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Thread: Authentic carniolan Bee Queens (apis m. carnica) from Slovenia

  1. #1

    Default Authentic carniolan Bee Queens (apis m. carnica) from Slovenia

    i can't see your advert in the Scottish beekeeper and the SBA encourages local queen rearing so I'm afraid I've removed your advert content

    Regards

    Nellie.
    Last edited by Neils; 11-06-2012 at 04:14 PM.

  2. #2
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Mind you, they are a good price!

    Thanks Nellie, quite right.

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    Slovenia is quite local it all depends on your definition of local

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    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Better than NZ and Hawaii then?

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    Senior Member Mellifera Crofter's Avatar
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    How does one become a 'certified' queen breeder?

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    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Maybe they have a scheme in Slovenia, a sort of quality assurance scheme? Slovenia itself protects the purity of its own race of bees by banning imports of other races and insisting on racial purity for a 30 km radius around its breeding stations. Then it exports these bees to other countries where the bees may be already mixed up but where at least some beekeepers are trying to keep the native type alive and productive.

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mellifera Crofter View Post
    How does one become a 'certified' queen breeder?
    Reminds me of those mugs you used to get with the slogan 'You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps'

  8. #8

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    I agree it would be nice to see native bee breeders selling queens
    The Commercial beekeepers import so many thousands of queens every year
    A few bought by ordinary hobby beekeepers won't make much impact.
    A couple of years after they are imported they somehow become local and OK anyway
    On the whole it's best just to use an artificial swarm or a board to raise a new queen each year
    There are some who say that's unpredictable but its cheap and keeps a varied gene pool
    However if you have say 2 hives and fierce temperament re queening pronto might be necessary
    A "certified queen breeder" that would be one who asks £75 for a native queen eeek!!

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    £75 is crazy. Is that the guy in the South of England who got some queens from Andrew Abrahams in Colonsay.
    I sold a few last year for £20 each to a neighbouring BKA which needed local queens to make up nucs for its members.
    Our queenrearing group chips in £10 per member and you can have all the cells you want for your apideas and you can set them out in a designated mating site which should have mainly AMM drones.
    Going well so far with over 60 queens emerged in Apideas and another 20 or so due to emerge tomorrow.
    Queen rearing is definitely more feasible if you can get a group together to share the activities.
    Very poor forecast for June so not counting any chickens with this current lot.

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    Senior Member prakel's Avatar
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    There are two who I've come across this spring charging £75, one in Scotland and Paynes. I think more will come out of the woodwork too once they realize the potential market, the thing is most people don't have direct access to breeding groups with true native stock. This has always been one of the criticisms of BIBBA has it not? Their 40+ year existance and still they've made no major inroads into the supply of amm -I don't think it's a valid arguement to say that as an organization supply isn't their responsibility; my point is that they've an awful lot of members some of whom are good beekeepers but it's almost as if there are two tiers of members: those who want amm and those who want to keep their own amm to themselves. This lack of concerted breeding and supply by sale is why the market allows such inflated prices to continue.

    Maybe if the Greek bee importers were a little more forceful in their adverts the country would (once again) be flooded with amm of French parentage at much lower prices which might then drive down the prices of native amm.

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