Those NZ carnies

[Jimbo]

Murray's carnie plot has already been published on the Forum by Jon. See #69 Your Galleryof 2D plots thread

[Neils]

A friend has some Italians, I can try and sort some plots out if people are interested.

[Adam]

Rosie I said this
"The impression I get is that the NZ bees are generally well behaved" meaning the Italian types. and
"I assume that the 'inbreeding' of the carnis will not be a problem once mated with the local girls in any case". Which you disagreed with. What I was meaning to say (badly?) was that if there was inbreeding in Germany and a genetically unvaried stock from the carniolan semen (maybe shown by a poor brood pattern where drones had been removed); as soon as the carnis mixed with Ligustica there would be a good gene mix and therfore no inbreeding. However the outcome might be poor as far as temperament is concerned.
Gavin, please correct me if I'm wrong.

I can certainly understand why some NZ 'keepers are not happy about the Carniolans arriving.

[Rosie]

Hi Adam

I think we were at crossed purposes because I was not thinking of inbreeding as being a problem. The problem as I see was the outcrossing with Italians. I doubt if the article meant that the German bees were inbred in the sense that they had lost vigour or were having diploid drone problems. People sometimes use the term to mean "mated within race" which, to me , is a good thing rather than a bad one.

Rosie

[gavin]

Gavin, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Seems fine to me. The German breeders knew what they were doing, so the inbreeding thing is probably a red herring anyway, as Rosie acknowledged.

[Adam]

I have a friend who now has a couple of hives in NZ. His bees are as gentle as kittens, no need to smoke them or wear anything. He is surrounded my manuka plants too. You can understand the reluctance over there to have dodgy crosses if bees are like that.