My point about the Romans Pete is that they didn't settle in much of Scotland and although Tacitus reports they ventured into the North East they didn't stay. Hence my flippant point of dropping off colonies of yellow bees as they passed.

DR - not annoyed at you. I think we've both been on here long enough to have a civilized disagreement . Just a bit confused about your stance on AMM.

Of course selecting black bees for colour and nothing else is a nonsense. All you get are black bees. From what I can see though that's not what's happening and I think it's disingenuous of you to suggest otherwise. As to the queens people actually use - I think the general stamp of beekeepers tend to use queens produced from their own swarm cells. You think they're buying in highly bred superior queens by operations that think deeply about what they're producing. If people are buying in generally it's imports from the likes of Bickerstaffes and I'm not seeing the evidence of a superior breeding programme in those queens.

Of course there are breeders dedicated to improvement. We have some of them on here and I hope to join their ranks as the years progress. What I don't get is why you're so opposed to breeding for improvement in AMM. The questions remains - why breed from foreign races or hybrids when we have our own, dare I say it, native race already here. If as you say AMM breeders are simply breeding from hybrids I'm sure they (whoever they are) would have it otherwise and would take advantage of DNA analysis if it were available. Something useful that could be funded were the political will there to do so.

And interestingly it's an accepted thing in some breeds at least of cat (don't know enough about dogs to say) that you can bring in an animal to the breed who is unregistered and who displays the characteristics of the breed but happens not to have the paperwork. I know they do/have done this with Maine Coone cats with farm cats in Maine who looked and behaved like the breed. So you see it can be a flexible business and we don't need to be down on people who are trying to breed AMM using bees who display the physical and behavioural characterstics of AMM without them having been DNA analysed for purity.

I'm not seeing the moral highground being taken by AMM proponents as you seem to DR. What I do see is anger at continued imports. And for myself anger and confusion at why we allow them when our Bee Health Strategy uses the word "sustainable" and endlessly importing bees is the very definition of unsustainable.