Why AMM?

[Jon]

Bout 20, although so far I am doing the breeding and they are bringing the apideas.
I am sussing out who can take more responsibility for next year. There are a few good candidates.

Re the honey in the garden hive, I think most of it is from bramble, balsam and rosebay willowherb, probably some from clover as well. I am in suburbia where people have biggish gardens full of flowering stuff. 5 weeks ago this colony needed feeding as we had 6 weeks of wind and rain from early May to mid June. A lot of the frames are well capped.

[The Drone Ranger]

Your garden hive would make a great candidate for a snelgrove board you could get a record crop from that one without too much hive inspection either. It would limit drone production as well.
"the poor mouth" can be had on Amazon used for £2.81 inc del.
I'm going to get a copy -- can't at the moment because I'm logged on using a live cd of Puppy linux (can never remember login stuff)

Gavin is building a breeding group near where my mum used to live but that's a long way from me.
This year I now have 4 Italian type queens which are nice but unexpected as I mentioned 2005 was the last time one appeared.
They were produced this year from queens who were mated last year probably not my drones
They have yellow and black bees good temper though so I like them and the queens are so easy to spot.
I would not cull them unless chalkbrood was a problem or the bees were nasty.

Lots of people are like me so it would be a weird and wonderful breeding group that could accommodate the likes of me.
I have one nuc with a completely black quite slim queen who's bees are all black but she was not one of mine
I found a cast low on the weeds near one of my hives and although she was marked there were not that many bees.
Of course what I recognise as a cast from my bees could be a full size AMM swarm

The results of my scanning are encouraging

Kitchen window - 2 bees - 4 wings -amm
Extracting room -4 bees -8 wings -amm
dropped super frame 18 bees - all left wings -amm

Haven't plotted them
don't have the prog. wonder if there is a Libre Office version ?

[Jon]

If you want drawwing and morph plot PM me an e-mail address and I send you them as file attachments. The programmes are not that big and install in 2 minutes.

The type of breeding group you describe is what the likes of Roger Patterson is doing in Sussex. The population in the south of Ingerland is pure mongrel, I mean the bee population of course, don't want to offend those in Bristol or Norfolk, and there is no chance of maintaining any pure strain with open mating. He has got a group together to work with local stock to improve it and try and establish something which breeds true. No imports allowed and the group has made good progress by all accounts. I have seen his presentation on the work a couple of times.

[The Drone Ranger]

Are they doing it without AI Jon or is that a necessary evil ?

Thanks for the offer of morphplot I already have drawwing

Have PM'd email

[Jon]

I don't think they use AI. Roger always advocates ruthless culling of bad stock.

[The Drone Ranger]

I don't think they use AI. Roger always advocates ruthless culling of bad stock.

Thats good to know all that drone squashing seems wrong to me and makes my eyes water

I think more needs to be known about where the queen goes and the drone congregation areas
It would do no good to flood an area with drones only to find the virgins avoid the area and fly off to somewhere miles away

[Jon]

It would do no good to flood an area with drones only to find the virgins avoid the area and fly off to somewhere miles away

I worry about that sometimes as well but have been encouraged by the queen mating taking place over my own apiary. No idea if that is the norm or just a few isolated events.

[Trog]

We've seen it happen here this year. I now wonder if the AMM swarm I picked up a couple of years ago was a mating swarm that came over to us from the other side of the bay (certain that's where they started from) then found the pile of junk just beyond the carefully set up bait hive and thought it would make a nice home. I've two newly-mated queens in nucs from that lot this year so it'll be interesting to see how much mongrel blood they've picked up, if any.

[The Drone Ranger]

Jon & Trog

Can you remember the weather conditions

It's all anecdotal I think but the argument goes that native bees are more likely to grab a chance to mate when the weather is poor and that would favour mating close to home.

If the weather is fine and settled temp and wind they would take a longer mating flight

The Internet is full of rubbish though so I don't place too much confidence in that being sound but it might make some sense.

[Trog]

IIRC, Droney, it was the first decent sunny day (and pretty hot) after a long spell of bad weather. We'd just opened the first hive. Think it was June and can find date when I've a moment.