Scottish Government report on the 'Restocking Options' study

[Calluna4u]

And only 6 of the 19 commercial beekeepers responding included imports as something to be encouraged - that surprised me. The appetite for imports is restricted to a few and the preference for local is not restricted to the hobby sector.

The model that Murray described of needing to buy in large numbers of mated queens to make early season splits just isn't happening on any scale in Scotland. Surely it makes more sense to overwinter nucs so that you can fill your empty boxes with vigorous colonies that will be productive almost as quickly as the main colonies. The queens in those overwintered boxes are likely better than current season queens from southern Europe as they have not laid much as yet, are proven to a degree and don't suffer from being out of their colony for a while. Yes, there will be poorer years for overwintering nucs but for people who know what they are doing a good proportion will come through. In the years when you end up with surplus stock and a slack market can you not use them to boost your less productive main colonies?

The bee farmers I describe are mostly in England. their spring crop is almost all they have. The summer crop that used to be important is in decline although if you read the forums someone somewhere, had a huge crop but mysteriously little honey to sell when approached. 2015 was such a season, with summer honey almost non existent in large areas.

I know of many bee farms whose season is effectively over at the June gap and who from then onwards are in winter prep mode.

However, the 'full crop first year from a split' people are in areas with access to heather, especially Yorkshire, Derbyshire etc, or have a lot of balsam to go at. They are folk with a major nectar source late season.

An over wintered queen is not the equivalent of a new seasons....she will already be 9 or 10 months old entering the first full season, and will have built up the nucs for winter. Wintering mini nucs is a very nice experiment and can be proven in small numbers but it is never likely to be a VIABLE process. The queens are not cheap to raise (and any commercial source must take time and wages into account, big numbers are not going to come from amateurs) and wintering them in a way that loses more than necessary is a needless loss. Yes they will have relatively little age on them from a laying point of view but they are mature queens pheromone wise and are more likely to need close management than current seasons stock. Do not assume from this that we do not do close management, we do, but others have different management models and strategies. I know of one sizeable and successful bee farm in Yorkshire who never look in the nest again after a new seasons queen is installed, all their disease control is in the first half of summer, and final again at season end during winter prep. It works and is very cost efficient.

The Buckfast/Carnica/ and from next spring queens from Scottish mothers, available from the Alps in late April to June are very young when sold on. I collect them in person from the area, freshly caught the day before and they are in the hands of the UK client inside 48 hours from catching. They will have only just started to lay.

Yes, for the most part they are bred from proven stocks, and mated in areas with a lot of drones from proven stock. However to call the other queens southern European is rather missing the point about them that makes their market. The mother queens are NOT southern European. They are proven NORTHERN stock, and they too saturate their area with drones from other lines of proven northern stock. The bees are normally from breeding institute stock or leading breeder stock. Our current breeder does his own inseminated crosses, using lines from Denmark, Germany, and the Austrian alps. The only difference to a northern queen is that they are being raised in the south to extend the available season at the critical time...the start.

If it truly were southern European bees, in their case ligustica or sometimes sicula before the freeze, then there is a much reduced northern market, except for queenless and droneless packages widely used in mainland Europe to bring small colonies up to strength for the spring flow. (called booster packages, and significant proportion of bees from the south of Italy, in particular Puglia, used to go for that)

If we end up in a situation where we have to use up our precious overwintered nucs to unite into our mainstream stocks just to get them up and running properly then its a dead loss, and the nuc project will not continue. Queen rearing yes, large scale nuc production no. I have the equivalent of a full time salary to find out of the nucs, and it cannot work if its going to be boom and bust on nuc production matched to bust and boom on demand.

We are in the opposite situation to the southern guys. Our crop comes very late by comparison. We are looking to the heather from day one and anything else is just a by product. The smaller colonies in spring that have not endured significant spells of instability, and then peak in July and August are often the best sets at the heather. Boosting them too much early CAN actually reduce their performance. I would always take a strong over a weak of course, but it does mean a lot more work, and on our scale being able to cope NEEDS a spread of strengths. That might sound odd, but on a tight schedule you cannot keep up if they are all needing split for example at the same time. The spread of strengths helps us in that.

There is lot more to this subject than simple solutions that have all the feelgood buzzwords in them. Not targeting your report Gavin, you know that, its an important first step, more aiming at the rather introverted approach prevent on the forums, which really reduces beekeeping to a conservation project for so called local strains of very mixed worth, though their keepers no doubt think very differently about their much loved bees.

[The Drone Ranger]

There's a difference between importing queens and package bees

I can't see how Germany and Denmark can produce commercial quantities of queens and UK can't

I don't feel that Queen imports from selected areas even NZ represent as much of a risk as moving bee colonies or packages from Italy to UK

If imports are stopped though you can be pretty certain that UK queen breeders will emerge to supply the market

Suggesting a new mated Carniolan would be less likely to swarm than an overwintered queen C4u ?
I like Carniolan but wouldn't try and spin that one

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[prakel]

If imports are stopped though you can be pretty certain that UK queen breeders will emerge to supply the market

Really? Where will their selected breeding stock come from? I may be wrong on this but it seems to me that a lot (but not all, admittedly) of the people currently promoting local bees are actually just churning out daughters off anything they can find in their hives that looks half decent with little further thought.

There are good queen breeders in the UK who've got to where they are by putting in the years, I know, but even they plainly aren't scratching the surface. New blood? Good luck to them (and I mean that quite genuinely) but I won't be holding my breath.

