Local bees

[busybeephilip]

. The 3 miles of water might be enough to keep your virgins away from your neighbour's drones and you might have a chance of keeping something close to the native type. There might be mechanisms - height of drone flight is one possibility - that slow any mixing locally.

But you forgot to mention Apairy Vacinity Mating so keeping them native will be no problem

[Jon]

AvM does not apply to all queens.

This paper is interesting with regard to mating habits

Abstract
Northern Poland is inhabited by native Apis mellifera mellifera (AMM) and the non-native A. m. carnica (AMC) which was introduced by beekeepers. However, hybrids between the two subspecies of honey bee are relatively rare. The lower than expected proportion of hybrids is hypothesised to be related to reproductive isolation between AMM and AMC. To verify this hypothesis, we allowed the AMM and AMC queens to be naturally inseminated in an area inhabited by both AMM and AMC drones. Genotype of the queens and their sexual partners were derived based on random samples of their worker offspring. Assignment of parental genotypes to the two subspecies was performed with a Bayesian clustering method. In colonies headed by AMM queens, workers were fathered mainly by AMM drones. On the other hand, in colonies headed by AMC queens workers were fathered by drones of both subspecies. The partial reproductive isolation reported here between AMM and AMC may facilitate conservation of the declining population of AMM.

edit: still cant post pics

[Thymallus]

Didn't Keoniger's books describe some experiments that suggested Carnica drones and Amm drones congregated at different heights and so less inter-sub-species breeding. I'm assuming virgin queens are genetically programmed to fly at the appropriate height whilst "on the pull".

[Poly Hive]

I had a massive slide sort out over the weekend and came across some 20 odd ones of wings I collected from Aberdeenshire and also from Morayshire. would they be of any interest to anyone?

PH

[Mellifera Crofter]

It would be nice to keep the Aberdeenshire slides with the ADBKA - unless somebody has a better suggestion for their safeguarding. I'll have a chat with David or somebody about it.
Kitta

[greengumbo]

It would be nice to keep the Aberdeenshire slides with the ADBKA - unless somebody has a better suggestion for their safeguarding. I'll have a chat with David or somebody about it.
Kitta

It would be interesting. Do you know where / when samples were collected PH ? I bet Jimbo would be up for analysing them.