Hi Rosie
Rosie wrote:
I used to live in an OSR area and my bees, which I BELIEVE to be near native and exhibit all the usual AMM traits.
The ones I did not stimulate still got a worthwhile crop of rape and did not suffer from the problem of early swarming which EARLY BEES such as Carniolans or stimulated AMMs are prone to.
..........................................
How would pure race AMM perform? In the light of their being historically slow developers, with relatively low fecundity; building to a maximum of 8 British Standard frames of brood, this bee is not noted for the enormous amount of honey, which even the much maligned Scottish acclimatised mongrels are capable of producing. I won’t quote from my own experience but this is rather similar to Ian Craig’s who regularly harvests averages of 90 lbs of surplus year on year.
I personally would welcome a comeback of AMM in the marginal ‘late areas’ where there is considerable presence of bell and ling. This I reckon is ‘ do-able’. But the present scenario of burgeoning imports by the commercial beekeepers is undermining the precarious existence of the Scottish acclimatised mongrels without exacerbating the problem with an unknown quantity resulting from “cross”, cross breeding with AMM in the more productive areas like Perthshire, the North East and the East coast. AMM’s historical susceptibility to acarine is also a major factor, despite the low incidence of the disease in Scotland, currently. This low incidence could be attributed to the presence of the more acarine resistant mongrels (hybrids)
As an aside the legendary brilliant white cappings are due to AMM’s propensity for not filling the ‘bottles’ and leaving a large air space above the sealed honey!