Feisty bee behaviour

[gavin]

Aha! Careful, we're into a topic with strongly held views, gut reactions, underlying philosophies, and where what you do affects your distant neighbours in a way that simply doesn't compare to whether or not a gardener will sometimes apply glyphosate to tidy up his garden.

Are mongrels more robust than a pure-bred native Lochaber Apis mellifera mellifera? Not sure. Probably not, but if you look after them your mongrels should do well. One aspect that may affect them is the need to breed with other stocks. A small number of stocks in an isolated area will suffer from inbreeding depression within a few generations. There are isolated Amm stocks which seem to remain healthy despite likely limited contact with other stocks, so maybe native bees are better at this inbreeding issue. But that is wild speculation, not fact.

Gavin

[marion.orca]

Don't wish to start a heated debate about Amm whatsoever ! Be assured my little " mongrels " will be most carefully looked after. As you know we are limited here in Lochaber for stock - and rightly so for the moment - but there are possibilties to breed with other stocks in the future - the islands spring to mind as one example - with one of the islands having the Colonsay Black bees.

[gavin]

I'm curious, and I hope that it is OK to ask this - are your stocks locally sourced? I suspect that you've already said that they are sourced locally, in which case it does look like the local stock is not Amm.

[marion.orca]

Absolutely locally sourced - keeping in line with the request of LBA, not to import stock outwith Lochaber, due to the risk of importing varroa to the area.

[Trog]

A smiley and brownie points from me to you, m.o. for not importing! Maybe you could get your wings checked? I did and found to my surprise that my mongrels were more amm than I had thought from their appearance!

[marion.orca]

Thanks Trog - but no brownie points needed - [ like smileys though ! ] I'm just abiding by what I believe to be right for this area. I'm not too concerned about their genetic make up at this stage in my beekeeping, just to keep them healthy and learn to care for them to the best of my ability is enough for now. Perhaps sometime in the future I may become interested in that side of things - who knows ?

[Jon]

Steve Rose always says that with his stock the bees with yellow bands can be reasonably pure AMM (according to wing morphometry, another can of worms)
With my stock, I always assume the virgin queen has encountered a few yellow drones.

But the most important thing is sourcing bees locally especially if you are in a varroa free area.

[Jimbo]

If you want your bees checked just send me approx 50 worker bees and I will do the wing morphometry for you. There are still some people in varroa free areas that may be able to help you source new stocks or queens

[marion.orca]

Thanks for the offer Jimbo, it maybe something I will think about in the future.

[Rosie]

Go on - send the sample. We're all curious now and you must be too!

Steve