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Thread: Why AMM?

  1. #11

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    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!

  2. #12
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eric McArthur View Post
    with relatively low fecundity; building to a maximum of 8 British Standard frames of brood,
    Most of mine limit themselves to a maximum of 8 or 9 frames of brood but the odd one needs a second brood box and I had one last year produced 20 frames of brood in May.
    It was 85% amm according to wing morphometry.

  3. #13

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    Hi Jon
    Jon wrote:
    It was 85% amm according to wing morphometry.

    .................................................
    Hybrid, heterotosis vigour?

    Eric

  4. #14
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    I don't think the queen was a hybrid although she must have mated with a couple of non amm drones.
    The scattergram is in the other thread, colony 31.
    I reared quite a few daughters from her but too early to assess them yet.
    Last edited by Jon; 01-03-2011 at 09:55 PM.

  5. #15

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    Some people are breeding great bees from AMM.It is unfortunate for us in England that we only have imports or mongrels.It may suit people with 100 plus hives to import vast amounts of queens. As far as i know Scotland as breeding groups of amm.Other places such as ireland for example have the galtee black bee group.Not forgetting some people are trying to save the Laeso bees in Denmark.Apathy along with stupid EU import rules will further damaged our bees.I am not trying to rewrite the book,although i think we should take another look at it.

  6. #16
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    Peter Edwards in Stratford upon Avon runs 100+ colonies of Amm so it can be done. Not easy, and it needs lots of stocks to pull it off, but it can be done.

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    I think he has 160 colonies. He was a speaker at the ubka conference in March and gave a couple of very good presentations about his work.
    The Galtee bees are great to work - bare hand bees.
    I have a few colonies with part galtee genetics and I intend to graft a few from them this summer.

  8. #18

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    Hi Jon and Gavin,I wish i could get my hands on some galtee bees.I was tempted to ask Micheál Mac Giolla Coda at Stoneleigh.Although i think he now just breeds for the amm groups.Breeding enough drones to keep them pure would be difficute.Dave Cushman had a great website dedicated to the Galtee bees at one time.The website is now down unfortunatly.Interesting to here about the other amm breeder in stratford.Did he get them from Ireland ?

  9. #19
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Hi BB

    Peter mainly uses local stock although he has brought in the odd queen from here and there. He uses Morphometry to eliminate unsuitable breeder queens and he raises his own queens every year.

    The Galtee bee site is here.

    http://www.gbbg.net/

    Micheál Mac Giolla Coda now only sells queens in Ireland south of the border so I would have to go down and collect one or get it posted to an address in the South to pick up.
    I have never actually bought a queen in my life but I have some of my own queens mated with Galtee drones and I have a daughter of a Galtee queen which I swapped one of mine for.
    No matter what bees you start with you can improve them a lot if you select carefully.

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    Peter tells me the "Odd bees from here and there" were from Ben Gillman in the East Midlands, Prof. Ratnieks and Galtee. Of the three I get the impression that he favoured the Ben Gillman strain. In his conditions the Ratnieks ones were a bit defensive and the Galtee ones were prone to chalk. Thats' not to say thoug that those problems would not apply to all queens from those sources or to all localities.

    Conversely not all Ben's bees are wonderful as I know one couple who bought a colony from him that turned out to be swarmy, nasty, yellow and ridden with acarine. They died out and were subsequently analysed at the bee unit.

    Rosie

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