Hi Guys
How was the "Standard" arrived at to describe AMM bees
sorry about the chicken breeder terminology
Hi Guys
How was the "Standard" arrived at to describe AMM bees
sorry about the chicken breeder terminology
According to Ruttner, Milner and Dews the standard for the British AMMs was derived from analysing museum and archaeological samples which pre-date the importation of exotic races. They then compared them with mainland European samples and found the wing and body shapes were similar for their whole range. It seems that the only feature that changed significantly was tongue length which increased towards the Southern extreme of their range.
This work is still continuing as Bangor University have recently borrowed a number of AMM samples from Oxford University for DNA and morphometry testing. I just hope the results eventually see the light of day. Another researcher from Bangor is testing wing morphometry of enough samples in Denbighshire and Flintshire to plot a "contour map" of bee race for the area.
Leeds University, in conjunction with BIBBA are testing modern populations. They are also using both DNA analysis and morphometry so will be ideally placed to test the correlation between the two.
Rosie
Thanks Rosie,
How far back do the museum samples go I have heard people say that the black bees colonised Britain after the ice age.
Are these fossil samples ?
Had a search on the net for Ruttner and got this lively link
http://www.bbka.org.uk/members/forum...=28&t=3891&pg=
Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 06-07-2011 at 10:52 PM. Reason: found a link bbka
I have read that some of the samples came from York Museum and bees found in a Viking burial.
The viking bees were circa 1100 I believe. I'll have to check my book. There are also bees in the Linnean collection from 17 something which Ruttner did the morphometry on.
1100? Seems a bit late for vikings.
[edit] Oops, seem to have managed to lock the thread somehow, my apologies.
Last edited by Neils; 06-07-2011 at 11:41 PM.
Nellie is now outed as a Viking pedant. I looked it up in my Ruttner Milner Dews Dark European honeybee and it is 954 AD. Close but no cigar. I will never mention Vikings or winged helmets again on the forum for fear of drawing a bad house down on myself if not complete ridicule.
Originally Posted by Jon
/pedantI will never mention Vikings or winged helmets again
They didn't wear winged helmets
The jury is still out on that one.
They taught me in my teacher training that winged helmets was an urban myth but you only have to look at the Danish football support to get a whiff of the true heritage.
Can't help it, you invoked pedant mode.
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