Why AMM?

[Jon]

Some of mine are completely black and other have that banding like 61. Some of the Galtee queens I have seen have the banding as well.
I have a queen which is brownish and has pronounced banding but according to the voodoo morphometry the colony is 100% AMM. All the workers are black.

I don't think I have a picture of the queen but these are the workers.

queen1..jpg Col44..jpg bees-col-44..jpg

The Queen shown here (RIP) is the grandmother and you can see some banding.

Pure carnica queens look like this, much wider bands.

We don't have a lot of carnica imports here, Buckfast types and yellow mongrels are the drones to watch out for and thankfully they show up quite easily due to the yellow bands in the offspring. I have a colony at the bottom of the garden headed by a black queen and three quarters of her workers have yellow banding.

[The Drone Ranger]

Jon

Thanks very much for the pics
Mostly my queens start very dark but soon show banding
Like an accordion opening
Generally I just ignore colour as long as they are well behaved but it will be interesting to check them all out
Strangely the web is awash with Carnica queen pics but I couldn't find good AMM ones

Have to be careful not to let Tonto hear any of this


By the way I read this today

Northern latitudes, the black bee has evolved and adapted to take immediate advantage of
even a short improvement in the weather, to achieve a successful mating. Occasionally,
virgin-queens have even been observed to mate in the immediate vicinity of the apiary
itself if the weather is poor.. Other non-native species of bee seem less-able to take
advantage of such short breaks in bad weather and may fail to mate successfully because
they lack this evolutionary adaptation to bad weather.

sound familiar

[The Drone Ranger]

I've been mulling this over for a while now, and tried to figure out a "nice" way to ask the question, but I can't so I"m just going to go for it.

Why the interest in the "British Black Bee"/"Apis Mellifera Mellifera"?

The people that I know here that had them aren't that sorry to see the back of them.

My bees live through winter and give me honey, in my brief time beekeeping I havent had to consider much else. Why should I, as an individual beekeeper care what their provenance is?

Well Nellie
As you started this thread I wonder what you think now ?
Strong opinions have been voiced for and against
You can see that feelings can run high on the subject
Terms such as mongrels are used by even nice people
Claims about Britishness of black bees are probably unfounded
Lots of imported bees were black and AMM types
Amm good traits are expounded and bad points dismissed.
Temper? who knows except people who saw and kept British Blacks 150+ years ago
The impressive commitment of great beekeepers working to restore Amm type bees
The need for isolated mating stations
But worryingly the separation of beekeepers into the good and the bad
The them and the us
Personally I have learned a lot from reading Gavin Jimbo Jon and Eric's posts
You might be wondering why if AMM have all the best qualities and hybrids the worst
Why then if you select queens for the best traits don't you end up with AMM queens
Personally I feel if you want AMM bees you had best start with a queen of that type
I can understand the wish to breed AMM from what you have got already and perhaps Gavin is better qualified to do this than most of us with his scientific background

My choice is to carry on enjoying keeping the bees I have and not worrying about their ancestry colour or wings other than as an extra interesting side issue.

How about you ?

[Trog]

I use the word mongrel about my bees as a compliment to them! Some mongrel dogs are extremely intelligent. My hens are mongrels, though I started with assorted pure breeds. Never had any intention to breed them pure - as long as they're gentle, reasonable egg-layers and, above all, hardy. Funnily enough I have the same attitude towards my queens!

[The Drone Ranger]

I use the word mongrel about my bees as a compliment to them! Some mongrel dogs are extremely intelligent. My hens are mongrels, though I started with assorted pure breeds. Never had any intention to breed them pure - as long as they're gentle, reasonable egg-layers and, above all, hardy. Funnily enough I have the same attitude towards my queens!

Sorry Trog no intention to give offence
I could have said the use of the word "pure" as it is equally is divisive when used in certain contexts
I was just expressing concern that some people can take the issue too seriously leading to division
I prefer mudblood myself

this is little extract from internationalhero.com

At the beginning, Tonto was not quite the same character we are familiar with. He was a little, old, wizen half-breed. His function at the beginning was predominantly for The Lone Ranger to have someone to talk to. He was not the strong, young partner he morphed into over time.

