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Thread: Grow, or die!

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    Default Grow, or die!

    As the only beekeeper here in this group of islands and with extremes of environment - wild flowers and heather to die for, but alas very windy! - it's all down to me. It's extremely unlikely that escaped bees will survive a winter, thus no feral honey bees, and certainly i've never seen any. So there's s no wider pool of honeybees to complicate breeding or disease/pest control, but also no help either. The only drones are my drones, and certainly only my queens. This makes beekeeping extremely precarious for a beginner starting with one or two colonies!

    I've come to the conclusion that the only way to make this sustainable is to try and rapidly grow to a minimum say 15 or 16 hives at 3 or 4 apiaries, each 3 or more miles apart. (I can use my own house/garden and the croft for two of these, and I've got a few borrowed sites in mind also). Likewise, I would like to have three or four bloodlines at each apiary. Where did I get these numbers from? Umm, well, just thinking about it really, based on the admittedly very limited experience to date.

    All books and reference materials I've have or have come across implicitly assume a location where there are other bees in the district: I have absolutely nothing to go on, other than comparison with Andrew Abraham in Colonsay: I was one of his first students back in 2009 and greatly inspired by what I saw and learnt, but my situation is more difficult not only because of a more severe environment, but also because since he started we've seen the onset of varroa and a huge inward migration of non-native bees.

    Going back to the numbers, my idea is to get into a situation where I have sufficient numbers and diversity at each apiary to ensure good mating, and sufficient apiaries to avoid the risk of total wipe-out. Beekeeping here is expensive (transport costs for purchases, no-one to share equipment with, higher requirement for winter feeding), so I need to scale up to quite a good size to cover costs, never mind a modest return for my efforts!

    Selling is not really a problem. Neonachina and I already have a wee shop in the garden where as well as the handspinning and weaving we sell fresh produce, preserves made from our own-grown fruit etc. Honey - the only honey available in the islands here - would absolutely fly off the shelf. I think almost everyone who sees the hives asks if there's honey for sale! Oh I wish!

    My short term plan is to get to next spring with more healthy hives than I had this spring, and to be in a position to double the number during 2012. I also want to buy a spinner in 2012 (or possibly alternatively to sell cut comb?). Lots of money needed for that, when it's very much in short supply.

    Any thoughts or advice very welcome.

    PS: I have no experience of bees other than Amm, and introducing another type would nearly double my work and make life very complicated. But I can't help but feel that Amm should logically be the best suited to conditions here. Or am I tying one hand behind my back?
    Last edited by Neonach; 07-08-2011 at 10:15 PM.

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    Hi Jonathan,
    If you click on Forum at the top of the page and then look at the last post. You will see there are other beekeepers in the Western isles you may want to contact by e-mail

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    One strategy to get around the potential inbreeding problem is to buy in one new queen per year which is unrelated to your stock and do all your grafting from that one, letting the virgins mate with your existing drones.
    I have largely done that this year as I swapped one of my queens for an unrelated one last summer and have grafted from it.
    I have requeened about 7 or 8 colonies with its daughters grafted in May and the brood pattern is very good showing no sign of pepperpot brood associated with inbreeding.
    In an ideal world you would want to get a local queen from a disease free area.

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    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Jonathan

    There are enough beekeepers on Lewis to have formed a local group. There is also a thriving group on Orkney, and Shetland has one long established beekeeper and maybe a couple more.

    Lewis has Varroa unfortunately (too many unwise introductions).

    There are also beekeepers in Wester Ross and Sutherland, including on the north coast.

    Some of these folk have long-established local stock, others have had imports of other types which are still in the mix locally. So for you Amm is certainly not tying hands behind backs, but realistically the only strain likely to thrive in your environment, and even then only stock adapted to the rigours of a windswept coastal environment.

    Reading your post one thing that strikes me is that you will need a bigger population to be sustainable in genetic terms. As the queen stores diversity in her spermatheca, you have one generation to build up numbers from each queen to capture that diversity.

    On the other hand some of the people who keep bees in remote areas keep relatively few colonies and seem to get away with it.

    good luck anyway

    Gavin

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jimbo View Post
    Hi Jonathan,
    If you click on Forum at the top of the page and then look at the last post. You will see there are other beekeepers in the Western isles you may want to contact by e-mail
    Thanks Jimbo, not sure whether you appreciate that Oban is nearer to us than Stornoway - in miles and cost if not quite time. And they speak funny up there too - you'd almost think you were in N Wales. Fancy the weather being masculine in Gaelic - here in Uist it is feminine. Tells you a lot about the weather there in Lewis and Harris!