[Calluna4u]

I can't see how Germany and Denmark can produce commercial quantities of queens and UK can't

If imports are stopped though you can be pretty certain that UK queen breeders will emerge to supply the market

Suggesting a new mated Carniolan would be less likely to swarm than an overwintered queen C4u ?
I like Carniolan but wouldn't try and spin that one

1. They don't really, and that's in a really favourable more continental climate than our with much more reliable summer weather. Sure, Ringkobing and Saint Andrews are on the same latitude, but the weather moves, on average, sw to ne in this part of the world, so Denmark has a climate more like Kent. The queens they take to Italy for grafting and mating are selected breeders.

2. Not very likely. Why they have not emerged already, in times when wages and cost were far lower kind of tells its own story. The top guy only claims to manage a maximum of 2000 a season. There are higher claims but they are held in some suspicion.

3. Without shadow of a doubt yes. I don't suggest it. I know it. From direct experience over many years.

However, before this gets misinterpreted.........even NEW season queens can swarm. The idea that they will not is a partial myth, but they are a lot less likely to. You have to compare apples with apples as well. A lower vigour second season queen may indeed be less likely to swarm than a new queen of a more vigorous strain. I prefer to compare like with like.

[The Drone Ranger]

On the rape C4u if the colony is big enough to do well its probably going to try and swarm as the blossom starts to diminish
That's true of a new season carnie or overwintered hybrid
The AMM boys would argue their bees don't swarm in May but that's because they build up too slowly for rape anyway
That should pretty much upset everyone I suppose but its only my opinion
Are any of the UK queen breeders approaching the task using Instrumental Insemination prakel ?

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[Calluna4u]

On the rape C4u if the colony is big enough to do well its probably going to try and swarm as the blossom starts to diminish
That's true of a new season carnie or overwintered hybrid
The AMM boys would argue their bees don't swarm in May but that's because they build up too slowly for rape anyway
That should pretty much upset everyone I suppose but its only my opinion

New season carnica of reliable provenance are not available, other than from NZ, at a time to even come close to testing this. You get them in as early as the end of April or early May....introduce and wait for brood to hatch.....its only turning round into build up at the end of May. Thus misses the OSR. The NZ carnica were very low swarming stock indeed, but we have stopped working with those for now. We are far more interested in them building for around 7th to 15th July, to be moved to the Bell. New seasons queens can effectively be left to get on with building that.

I have opinions on the instrumental insemination too, but you directed that to prakel so I will hold me tongue on that.

Your opinion on the Amm vs OSR situation pretty much matches my own. Some colonies do well, but many are a lot slower.

[mbc]

2. Not very likely. Why they have not emerged already, in times when wages and cost were far lower kind of tells its own story. The top guy only claims to manage a maximum of 2000 a season. There are higher claims but they are held in some suspicion.

.

There has never been a time when home produced queens could be reared at a comparable cost to imports from further south.
If I were honest about my own queen rearing efforts, then I only get about 50% success for all the effort of setting it all up, that is 5 usable queens for every 10 cells grafted, after the attrition of larvae not accepted, virgins not hatching or not getting mated. I believe professional outfits here get a better strike rate, but they are also below some of the success rates achieved further south.
It would take import tariffs or closed borders to make queen rearing here competitive on price with queens raised and mated on the continent.
This isnt going to happen so we need to out compete the imports on something other than cost to make queen rearing on a large scale viable for british producers. I believe sustainability could be our competitive angle, our queens mated by our drones could be far more sustainable in the medium to long term as successive generations are more likely o be stable and useful to us than the progeny of foreign queens mated to our drones.
This scenario would hold more water if we had a uniform(ish) bee of our own, sadly this isnt the case as we've got the hotsh potsh we've got through generations of imports and no central vision for our own queen breeding.
But anyway, the argument that if imports were stopped then uk breeders would emerge to fill the gap is spot on, just never likely to happen.

[Calluna4u]

But anyway, the argument that if imports were stopped then uk breeders would emerge to fill the gap is spot on, just never likely to happen.

I doubt it. there has to be some concept of viability for anyone to do it at sufficient scale. Unless honey prices rise dramatically then high priced queens from the UK are just seen as an increased cost in an already marginal profession.

What would actually happen, as has happened in the past, is if the beekeeper deems it too expensive, and most do not have the time to do queen breeding of any scale on top, is that they will just use their natural cells and have to take what comes out in the mix. Some will set up breeding programmes, other will not and just raise what they can on an ad hoc basis. That has been the British way for a long time, and cutting off the route to early mated laying queens will just institutionalise the way it has been done for years.

We are charging 30 pounds for the home bred new seasons queens. I do not expect many orders from professionals at such a price.

[mbc]

I doubt it. there has to be some concept of viability for anyone to do it at sufficient scale. Unless honey prices rise dramatically then high priced queens from the UK are just seen as an increased cost in an already marginal profession.

What would actually happen, as has happened in the past, is if the beekeeper deems it too expensive, and most do not have the time to do queen breeding of any scale on top, is that they will just use their natural cells and have to take what comes out in the mix. Some will set up breeding programmes, other will not and just raise what they can on an ad hoc basis. That has been the British way for a long time, and cutting off the route to early mated laying queens will just institutionalise the way it has been done for years.

We are charging 30 pounds for the home bred new seasons queens. I do not expect many orders from professionals at such a price.

It would need someone well respected in the game to prove on a large scale that there was a good return on that £30 for a queen

[drumgerry]

Again the focus seems to be that we need large scale queen production for a Scottish solution (I say Scottish as that's what I'm talking about and what Gavin's report is about) to be viable. For 99% of beekeepers the requirement isn't for 100 or 200 or 2,000 queens at a time. Maybe the focus should be shifted away from what the commercial guys need for their business model and instead should be on what would benefit the vast majority of us (who from Gavin's survey seem to own most of the colonies in Scotland). If some of the commercial guys want to hitch on to the back of that all well and good.