Black wires in super frames

[busybeephilip]

WOW - I've just been promoted to Senior member !!

[busybeephilip]

Oddly enough I was thinking wax was a bit lighter this year.
Perhaps it's the white cappings from my 99.5% amm.

Yes, White cappings is one of the nice things about the Amm bee. This was one of the traits that Bro Adam admired about Amm and he maintained it in the Buckfast bee. The Italian bee produced what I call a wet capping, it does not look well in cut comb or sections nor for showing a frame for extracting, this is because the italian does not leave a large air space between the honey and the wax capping. Carnolians have a pure white comb capping too.
Amm and carnolians both being dark bees can be identified by the color of their queens, in general the carnolian queens tend to be leather brown compared to the Amm dark queens although some Amm queens can have a small fine band hint of orange in the first abdominal segment right next to the thorax but not in the second segment.

The Amm bee also has a round ass while the Italians and carnolians tend to have a pointed ass (I'm not joking) , its to do with the broadness of the rear abdominal segments.

Also, to tell the difference between dark Amm and dark carnolian a sure method is to do a wing morphometery measurment as the two races have very distinct Dischoidal shift and Cubital index vaules.

[The Drone Ranger]

Thanks for that good info busybeephilip much appreciated congrats on recent "promotion" lol!
Some people are very lucky Black Comb I have a friend who bred this queen in her own back yard and gave her to me

[Black Comb]

Thanks for the info. I have only black queens now, not studied their derrieres but will so so in future!

[busybeephilip]

Looks like a nice queen to me. You should try to get one of the twist and turn cages for clipping and marking, they are much better than the type with the string mesh which can get cut and it takes a bit of fiddling to make the queens wing back up over the threads. Maisemore have them at around £8 and Thornes have them too but a bit more expensive

[Jon]

queen and attendants for posting small.jpg

Look at the ass on that one I posted this morning!

[busybeephilip]

Yes a nice egg bear'in hips, wish I had more like em

[Jon]

I took 6 out of Apideas this morning and they all looked like that one. All sisters.

[alancooper]

I took 6 out of Apideas this morning and they all looked like that one. All sisters.

Jon,
I have a very large hive that is bound to swarm before long. I would like to split and make increase if you still have one of these sisters, can you give me your contact details? I could probably collect.
Alan.