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Thread: Inbreeding/Diploid Drone risk

  1. #21
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    Hi Jimbo

    According to Jacob Kahn, cubutal index is totally dependent on genetics but discoidal shift can be influenced by environmental pressures. This suggests to me that cubital index should be given more weighting than DS. I have tested wings (using DrawWing and Morphplot) for a number of people including someone with bees on a pensinsula in Wester Ross. On that basis these are the best I have come across so far:

    Hive 2 Aug 2010 p&#108.JPGplot..JPG

    The first was a swarm collected from a feral colony in Wrexham and the second is a managed colony in an apiary in Nottinghamshire where no bees have been added for 41 years. Neither are 100% but they are the best plots I can offer. I am trying to find the origin of the Nottinghamshire bees but I cannot get earlier data than South Derbyshire in about 1970. Does anyone know if Galtee were exporting bees then?

    Rosie

  2. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rosie View Post
    Does anyone know if Galtee were exporting bees then?Rosie
    I've just checked the Galtee bee breeding site and found that they did not form a breeding group until 1991 so I have answered my own question.

  3. #23
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    I've just checked the Galtee bee breeding site..
    There is a Galtee timeline here.

  4. #24

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    Howdy Folks,

    I had a bit of trouble finding this outpost, but finally made it. I can do with a beer if anyone can buy one then pour it for me! Not all at once though!

    You are all guessing at what I've been up to and getting parts of it right, so let me explain:-

    I came back into beekeeping in 2001 after being out of it for 15 years. I had stayed in touch with my local BKA and had still done some demonstrating, but had no bees of my own. Five different people gave me a colony as a thank you for helping during my time out. The bees were all horrible, yellowish, bad tempered, runners, followers etc. I retained a good relationship with most of the local beekeepers and they became useful for taking my queens and providing extra colonies for trialling. I was also asked to manage my local BKA teaching apiary that gave me more colonies.

    I decided to try to improve what were heavily mongrelised bees, firstly to improve their temper, and secondly to see how much amm I could tease out of them, assuming there may be a tiny bit. I was told it was impossible to "back breed" and accepted that, but when I want to try something there isn't much that will stop me.

    In raising queens from these colonies I soon found out there were problems with queens that I had not experienced before, and that is when I made enquiries and found out that it was largely the older beekeepers who were also seeing problems, but the newer ones who weren't. It then became obvious there had been problems for a few years, and the newer ones thought that what was happening was normal. There are many who still flatly refuse to accept there are problems, even when I show them in their own apiaries.

    I was invited to Kev's BKA mating apiary with about 20 colonies in 2006 to see a colony with a queen problem. I found 4 more they didn't know about.

    In the first year I had about 3 queens through each colony, and was culling heavily. At the end of the year the progress had been tremendous, and all the colonies were much quieter, so you can select for temper and be successful very quickly, and don't believe anybody who says you can't.

    I haven't done wing morphometry myself until recently. Although results are very varied I have some in the high 70%'s, and that's without trying, though some are 0%, and that's without trying as well!

    I consider they are now largely "native type" and the characteristics quite good. They will all now happily fit in a BS single B/C all year without spring feeding, where what I was given 9 years ago wouldn't. I have not brought in any outside blood apart from my immediate area. This may change, although I am now convinced I can get to similar figures to some of you folks without it.

    Ready for another beer now!

    Roger Patterson.

  5. #25
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Hi Roger.
    How did you slip in under the radar?
    You will have to join the southern softies sub group with Nellie, Kev and Adam D
    This is a good spot for anyone interested in bee breeding or promoting the native bee.

  6. #26
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    I had some spare red wine in the bottle last night and would gladly have poured you some of that Roger.

    Quote Originally Posted by Roger Patterson View Post

    I had a bit of trouble finding this outpost, but finally made it.
    That'll be right!! We took a lead from a certain other forum and headed in the other direction - to a more open format more easily found by Google and able to be sampled by anybody prior to them signing up. Some on here have even helped that other forum by making helpful suggestions on becoming more visible and more welcoming ....

    Top marks to Roger for selecting from local stock and ending up close to where he wants to be. The original pure Sussex Amm may be gone forever in its purest form, but surely it is better to select your way back to something similar rather than import Galtee stock from another climate zone entirely? Of course there are local Amm types elsewhere in S England so maybe recovering something even closer to original Sussex Amm is feasible after all.

    all the best

    Gavin

  7. #27
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rosie View Post
    According to Jacob Kahn, cubutal index is totally dependent on genetics but discoidal shift can be influenced by environmental pressures. This suggests to me that cubital index should be given more weighting than DS.
    What about the other metrics, perhaps the Hantel Index. I can't even remember how good that is in discriminating bee races, but is it reputed to be more heritable? I've often thought about plotting a third factor to see how some of these data sets look. Anyone with data sets worth looking at this way?

    I have access to a program that plots scatter-plots in three dimensions and is able to be freely rotated to view the cloud of spots.

  8. #28
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rosie View Post
    The first was a swarm collected from a feral colony in Wrexham and the second is a managed colony in an apiary in Nottinghamshire where no bees have been added for 41 years. Neither are 100% but they are the best plots I can offer. I am trying to find the origin of the Nottinghamshire bees but I cannot get earlier data than South Derbyshire in about 1970. Does anyone know if Galtee were exporting bees then?
    If the Nottinghamshire bees have persisted in that state for 30 years, there is a fair chance that they were local bees before that too. Do you know if they look like Galtee bees, particularly in colour? I'm thinking of this business that some Amm are darker than others, and perhaps lowland/eastern Amm are more likely to be browner.

    G.

    Doh! Just read your later comment.

  9. #29
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    Hi Rodger,

    Good to see you here! I read your post and see you have got to with your bee breeding where some of us in Scotland are already starting from. We started with near native Amm with some good temperment and wish to increase numbers to give to the beekeepers in our area to help conserve the strain. We don't have problems of people importing or buying in other strains in our area. Not yet!.
    I wouldn't listen to Jon. With a name like Patterson if you trace your family back far enough you will find a Scottish relative so won't need to join the Southern softies sub group.

    Jimbo

  10. #30
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Just to link back to the first post in the thread:
    I took a virgin queen in an apidea to a mating apiary with Galtee drones about mid June.
    The queen was laying in the Apidea by the end of June and I introduced her to a nuc at the start of July.
    They tried to supersede her within a week and I kept a cell which hatched and resulted in a mated queen, mated in my own apiary, before the end of July.
    I checked the brood pattern of this queen earlier today and it was very good with very few gaps so no sign at all of diploid drone effect.
    I will get a sample of wings off to Roger within the next month as they look like nice bees with a bit of Galtee genetics in the mix.

    I still have the mother of this queen in a nuc and they have tried to supersede her all summer.
    I removed another cell about a week ago.
    The brood pattern is not as good as that of her daughter but it is not bad enough to warrant supersedure, imho.
    I might well find the nuc is queenless next March, but my curiosity gets the better of me in cases like this and I like to see the outcome if you deny the opportunity to supersede.

    PS Jimbo. Patterson is a common surname in N. Ireland as well. I was at school with a few. I dare say you would call them Ulster Scots.
    Roger may well be a southerner but he has a good thick skin on him.
    Last edited by Jon; 26-09-2010 at 08:09 PM.

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