[gavin]

Hi DL

I continue to look forward to your posts - thoughtful, entertaining, and a different perspective nicely expressed which is always good.

> Amm good traits are expounded and bad points dismissed.

I hope that I haven't done this. Amm is different. Also it is a variable entity, a blank sheet on which to draw the tracings of the selectors and breeders. (Is that the wine talking tonight?!). Unless you think that you have the Maud strain of Bernard Mobus or a perfect Galtee bee, in which case you might simply be trying to keep it. Amm comes is unpleasant and unproductive forms as well as the sort that beekeepers would like to keep.

Those who would like to breed bees probably are best to do so within a given line rather than try to create a new one - that way you will have a degree of stability.

> Personally I have learned a lot from reading Gavin Jimbo Jon and Eric's posts

Interesting set of posters! I'll not ask why ...

> You might be wondering why if AMM have all the best qualities and hybrids the worst ....

No, I don't think so. Not all Amm have good qualities (some are awful) and many hybrids are good bees.

> My choice is to carry on enjoying keeping the bees I have and not worrying
> about their ancestry colour or wings other than as an extra interesting side
> issue.

A fine position. Most beekeepers will continue down that road.

We must drag you along to the East of Scotland apiary sometime DL. Don't expect anything much at the moment, except some weak splits and half-baked grafting attempts.

cheers

Gavin

[Trog]

No offence taken at all, Droney! My Welsh Cob is as pure bred as they come and I'm a pure bred Scot but my bees and hens are a happy mixture. Actually, one of the things I like about both the hens and bees is that being home-bred over the years, I can see the mother's characteristics coming through in one or two of them and there's great pleasure in that.

[Jon]

DR

Of course some hybrids are good. The problem is they do not tend to breed true like pure strains of bee - be they amm, carnica or Ligustica. Your pleasure will be short lived and you need to pay homage to the god of heterosis.

Amm has its limitations. If your main honey crop is oil seed rape from mid april to mid may it will probably not have built up enough.

There is a lot of propaganda put out about amm, the main stuff being that it was wiped out 100 years ago by isle of wight disease and also that it is overly aggressive.

I don't think it was lost from the more far flung regions of the uk and ireland and re. the aggression, I have recently requeened a few colonies with this years mated queens and they are unbelievably docile. Some of the nicest bees I have ever handled. The people I know with mongrels (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) do their beekeeping dressed like astronauts and handle colonies wearing something looking like welding gloves. What does that tell you about levels of aggression. Nitrile gloves and a veil is enough for my colonies.

I try to avoid a 'them and us' situation as some of the posters I most respect such as Dan Basterfierld, Richard Bache Adam.D or Pete.L are hardly native bee people. I only take issue when people start making gratuitous jibes about the native bee as I find that to be a bit tedious. Not accusing you of that, and like Gavin I am enjoying the debate.

[The Drone Ranger]

AMM temperament?
I don't know because in the days of skep beekeeping the bees were left alone till they were killed so only after movable frames appeared did temper jump to the top of the list of desirable qualities

"Those who would like to breed bees probably are best to do so within a given line rather than try to create a new one - that way you will have a degree of stability."

Again I don't know. You are probably familiar with black rock laying chickens They are very popular free range hybrids produced by crossing two line bred strains one of Barred Rocks and one of Rhode Island reds
You can't buy a cockerel of the breed I don't think it would be possible starting with only black rocks to breed Rhode Island red's and Barred rocks.
You might if you had a very long life breed birds similar to Rhodes or Barred Rocks but if the neighbours cockerel jumped the fence every night and mated with your hens then game over.


Interesting set of posters!

The 4 posters represent, the ideals, the methods, the practicalities, and the doubters view.



We must drag you along to the East of Scotland apiary sometime DL.

That reminded me of a man in Florida who was tried for tying his wife to the bumper of his car, dragging her for three miles, throwing her in a ditch, pouring petrol on her, and setting her alight.
When asked why he did it he said " I was mad at her at the time"
If he had been British that would qualified as typical British understatement

Thanks for the invite hope I don't have to be dragged though

[Jon]

If you select for temper you will see progress in two or three generations and there is no need to hark back to the days of skep beekeeping irrespective of the bee race you keep. Temper is obviously a strongly controlled genetic trait.