry as well as behaviour.

    I suspect that his original position would have been similar to your own where the local bees have so much exotic blood that the introduction of pure AMM results in aggressive hybrids. I would hope though that by now he could risk introducing pure AMM and get away with it. Unfortunately, now that Galtee have ceased exporting bees to Britain, it's difficult finding a supplier of bees as pure as the Irish ones.

    If you like AMM traits such as the ability to be confined to a single national without swarming and without loss of honey croop then you could do as he did and breed from your best.

    All the best

    Rosie

  5. #15
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Belfast, N. Ireland
    Posts
    5,122
    Blog Entries
    94

    Default

    Hi Beebreeder/Kev.
    Bringing in outside stock is always a risk as hybrid vigour can translate to increased aggression amongst other things. The AMM Carnica cross is the best example of this.
    Roger Patterson is comitted to working with and improving the bees he has in his local area. He mentioned that he would not bring in queens from outside his area.

    In my case my bees are 'native type' I had half a dozen colonies tested last year and the % AMM according to wing venation varied from 65%-85%.

    I was grafting from two queens with AMM characteristics and I brought Apideas to get queens mated with galtee drones. I have about 10 nucs headed by queens mated with these drones and none have shown any signs of aggression yet. I don't need to use smoke when checking for example and I only ever use nitrile surgical gloves. I have a load of nucs in my garden behind the shed and I wouldn't risk that if they were cranky.
    I also have ten nucs headed by queens from the same two breeder queens which were nated in my own Apiary and I don't see any problems with aggression there either.
    I have seen most of the problems of early supersedure described by Roger Patterson in queens mated at my own apiary, queens mated elsewhere, queens mated in Apideas, queens mated in Nucs and queens mated in full colonies. ie, everywhere! I don't think it has anything to do with Galtee Genetics.

    PS. Check out the level of protection used in the galtee apiary.
    Last edited by Jon; 24-09-2010 at 10:12 AM.

  6. #16

    Default

    Hi All
    Maybe I speak to soon and I do not want to sound smug....but I am really amazed how relatively straight forward it has been to propagate more docile stocks once I got a uniform strain of dark local bees. Is this because docility is a dominant trait? I am being careful to breed from at least 30-40% of the better stocks by doing a series of grafts. The next thing is to develop an Isolated Mating Site.......Gavin have you made any progress there?

  7. #17
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Tayside
    Posts
    4,464
    Blog Entries
    41

    Default

    No, but I did miss a call which may have been about this. Are you free on your usual days in the coming week or two? You can tell me at Scone tomorrow!

  8. #18

    Default

    Hi Gavin
    The galtee queen was about 15 miles from me and so had no influence on my own stocks, the Carnica stocks have now been repeatedly crossed with local mongrels removing any with bad traits. Like Jon I have Nucs, Mini nucs and full sized colonies in the garden, it is a big garden with fields at end and empty house n/door, but the bees are easy to handle, I have been running taster courses all summer and have a dartington that has been runing 16 frames of bees and brood 14x12 and no one has been stung so I must be getting something right. I have been grafting from that queen and moving the cell/ virgins to another site with drones raised from other colonies with desirable traits for mating, I have had 25 year plus experienced beekeepers buying queens because of their good temper and desirable traits, AMM around here would be a near impossible as the area is fairly flat and isolated mating near impossible unless II was used but thats another thread for the winter months.
    Regards
    kev
    Last edited by beebreeder; 25-09-2010 at 01:15 AM. Reason: spelling

  9. #19
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Location
    Rosneath Peninsula Helensburgh
    Posts
    691

    Default

    Hi Jon,
    I have started to check my new stocks using Drawwing and still finding the results similar to you ie 70% to 85% for Amm.
    I still have not seen a colony giving 100% with a good sample size of 40 -50 bees. My question. Is 100% achievable with this software or the way that Drawwing makes the measurements means that 85% -90% as good as you get. It would be good to see a plot from the Galtea bees which have been bred as pure Amm for comparison.
    Jimbo

  10. #20
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Belfast, N. Ireland
    Posts
    5,122
    Blog Entries
    94

    Default

    I have a daughter of a Galtee queen which was mated in an Apiary with 12 Galtee Drone colonies so I will take a sample from that one in a few weeks.
    I introduced it to a couple of frames of young bees at the end of July and then combined it with another colony from which I had removed the queen 2 weeks ago - so it has a mix of bees around it at the moment.
    I know a few people who bought pure Galtee Queens at the Bibba conference a couple of weeks ago so I can get samples from their stock as well.
    One guy bought 25 for members of his association.
    I doubt if you can ever get a sample much over 90% due to some natural variation and the odd bee drifting in from another colony.
    I would be curious to see if the same colony was sampled 10 times over a period of a few months would the percentage AMM always be the same or similar.
    I wouldn't be surprised to see a variation of 10%.

    AMM around here would be a near impossible as the area is fairly flat and isolated mating near impossible unless II was used but thats another thread for the winter months.
    Regards
    Hi Kev.
    The Galtee apiary has an II setup now as well.
    kev

    It's in the shed labelled in Irish behind Roger Patterson and Ole Hertz the Danish AMM breeder.

    http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/at...2&d=1283865301
    Last edited by Jon; 25-09-2010 at 09:56 AM.

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •