Bee improvement day Dobwalls

4th Annual Bee Improvement Day
To be held at Dobwalls Memorial Hall, Higher Meadow, Dobwalls,
near Liskeard, Cornwall PL14 6LS
on Saturday 7th February 2015
at 9.00am for 9.30 start
until 4.00pm
Guest Speaker: Harry Owens from The Isle of Man
plus local speakers

A BIBBA Southwest Event
Entrance is £15 on the door or £10 if you register your interest prior to the event by emailing: [email protected]
or notifying: J.Widdicombe, 4 West Street, Millbrook, TORPOINT, Cornwall. PL10 1AA
Register now but 'pay on the day'.
http://bipco.co.uk/events.html

Bob Bee said:

4th Annual Bee Improvement Day
To be held at Dobwalls Memorial Hall, Higher Meadow, Dobwalls,
near Liskeard, Cornwall PL14 6LS
on Saturday 7th February 2015
at 9.00am for 9.30 start
until 4.00pm
Guest Speaker: Harry Owens from The Isle of Man
plus local speakers

A BIBBA Southwest Event
Entrance is £15 on the door or £10 if you register your interest prior to the event by emailing: [email protected]
or notifying: J.Widdicombe, 4 West Street, Millbrook, TORPOINT, Cornwall. PL10 1AA
Register now but 'pay on the day'.
http://bipco.co.uk/events.html

Click to expand...

Should be a fun day!

Bob Bee said:

4th Annual Bee Improvement Day
To be held at Dobwalls Memorial Hall, Higher Meadow, Dobwalls,
near Liskeard, Cornwall PL14 6LS
on Saturday 7th February 2015
at 9.00am for 9.30 start
until 4.00pm
Guest Speaker: Harry Owens from The Isle of Man
plus local speakers

A BIBBA Southwest Event
Entrance is £15 on the door or £10 if you register your interest prior to the event by emailing: [email protected]
or notifying: J.Widdicombe, 4 West Street, Millbrook, TORPOINT, Cornwall. PL10 1AA
Register now but 'pay on the day'.
http://bipco.co.uk/events.html

Click to expand...

Just received the list of speakers for the day... should be interesting, even for those who do not believe in the Native bees!

Another fascinating Bibba day, with some useful morphometry comparisons across the Country and beyond, pity the DNA sampling for the same samples wasn't yet available. Also some interesting research findings on the quality and viability of Queens raised from emergency cells ( when deliberately made queenless ) debunking a lot of previous twaddle about not using emergency cells for queen rearing.
Nice 'Plain English' talk from the Isle of Man beekeeper too. Jo Widdecombe was predictably easy to listen to as well. Big Thanks to the team for putting it on again.

Bob Bee said:

Also some interesting research findings on the quality and viability of Queens raised from emergency cells ( when deliberately made queenless ) debunking a lot of previous twaddle about not using emergency cells for queen rearing.

Click to expand...

Who was the previous twaddle from? and could you please put on a link to the research paper findings on this.

Hivemaker. said:

Who was the previous twaddle from? and could you please put on a link to the research paper findings on this.

Click to expand...

Pete,mostly the twaddle I refer to is the presumed wisdom that I took for gospel when I kept bees 40 years ago, I've spent much of my last 4 years discovering that much beekeeping then was little more than old wives tales and much of it persists today.
Jo widdecombe quoted the papers and I didn't write it down so I'll have to ask him for the reference.
It shows that when emergency cells are produced after making a colony queen less ( maybe making up a nuke) as long as plenty of eggs and young lavae are left, the percentage of good viable queen cells that go on to mate successfully in apadea are about the same as the result of grafting etc. So for a small scale queen rearing programming, maybe as needed by 5 to 40 hive owners its as good a system as any.
Obviously emergency cells made when only older larvae are left have poor results.
The twaddle ( perhaps a bad choice of words) is the sweeping statements made in books and by beekeepers that you shouldn't raise queens from emergency cells....

Bob Bee said:

...
The twaddle ( perhaps a bad choice of words) is the sweeping statements made in books and by beekeepers that you shouldn't raise queens from emergency cells....

Click to expand...

It only becomes twaddle when you cut off the necessary qualifying phrase!

It is perfectly reasonable to say that -
You shouldn't raise queens from emergency cells started on older larvae, as they would give you poorer queens. To avoid that problem, you need to take care to remove such QCs that are sealed "too soon".

You can raise good or poor Qs from emergency cells. Beekeeper intervention is needed to avoid the potential for incompletely-specially-nourished QCs which would lead to the poorer Qs.

What are the defining characteristics of a good queen?
Biologically it's obvious (but needs the queen dissected), but what is the beekeeper definition?