Why AMM?

[The Drone Ranger]

Jon

"do their beekeeping dressed like astronauts and handle colonies wearing something looking like welding gloves."

Fraid I do my beekeeping dressed like a skinflint tramp my bee jacket has holes in it and they get in.

I'm going to get a new one

Two pairs of gloves though and then I can take the top ones off each hive and the new ones go on easily

I put this link up somewhere else www.justgloves.co.uk they have all types and sizes latex synthetic nitrile aloe vera lanolin you name it

If I was in your area I would happily convert and join the breeding program

Where we are it's probably best to just go with the flow

[The Drone Ranger]

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.

Pure Bred Scot now they are supposed to have dark eyes and fiery red hair

Most of my family and friends have dark hair and fiery red eyes

At one point we had 10 cockerels of various breeds until I put the damn incubator in the loft

Never could bite the bullet and dispose of the little guys

When they grew up I had to make 10 separate runs and hen houses

[The Drone Ranger]

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.

What I always find strange is that requeening the bad tempered ones sometimes has the bad girls doing away with your chosen leader as soon as she has layed a couple of frames.
Then they seem to be able to raise another lunatic from the available larvae

By the By L E Snelgrove no less believed that all bees revert to one of the main races naturally over time.

[gavin]

What I always find strange is that requeening the bad tempered ones sometimes has the bad girls doing away with your chosen leader as soon as she has layed a couple of frames.
Then they seem to be able to raise another lunatic from the available larvae

By the By L E Snelgrove no less believed that all bees revert to one of the main races naturally over time.

Around here the big beekeepers tend to have done quite a bit of importing exotica ... and yet their bees do tend to drift back to something Ammish. So let's go with the flow but try to divert it into better channels as we do so?!

Sorry to disappoint but Trog doesn't have red hair nor dark eyes if I remember correctly. We're all hybrids really!

[Trog]

DR

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.

You shall have to come over and meet my lot. I would handle them without gloves but I'm too ticklish! And when I was learning the craft there were some vicious bees around so I've always used gloves and rather got used to wearing them.

[Jon]

I have nothing against gloves, just the excessively thick ones. I use disposable nitrile/surgical gloves. A lot of people use marigold.
Watching people try and lift the little frames out of apideas while fully suited and wearing thick gloves looks like overkill to me.

The disposable gloves are good from a disease point of view. Some of the leather gloves I see look like they haven't been washed for years and they probably give off a smell of sting pheromone as well.

I am convinced that bees, AMM or otherwise, react badly to leather.

What I always find strange is that requeening the bad tempered ones sometimes has the bad girls doing away with your chosen leader as soon as she has layed a couple of frames.
Then they seem to be able to raise another lunatic from the available larvae.

I have never noticed that other than the early supersedure problem which seems to occur in a lot of colonies now irrespective of temper.

Most of my family and friends have dark hair and fiery red eyes

Too much booze!!

[Trog]

Ah, well, Jon, I wouldn't dream of wearing my kid gloves for anything as small as an apidea, should I ever go down that particular route!

[The Drone Ranger]

Do AMM bees have any identifying feature that is recessive i.e. absent(not expressed)in hybrids ?
The wing thing doesn't seem to fit the bill
I'm thinking of something like blue eyes (in humans)
I'm not discounting wings its just if even the left and right wings on the same bee don't match that's a worry
There must be something better

[Jon]

There must be something better

Yep unique DNA markers!

There are 30 odd morphometric characteristics as well, tongue length and suchlike.
Get out your measuring tape and check those hybrid tongues.

http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/morphometry.html

[The Drone Ranger]

This one looks like it would be worth a few quid as a breeder

Check the eyes

I have had a look at the site before
Dave Cushman will be missed