New BIBBA website

[The Drone Ranger]

And as I've alluded to, there are people locally willing to sidestep soapboxes and spend their own valuable time trying to improve things in a collaborative way and with their eyes open about the difficulties.

A much better way to proceed than to turn to the importer of queens or packages for a temporary fix which ends up making things worse for everyone (unstable genetics locally, poorly adapted bees, new pests and diseases and new variants of pests and diseases coming in .... )

Sorry Gavin if that upsets you but a hybrid is a hybrid and anywhere that migratory beekeeping occurs the bees will be hybidised
Trying to breed back to something like AMM has no more validity than any other process of selection from the hybrid bees
There is no reason why choosing ones with fluffy bums and nice wings should be exclusively considered desirable

I don't get on soap boxes, in fact I largely just keep myself to myself, not joining lots of organisations and pressure groups
Some other beekeepers are members of everything under the sun, on committees ,preaching their message etc -- good luck to them
I always welcome the Jehova's witnesses at the door because they are very nice people,well dressed,well meaning and committed
That doesn't mean I accept any of their views or I would ever consider becoming one
To me working against nature, which puts every effort into increasing the hybridisation of the honeybee, is in fact a waste of time and effort
On imports you had best address those points to the importers but they have nothing to do with the breeding of AMM from the background population of bees
To maintain an AMM or any other pure bred population you would need the 4 conditions I listed in post #95

[greengumbo]

To me working against nature, which puts every effort into increasing the hybridisation of the honeybee,

I think nature plays a longer game than this. It might put every effort into hybridisation but in the long term the undesirable traits resulting from this hybridisation will be lost anyway if the hybrid bees are not adapted to local climate etc etc. Maybe the attempt to breed locally adapted Amm, with other desirable traits, actually helps nature by bypassing this long winded evolutionary process that would see many of the "poor adaptation to local climate traits" lost anyway. Of course it means you miss out on all the desirable traits as well which is what nature "wanted".....I guess it works both ways ! Interesting topic guys

[Jon]

DR. I am sure your 4 conditions could be met in various parts of Scotland.
Clearly it is like pushing a boulder uphill if someone plants hundreds of Carnica colonies near you one year followed by hundreds of Ligustica the next.
The advantage we have in Ireland is that in the North there are no commercial beekeepers and in the south the commercial and semi commercial beekeepers mostly use native stock.

Starting with hybrids or mongrels could certainly lead to a better bee. Brother Adam demonstrated that you can tinker and improve.
The thing is though, it has to be done in a controlled fashion and what you have with the commercial beekeepers in Scotland is total chaos with regard to stirring up the gene pool. It will never stablise to produce a population which breeds more or less true for the traits you want if there is a random injection of new genetics every year.

[The Drone Ranger]

If the 4 conditions were met you would be home and dry you don't need to worry about Commercial beekeepers or anybody else

greengumbo's post started me thinking
Surely we are not trying to assert that some bees that were around in Viking times were better that the bees we have now after hundreds of years of selecting from the best.
When was the golden age of AMM that we are trying to return to ?

[mbc]

When was the golden age of AMM that we are trying to return to ?

That should read "When is the golden age of our indigenous bees going to happen ?"
This is whats so exciting about the new energy and vigour surrounding native bee breeding projects, unlike ligustica and carnica bees, which have had considerable resources spent improving them for quite some time, the potential for improving AMM is still ripe for development, who knows where this will lead us.

[The Drone Ranger]

Steve thanks for taking the time to give a detailed explanation of the BIBBA position

I would have posted sooner but after reading mbc's post I was struck by a flying pig and rendered insensible

[Rosie]

I would have posted sooner but after reading mbc's post I was struck by a flying pig and rendered insensible

DR, If you were able to sense the renewed enthusiasm in some districts for improving their local near-natives you would not be so surprised by mbc's comment. mbc lives in an area where many of the native bees were never compromised in the first place and they are into improvement in a big way. Here we are still sorting out the genetics of the background population but the enthusiasm of the locals is palpable.

Steve

[mbc]

Steve thanks for taking the time to give a detailed explanation of the BIBBA position

I would have posted sooner but after reading mbc's post I was struck by a flying pig and rendered insensible

Lol.
What I was trying to get at, which I'm sure you realise DR, is that as with any stock improvement breeding efforts, there is a time when incremental improvements plateau out, and that this plateau is unlikely to have been reached in AMM due to the historical and present lack of resources behind the breeding efforts. One man bands and enthusiastic amateur groups just dont have the same impact as the national institutions which have led ligustica and carnica breeding efforts on the continent.

[drumgerry]

Surely we are not trying to assert that some bees that were around in Viking times were better that the bees we have now after hundreds of years of selecting from the best.

DR - are you seriously trying to say we've had hundreds of years selecting from the best of our bees?! Surely not! Selective breeding seems to be the preserve of the very, very few. Has it ever been any different?!

Most people "breed" their bees using swarm cells from whichever colony happens to be producing them at the time and that I'm afraid ain't selective breeding. I would suggest that our bees are in fact worse than in those days as currently we have bees imported yearly which constantly degrade any natural adaptations to the local environment which might be taking place. At least homegrown bees in those days didn't have that to contend with.

[The Drone Ranger]

DR - are you seriously trying to say we've had hundreds of years selecting from the best of our bees?! Surely not! Selective breeding seems to be the preserve of the very, very few. Has it ever been any different?!

Most people "breed" their bees using swarm cells from whichever colony happens to be producing them at the time and that I'm afraid ain't selective breeding. I would suggest that our bees are in fact worse than in those days as currently we have bees imported yearly which constantly degrade any natural adaptations to the local environment which might be taking place. At least homegrown bees in those days didn't have that to contend with.

Well importing bees affects both hybrid bee breeding and AMM somewhat differently
Hybrid bees are very by their nature very adaptable to any environment but of course when bees are moved into an area whether they are imported or not they affect the local population
Fortunately that just alters the genetic mix of the hybrid by adding a bit more of something that was already there
An Amm breeding program would become a hybrid breeding program as soon as those crosses take place
Most of the AMM breeding seems to just be breeding hybridised bees anyway

The questions I might ask are

When I check my bees they are hybrid mongrels
Yet the same results elsewhere are near native
What would you say the cut off point is ?

How local is local that's another puzzle to me
when it's hybrids then the next county is no longer local
AMM local is clear across the country

How about native
100 years after importation the non AMM are still imports
a couple of years after importing AMM are native

Which brings us to when was day zero when the whole country was populated by AMM bees
was it before or after the Romans arrived

There are a lot of inconsistencies