The black bee

[Busy Bee]

For a start I would not consider inviting the BBKA, the less those people know about us bee keepers the better for all. Next thing you'll be asked to get a bee keeping licence and then it spirals into a government controlled hobby with QS, detailed records and it goes on. Anyway there is a group of people in Ireland who have the ability to test bees. If you google it you will find them.

Busy Bee

 

[Finman]

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http://www.sicamm.org/

SICAMM was founded in 1995 at Flekkefjord, Norway by beekeepers and scientists from Austria, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, as an international association devoted to the protection of the European dark honeybee, Apis mellifera mellifera.

 

[peteinwilts]

hi any chance of a picture.regards jim

I will try when I pop my head in next...

 

[Poly Hive]

AMM certainly existed in Scotland as recently as 10 years ago. I did BIBBA style morphometric measurements on some 100 colonies for sale in Morayshire and a lot of them were clean off the discoidal scale.

How pure they were on a DNA basis of course I have no idea but my own bees were of the same ilk and certainly matched the Rutner description, behaved as per the same and to the best of my belief were pure or very nearly pure AMM.

Would I be interested is assisting a breeding program, yes.

Island mated. Do not laugh at this as the Germans in particular have used islands for selective mating for many years and are in a very enviable position as a result of it. We too have lots of islands that could be utilised for some serious work but no one seems to care.

PH

 

[rourkie]

ph correct me if iam wrong but i think i recall you have used bikerstaffs amm if that is correct. how did they work out , and if any one else has experience of their amm i would be grateful of feed back. regards islands for breeding i have recently returned from arran an island of the coast of ayshire does have bee keepers iam trying to make contact via local paper. regads jim

 

[Crg]

Do you know where I can read the DNA results or know of anyone who has them?

There are a few studies around that have studied the purity of AMM around Europe such as this one: http://www.gbbg.net/pdf/ligustica_incursion.pdf

The UK bee was also shipped to other parts of the world and there are studies that show that there are pure populations in Tasmania, which people would look at trying to import queens from if they were serious about conservation rather than playing around with what amounts to back breeding.

 

[Poly Hive]

I bought two AMM from Bickerstaffes and one failed on intro the other is doing well but they only got up to strength in time for winter so way too early to comment.

As for back breeding...... frankly there probably are goodly number of AMM spots in Scotland that could be used. In London there will be none, nor I would expect anywhere in the south of England.

However as ever to say with any certainty that x is absolute would be foolish, esp when it comes to bees. I cannot bring myself to believe that AMM over the last 10 years has vanished from the UK, Scotland in particular, when it was relatively wide spread so recently.

I can understand those from the south who have never probably even seen an AMM colony having doubts, but from my POV having until recently run nothing but AMM it is another matter.

PH

 

[rourkie]

I have located some british bred dna tested amm and have ordered two queens and two nukes for 2010, so any one else interested in joining a breeders group. i would be pleased to hear from you. regards jim

 

[VEG]

What sost of prices are these queens and nucs selling for?

 

[rourkie]

hi nucs 150 queens 30 very limited supply regards rourkie

 

[Poly Hive]

I am certainly interested in some queens so will pm you. Possibly 5.

PH

 

[gavin]

I have located some british bred dna tested amm and have ordered two queens and two nukes for 2010, so any one else interested in joining a breeders group. i would be pleased to hear from you. regards jim

Jim, there was a talk at the SBA meeting in Perth on Saturday about conserving and using Amm. There are people around with an enthusiasm for this, and some have stocks that they think are good. A few have stocks that are very likely to be pure. Might be a head of steam building, and there is a possibility of a queen raising workshop next summer.

all the best

Gavin

 

[rourkie]

Jim, there was a talk at the SBA meeting in Perth on Saturday about conserving and using Amm. There are people around with an enthusiasm for this, and some have stocks that they think are good. A few have stocks that are very likely to be pure. Might be a head of steam building, and there is a possibility of a queen raising workshop next summer.

all the best

Gavin

hi gavin if that happens please let me know i only belong to the sbka no local association so dont hear whats happening regards jim

 

[Finman]

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In Finland the only black bee queen breeder is a professional beekeeper Aimo Nousiainen. He lives on archipelago near Turku .

Weather on that area is mild and snow is few. The se keeps weather warm.

http://finland.fi//finfo/images/archipel/archipel1.jpg

Norweagians have musch black bees. Their weather is very rainy.

 

[hedgerow pete]

i find this thread very interesting,
i have some dark bees,

i do not call them black because i dont know if they are? , i have tried several attemps at wing morph to see, but decided that i know nothing about it and have given up on it, i am very interested in the dna testing that sounds like a very good idea. What i am doing though is i have several hives with dark bees that i was planning to breed with, i was looking for some new queens to help prevent inbreeding and concentrated line breeding. as for thier traits, they are not the best bee to keep as they can be very grumpy and hard work at the best of times. but they do excell in my style of beekeeping, which does involve me mucking about alot with them and they dont mind to much with it,

if my bees are pretty set as the norm i would normaly sugest that as a new beek they shoud try to keep an other sort of bee as they are easier to work with, as for the bbka dont get me started and to tell the truth i was hoping that they would have had a bigger and dare i say a better breading program than they do, may be a centraly set agenda to bee improvement and bee breed preservation??

 

[Poly Hive]

Pete? the organistaion that is supposed to be doing the business is BIBBA and they seem to have major issues with several matters not least communications.

I am still trying to source AMM from up north but with no success as yet.

Mind you *thinking on the keys here* I should start with a letter to the Caithness association.

PH

 

[hedgerow pete]

dont get me wrong i know its bibba that is soposed to be looking after the black bee but i realy belive after looking into there lack of any breeding set up and a very disorginised set up a complete waste of time the reason i said bbka is because they are the only other group with a training set up and a breeding program capability

 

[Finman]

i have tried several attemps at wing morph to see, but decided that i know nothing about it and have given up on it, /QUOTE]


When you breed honey bees, wing morphology is not the basic where you start.
What is PURE? Nature has not pure animals because it tryes to mix individuals and genes.

It must be some other features which is more important to honeybee than veins of wings.

 

[Poly Hive]

The wing measurements are a tool to establish what type of bee the wing belongs to. They are not a DNA type reading but a guide.

On saying that I found it an effective tool to use when in doubt over using a queen for breeding. Sometimes it was a yes and more often a no.

PH

 

[hedgerow pete]

the reason i went to wing morpholigy was i wanted to know what sort of bee i have so i can decided on thier powers as a breeding stock. i wanted to know as well if they are black english bees or just plain dark bees plus i wanted some idea of thier back ground breed, what i have decided apon is that they are very dark and are of the good nature of a bee that i like so there for i shall use them to breed from and with the occasional outside breed queen to keep the line breeding to a minium i shall use them as the base for my expansion programe