    I've yet to hear of any serious bee-keeping in Lewis: All I hear of are the folk who have started up with a hive or two and then the bees have died out and they've given up. Just a few years ago, one apiary was wiped out by the varroa that came to Lewis with the bees, but usually folk blame the weather. However if there's anyone plodding away quiety and industriously at proper-beekeeping with bees actually suited to the conditions - ie Amm - then I'll be glad to hear from them.
    Last edited by Neonach; 07-08-2011 at 10:17 PM.

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    Thanks Gavin for a very helpful reply. A long journey to Skye (actually nearer and cheaper than to Lewis) is worthwhile to work with a serious and well-established Amm apiarist. I'm wondering whether to join the SBA Skye and Lochalsh branch might open doors. Not that I'm not looking for freebies from anyone - I must stress that: I'll be happy to pay for good queens (or better still nucs), or exchange queens if anyone think mine are good enough.

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    Hi Jonathan,
    I am well aware of the distances as I actually got married on Solas beach and visit the islands most years to visit friends. It is a pity that the Lewis beekeepers have varroa. As I see it you have two main challenges. The first is the weather as it can be a bit windy up there. The second is obtaining varroa free bees. There are a number of people and groups with Amm and still have no varroa. Andrew Abraham is one obvious source. Margie Ramsay in Wester Ross may be be able to help and the other source is the Island of Man beekeepers who supplied varroa free Amm to Chris Connelly for his pesticide research at Dundee. You could also try contacting BIBBA to see if they know of any other varroa free Amm areas. As Gavin has said if you can source more Amm to keep the genetics sweet then the way to make increase is by grafting as Jon has stated

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    If I was setting up in an isolated area I'd be keen to keep the Amm pure - in which case the Isle of Man and some of the larger islands are suspect. You could still bring in Amm from such places but would have to be careful about checking out the stocks first. Another way may be to exchange breeding material (eggs, mated queens in cages) by post. That way you could even source from a Varroa area - if you really knew what you were doing and could check for stowaways.

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    You are right Gavin. I would want to see the Morph plot at least from any queen I was purchasing from these areas. A mated queen from a varroa area is high risk. I don't think I would want to be the person responsible for the spreading of varroa into a varroa free area by selling a queen.

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    Quote Originally Posted by gavin View Post
    If I was setting up in an isolated area I'd be keen to keep the Amm pure - in which case the Isle of Man and some of the larger islands are suspect. You could still bring in Amm from such places but would have to be careful about checking out the stocks first. Another way may be to exchange breeding material (eggs, mated queens in cages) by post. That way you could even source from a Varroa area - if you really knew what you were doing and could check for stowaways.
    At the risk of straying off topic, I can see in me a temptation niggling away to cut corners and start with a different type of bee; but Gavin you're helping me quash that and stick to the original idea, which I'm sure is right, which is to keep only pure and disease-free Amm. Veering back on topic on how to scale up quicky without compromising on quality, I am interested in your suggestion of importing using eggs - I'd not heard this. I suppose that there is also AI, but whilst I know how to do that with sheep and cows, I can scarcely imagine how it is done with bees. These options have the potential to source material from further afield (they will I assume tolerate a longer postal route than live bees) without greatly increasing cost. (All 2st/2nd class mail and most parcels come by air in unpressurized plane - I'm not certain this is okay for eggs, but I'm even less sure about live bees!). I would think the first concern would be varroa eggs in the cells, and then mites on the pupae, and this may actually be relatively easy to check for. I have next to no knowledge of how other 'conditions' are propogated and could be monitored for, but I would have though initial isolation of imports would be a good idea - I could certainly manage that by having a separate temporary apiary for that purpose. However this is the detail: the first thing is to find a willing pure Amm supplier of either queens or eggs (the latter presumably as supersedure cells). I really needed those two nucs I ordered from Colonsay last year for supply this: with queen mating likely to occur here within the next four weeks, it's not yet too late for this year, but I've heard nothing from Andrew and with him so busy I'm reluctant to contact him. There's no doubt I need other sources, so any help in getting in contact with suppliers - or where to enquire - would be very welcome.

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