Hello All,
What Jon didn't tell you was that Colony 48 had 43 wings, seven of which didn't register because D/S was >-10°. At least one was -13°. This I think is a slight problem with MorphPlot, and I have previously discussed it with Peter Edwards, as I have experienced it on several occasions. If you get "999" in the D/S column, go back to DrawWing "Results" and check the file.
When Peter has time he will look at it and see if he can easily modify it.
Roger Patterson.
Roger
Have you seen plots from Galtee? I wonder if they could be used a "gold standard" that we could all aim at but I have not yet managed to find plots from them .
Rosie
Bear in mind that Jon's are effectively already 50% Galtee!
I might prefer Colonsay as a Scottish standard, but then again I'm also a bit wary of relying on any standard when Amm in Ireland and the British Isles was and probably still is a variable entity.
In other words, let's find stuff that looks like real native honeybee stock for all sorts of reasons including a rough fit to the usual Amm criteria, and then see what we have in the way of any standards. As usual, I'm wary of going down the route to CI and DS 'perfection' and especially black/dark 'perfection' without really appreciating the diversity that there was for these things originally?
Feel free to argue! (Richard B will be along in a minute if I'm not careful. Wish I hadn't said that.)
Back to cutting up polystyrene sheets in case the Ice Age returns again this winter ....
Gavin
The queen heading colony 44 has some banding and is not jet black.
The mother of this in colony 31 is also brownish with some banding.
31's mother, 19, was brownish with some banding and 19's mother was a black queen heading a prime swarm I collected which came out of a roofspace where it had been resident for a year.
The least impressive of the scattergrams, 36 is headed by a black queen whose mother in colony 33 is very black and the mother of 33 was the one in the swarm I collected.
I reckon queen colour is a poor indicator of amm purity on this basis, although all the workers are very black.
I have a daughter of a pure galtee queen, a queen I swapped with Mervyn Eddie, but it is not with it's own progeny as I combined its nuc with a queenless colony.
I know several people who bought Galtee queens this year so I can get a sample at some point.
Only 43 and 44.Originally Posted by gavin
The other 3 were mated in my own apiary.
Last edited by Jon; 11-10-2010 at 03:47 PM.
I can't disagree with that Gavin but my problem is that I don't know what the original AMM's were like in my area. I can and do select for behavioural traits and fitness for the locality but when I analyse a set of wings I am not sure where to draw the line to help reject bees for having too much exotic blood in them. At least a sight of Galtee wings would give me a clue.
My aim is to get bees that breed true but a colony that behaves like natives could still be highly hybridised and would stir things up again in the next generation.
Rosie
I think that is one of the main uses of morphometry. It lets you reject a colony which on the face of it looks ok but has underlying genetics which are quite different and may throw a spanner in the works of the next generation.
I don't consider DrawWing to be some kind of 100% predictor re. amm purity but it does highlight stocks which are hybridised.
Hi Jon
Can you explain what exactly you mean by "banding"? You wouldn't have any photos of those queens?
Doris
banding = barred or striped.
My black queens are just black all over with no sign of any stripes but these ones have distinct bands.
Founds some images on the net.
My banded queens look a bit like this, but darker
The black ones look like this
The workers are dark irrespective of the queen and I don't think I could tell them apart.
I was worried a couple of years ago that the banded queens might have some Carnica genetics but that doesn't seem to be the case.
colony 31 which has the mother of 44 was one of my colonies which did not try and swarm last year and it was my strongest colony as well.
I only had 4 out of 11 colonies make queen cells last summer and none of them swarmed as I removed the queens or split them.
I'll have to get my own photos.
Last edited by Jon; 12-10-2010 at 05:55 PM.
I think we have some way to go on morphometry and that will fire up Richard B more than Gavin's feeble attempt!
I have come across several with >-10% D/S. I'm told there are some in South Wales, but haven't seen them. John Dews reckons he can tell where a sample originally comes from by it's position in the box.
I am beavering away at trying to find out a lot more than we already know. Drones are a major point as I think we can have a good queen that was mated with exotics and the scattergram will look awful, but her drones will be good. It would be a pity to cull her if she can still contribute to good local bees.
I tend to work on observation and logic and to me if anything is inside the amm box that would tend to suggest the queen is reasonably pure with the drone fairly pure as well. I have lately checked some that were sold as "Buckfast". The queens are bright yellow, and the bees are 50% Italian looking, 50% no yellow bands at all. The dark bees came up as about 30% in the amm box. The overall pattern was shot about all over the place. Going on Rosie's point any queens raised from these would be very variable. In any case how do you get anything in the amm box with a bright yellow queen?
Roger Patterson
I would love to see some scattergrams from bees considered to be pure carnica or ligustica to have as a reference point.
Have you checked any samples or would their very presence in your home provoke an anxiety attack?
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