Colonsay reserve approved!

[mbc]

Temper is undoubtedly related to the amount of introgression from other races - which is very high in this region. We overcame this by rearing a large number of queens from good-tempered colonies then went around re-queening one apiary at a time (I have 23 so the process took some time). All queens were killed if there was any bad temper at all and the colony re-queened. This was done regardless of their performance - and it is not easy to kill off queens when the colony has just produced 250lbs of honey!
The effect of all this was to flood a large area with good drones so that any queen flying to mate would stand a very good chance of meeting up with near-native drones carrying the right genes for temper.
.

This largely mirrors my experiences, two steps forwards one step back for years while simply increasing from the best, and then suddenly giant leaps forwards as soon as I had enough surplus queens to afford to be ruthless with regard to culling queens showing uncalled for aggression or other undesirable characteristics.

[The Drone Ranger]

It's a good thing for bee keeping generally if the SBA president represents the broad bee keeping community.
AMM enthusiasts are a vital part of that community but only part, and you catch more flies with honey than vinegar
(Actually that is another myth probably)
Some types of bees are better suited to different circumstances and indeed different bee keeping methods
That makes perfect sense to me and I can't see how anyone could object to that statement.
We have had discussions on here relating to the swarminess of Carniolans and after examining facts I have concluded that while they may be more disposed to early season swarming. That is in no small part due to the point in the season when they reach peak numbers of bees ie during oil seed rape
The commercial beekeepers know this and favour them for that reason and their good temper
Most people are like me they have hybrid bees, the jack of all trades, and they tend to adjust themselves to whatever environment they are in
No doubt having a wide spread of genetics gives them greater potential to adapt.
So selecting from the available hybrid bees may still be the best option for the vast majority of folk

[Jon]

Beekeepers need to be shown how to find a queen and replace it with a better one.
I am amazed how many people who have been keeping bees for a long time cannot actually do this.
Sometimes it is because the person is squeamish and may have given the queen a name, like you would with your Labrador, but more often they just don't know where to start with regard to (a) finding the aggressive queen, (b) rearing/acquiring a suitable replacement queen, (c) introducing it successfully.
There will be limited bee improvement if people tolerate aggressive colonies and don't work together to improve the local race of bee without stirring up the gene pool all the time.

So selecting from the available hybrid bees may still be the best option for the vast majority of folk

The population would eventually arrive at a stable mongrel which would likely be an ok bee to work with as long as people don't keep introducing genetic material from different sub species. Most bee populations are given no chance to stabilise.

[The Drone Ranger]

Any queens with names like Wild Oscar or Psycho Sam have to go
I can't believe folk get really attached to the aggressive types though

You are almost certainly right Jon because each aggressive hive (queen) produces lots of drones and if just one of those blighter's mates with the next year queens the whole apiary can suffer as it only needs a proportion of them to be nasty and the whole bee keeping experience suffers
On the whole all the bees in large commercial operation are very gentle but it does alter the population
Murray McGregor speaking to the Barefoot Beekeeper says he thinks the Carniolan drones from his hives improve the local gene pool
Not sure the recent Italian introductions can claim the same (in this locality at least)
If Oil Seed Rape production stopped then the pressure for importation would be very much reduced
Meanwhile anyone involved in breeding specific races would have more chance with Carniolans

[drumgerry]

I think temper problems are always going to be a factor whilst imported queens and hence unrestricted hybridisation is only a click or two of a mouse away. To me the AMM thing is simple logic. The buggers are designed in their pure form for the climate (or series of sub-climates) that we have in North West Europe. Why would you want to keep introducing bees from dissimilar climates? My take on it is that we have to choose a pure race of bee and then breed the bejeezus out of it.

And another point I wanted to make which arises from the Colonsay consultation responses - in particular the response by Dave Goulson. He argues that AMM are not native to northern England, Scotland and the Western Isles. My understanding from my reading of Ruttner is that they are. His (Ruttner's) AMM distribution line includes mainland Scotland, the Western Isles and Orkney but excludes Shetland. Anyone have any thoughts or links to research on this subject?

[Jon]

That seems like a contentious remark from Dave Goulson.
The bees excavated in the Viking dig at York are used as the standard for wing morphometry as they could not have been anything other than AMM.
The bees were dated at 975 to 1025 AD.

Page 11 of 'The Dark European Honeybee, Ruttner Milner Dews shows a range which includes the entire British Isles bar Shetland.

The York Viking dig is discussed on p39-41.

Archaeologists have a specific definition of 'native' with regard to UK flora and fauna and it is something like present since 5000BC so maybe that is where the confusion lies. Some regard anything which arrived since the last ice age as non-native. We have a paleo-botanist retired prof in our association who clarifies such matters for us.

[drumgerry]

975AD is native enough for me! It was the map that Goulson produced in his consultation response which perplexed me. The distribution of AMM on it is very different from the map Ruttner produced.

[prakel]

975AD is native enough for me! It was the map that Goulson produced in his consultation response which perplexed me. The distribution of AMM on it is very different from the map Ruttner produced.

It's the map which Sicamm use, but without the explanatory legend.

http://www.sicamm.org/WhatApis.html

[Jon]

I would love to see how that map was drawn up and what evidence was used to create it.
The border line looks like it runs straight through Belfast so I might have to move my colonies to the correct side of the Lagan to make them Kosher.

[prakel]

I would love to see how that map was drawn up and what evidence was used to create it.
The border line looks like it runs straight through Belfast so I might have to move my colonies to the correct side of the Lagan to make them Kosher.

Or start breeding true native pollinatorswhatever they may be.

I wonder if there's a fair argument for stocking areas which lie outside of the honey bee's classic distribution limits with buckfasts, would that be fairer than imposing a specific race on an area.