The Black Bees of the Ile d'Ouessant, France

I made a trip through parts of Brittany last week on my bike, including a short visit to the island of Ouessant, off the west coast.

On the island I found an interesting programme to preserve the native black bee of the region.

The local association doing this have a very good website (in French) which tells all if you take the time to translate the pages - I used Google translate.

http://abeillenoireouessant.fr/index.php

In summary, there were no honey bees present on the island when in 1978 the first bees were introduced - black bees from the mainland. The lack of bees should not be a surprise - there are virtually no trees on the island and any rocky crevices bees might use as an alternative are on the coast where they are lashed by frequent storms.

The French government seem to have given them help - both scientific, helping them improve the strain of bee and I suspect also financial - they have a full time beekeeper to look after their 150 hives. The island is free of varroa and is now protected from future imports of bees by legislation - providing the sort of protection the Danish Black Bees of Læsø lacked.

They currently raise about 500 queens a year, 90% of which are sold to France but some also go to Switzerland. I spoke to the President of the Association and he saw no reason why they could not sell queens to the UK and at 30 Euros each they seem very well priced.

Ouessant has a climate like the wilder parts of the south west and also probably a bit like the western isles of Scotland.

You can find out a bit more of my visit here:

http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/Brittany2012 Look on Day 6.

This shows some of their hives. Wooden Dadant Blatts on plastic floors. There were also some interesting double hives which I suspect were used for queen rearing - two colonies with a central area for grafts - but I forgot to ask when I spoke to the beekeeper. Someone else will have to go back when the weather is better and have a look inside them!

Looks like you had a great time! The island look vv interesting, I'd love to visit it. We are doing the Plymouth-Roscoff crossing soon...but we are only staying a day boo hiss...FinL, dog, cat and 2 adults otherwise known as son and daughter who are (apparently and according to my OH) helpless!!

Good to see.

Local Breton and Welsh - similar.

I wrote to Head man at Sussex uni suggesting the same thing for an isolated island but he saw no value in it.

Sounds great I have been pondering giving AMM a go. Some of my new 2012 queen are looking very dark but would obviously be a long way from what this place is offering.

When I have been over on the Plymouth ferry I have been struck by how like Cornwall it is.

I am going over in august for two weeks but doubt I can convince wife and three kids 'hay, I have a great idea of a really fun day out....for me’?

Oh and 'BUMP'

The problem is as always that purity can't be maintained in an open situation, although some are very close. These are some of mine and you won't go near these without gloves and ankle protection.



Chris

I wonder if protecting the breed in isolation is really the right way to go though? Surely the whole point is for a species (or sub-species) to adapt to changes in its environment. Okay, it's nice & noble to want to preserve Amm in its pre-Varroa state, but that's rapidly becoming a living museum piece rather than a sustainable strain.

I recently heard (anecdotally) of a commercial beek in France who has never treated chemically for varroa - suffered huge losses initially, but bred from the best-surviving queens each year, losses are reducing and his bees are becoming increasingly hygenic - does anyone else know more about this?

How black is black?

Here are my bees - originally a prime swarm from a wild colony in Bradford-on-Avon:

Click to enlarge:

Yours have quite a lot of orange in them clv101.

I recently heard (anecdotally) of a commercial beek in France who has never treated chemically for varroa

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I've never treated and have zero losses as a result of varroa related causes and it's well documented that untreated bees survive perfectly well in France, (probably elsewhere as well where feral or abandoned). All my bees are local stock hybrids, are allowed to swarm and have sex as takes their fancy. In my mind this is how it should be, it produces survivors that are genetically strong as it does with all other species. Some manifest more towards native, others Carnie, Buckfast and Italian - but who cares.

Specialisation and deliberate breeding for characteristics is always at a cost and leads to weaknesses, sometimes severe, in other areas.

Chris

Chris Luck said:

I've never treated and have zero losses as a result of varroa related causes

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That's great to hear - is that zero losses now or even in the early days of varroa as well?

Nice to see out Gallik half cousins interested in bee improvement!

That's great to hear - is that zero losses now or even in the early days of varroa as well?

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Varroa arrived in France in 1982, I arrived in France in 1995.

Initially there were substantial losses both in the managed and unmanaged colonies BUT not catastrophic and it was realised by the late 80's that unmanaged and abandoned colonies appeared to be surviving as was subsequently proved with long term control studies and, as I've said ad nauseam, I don't treat and have no issues and I know of masses of feral colonies that have had continuous occupation for at least 10 years, which is in itself remarkable given the failure rate for Virgin Queens.

However it would be misleading to say this applies to all forms of bee management or for that matter all bee keepers, some of whom apparently still have serious problems with varroa related losses. I say "apparently" because I'm not convinced, most losses take place in winter / early spring and could equally be caused by other mismanagements, especially as in my experience it is usually keepers that treat their bees.

Chris

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well as stated I would like to give amm a go at some point. I have tried the BIPCo web site and unfortunately due to some IT error in the site not sending me a registration e-mail I can't get on it as it just warns me that my e-mail is already registered. So I have no idea if or how you would go about getting local AMM.

any way no hurry

what I would say is that the island over in France is probably closer it me than Wales and has the same granite, vegetation etc. Not sure if bee's would try and cross the channel or not but it could be that the amm over there is very close to amm over here? happy to admit that way out of depth on questions of amm.......

very willing to learn

Thanks for the interesting post. I would like to try AMM myself, but I do not know where to get good stock in this country. The Cornish Q's sound interesting.

Mm they look just like a colony I have black as the ace of spades, little darlings, as soon as I remove the crown board their little black eyes are watching me between the frames, never been stung by them but they have a good go

I was wondering if there had been any trials done over here with simply not treating for varroa (must have been some)?

Perhaps that would give an idea as to how many generations of failures needed before they make it?

Into my second year of using queens from quessant, they over wintered very well and are great to work with, had two queens in the second week of may this year and the nucs are ready to be moved in to a main hive, they do post to the uk as well.

flemage said:

I was wondering if there had been any trials done over here with simply not treating for varroa (must have been some)?

Perhaps that would give an idea as to how many generations of failures needed before they make it?

Click to expand...

An ongoing research project in the far far westest west of Cornwall may interest you.....
a bit too controversial for some folks on this forum !

PM sent

beebopalula said:

Thanks for the interesting post. I would like to try AMM myself, but I do not know where to get good stock in this country. The Cornish Q's sound interesting.

Click to expand...

http://www.b4project.co.uk/
http://www.sicamm.org/WhatApis.html
http://www.cbibbg.co.uk/
http://www.bipco.org.uk/
http://www.cornishbees.com/index.html

all have useful links to people working towards good AMM stock. if the links get spoiled send me PM.
Bob