To check if honey bees are in an area ??

[Kate Atchley]

Here in the Ardnamurchan we are keen to set up an Amm apiary.

Our preferred site has no known managed honey bees within 5 miles or more. But how best to check if there are wild bees ... unless, that is, we see them foraging. That's a long shot as none of us local beekeepers live there.

If I put in mating hives surely the queens may simply fly their maximum (maybe 16 km or so) to find a mate and we are none the wiser about their immediate environment. But bait hives, yes certainly.

Any other suggestions?

Kate

[The Drone Ranger]

You could spread several margarine containers around the area with a block of apifonda or similar in them.
Any foraging bees that find them tell their mates
If there are bees in the area they polish off the free food
Usually there will be a feeding frenzy
Almost certainly they leave some dead ones behind
So after a suitable period of weather when bees can fly have a check for dead bees in the containers
If you find them cut their little carnie wings off and scan them

[wee willy]

Can't you encourage drone production in selected hives? This would increase the odds of the queens mating with the desired drones .
Drone foundation has uses other than for culling frames!
VM


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[Kate Atchley]

Can't you encourage drone production in selected hives? This would increase the odds of the queens mating with the desired drones .
Drone foundation has uses other than for culling frames!
VM


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Yes, we will be using drone mother hives but first we need to ensure that, if we put Amm hives in there, any queens from those, and others we take there for mating, are not going to cross-breed with feral bees of unknown genetics.

Kate

[Kate Atchley]

Thanks Drone Ranger. Good idea. I'll have a go at this but will need to find a way to protect the candy from the pinemartens (bolt it down?!).

Kate

[Jimbo]

I made honey traps by placing containers with some old honey in them to attract bees. At one of the sites there was some activity so I collected a sample and did wing morphometry. As it turned out the sample was a good Amm one and I later tracked down the beekeeper who had moved colonies within 2 miles of my proposed mating site. As suggested increase the drone population at your intended site.

[Jon]

Maximizing the number of drones in your own colonies is probably the best strategy as it is something you have direct control over.
A lot of beekeepers cull drone brood and the majority will have no drone foundation in their colonies.
If you get 10 colonies at a mating site it is possible that each could have several thousand drones so you will skew the odds of getting the matings you want in your favour.

Queens won't fly 16k although drones might. Queens don't fly more than a mile or two as far as I know.
I have found that a lot of my queens mate in the apiary itself which makes it even more important to pack it out with your own drones.

Are you in a varroa area? if so the number of feral colonies is likely to be limited.

[Kate Atchley]

Thanks Jon.

Maximising of drone population may be what we'll find ourselves doing (anyway) but I hesitate to adopt that strategy alone, without first checking to see if we can be more certainty about what's there on the ground.

We have no varroa here. Some local feral colonies are known to have been around for years.

Kate

[Jon]

Unless you can find a truly isolated site the best thing to do is to take a long term view and if there are other colonies in the area they will change over time due to mating with the drones your colonies produce.
This assumes that noone is complicating matters by bringing queens from other sub species to the area.

The background bee population in my area is not great but there is nothing I can do about that other than produce as many queens and drones as possible.

[Kate Atchley]

I live in Lochaber and the site we are considering is the Arnamurchan Peninsula - the most westerly part of the mainland UK. It is remote, with sea to north and south and no known managed bees within 10 miles or so.

Kate