Search results

I've heard this said before, but the important question is - how does one know how long the bees have been there. Non-beekeepers (Householders) may not be the best source of info. for example, unless DNA testing is being done on the bees leaving the hive each Summer, how does one know whether...

There is no relationship between iberensis and mellifera (in the past 150,000 years), the former is A (African) lineage and the latter is M (Central Asian) lineage. Also I would maybe question the accuracy of those results if they are giving you 99.999% purity?

I think it might help, if we are all going to discuss Amm bees, is for us to define the word "Conservation", as it invariably will be brought up - as it has. When I started beekeeping I naively thought it meant preserving the genetics of the Amm... (in fact that was actually stated) but I later...

To properly discuss a subject one must first define what is being discussed in a clear manner, for this to occur here you are going to need to define what you mean by "cope with varroa" and also "resistance": The former "cope with varroa", I believe is what is commonly referred to as Tolerance...

Pollen? If there is no Pollen they can't rear brood and I've seen the bees strip out brood in all stages if there is no pollen in the hive and none coming in (for various reasons); first they'll remove the drone brood then the larvae, the queen will have stopped laying by then and last, they...

Swarm, were you told the Mitochondrial DNA of your queens that were producing the 84% Amm? Just interested if the female lineage was mellifera or ligustica (likely Buckfast) or carnica???

I've never come across anyone that has said that, even in private communication, when the other person was expressing less than savory views about the keepers of Amm bees... what I have heard said often and now supported by scientific research (weakly to some degree in my opinion), is that the...

All I know is that from the honey bees that were tested - the ones that were not headed by imported (meaning moved around the island or brought from outside the island) queens were ALL Amm bees (meaning 90% or plus). I'm not a great fan of the term 'purity' in relation to genetic testing, I...

err... yes! With reference to Amm, most of Eastern Europe last time I read the research, not to mention numerous other places, Tasmania, Ireland, I could go on, but it's too late.

Swarm, are you saying that you had an opportunity to submit some of your bees for DNA testing and the results came back that they were not Amm? Meaning a score of less than 90%. On a side note: You guys do know that the English names given to bees are just nicknames, they're not supposed to be...

That's very interesting input, and beyond what could be termed as anecdotal due to your large scale experience. Thanks, we appreciate these little gems. :)

"caged for a while" ... more than five days? maybe, why would one? Even imported queens from good suppliers will not be caged that long. "rejected or superceded fairly quickly" ... yes, if the hive is left queenless too long or the queen isn't introduced properly; or the Queen is injured -...

YES!!! a third of my discs came off, even after I kept the queen in her cage for five minutes to let the glue set, and then another third came off in a week or two, at the beginning of this year the white discs had been propolised so much that they are a leather tan-ish colour and now less easy...

I don't believe so: Supercedure is when the colony replaces the queen; Swarming is when about half the colony leaves the hive and takes the Queen with them, leaving behind Swarm (Queen) cells yet to emerge. Many things can affect / cause Supercedure, but two things which will trigger it is, 1...

Prof. T. Seeley has done good research into what bees prefer in relation to hives when they are swarming, such as the size of the hive and size of entrance, from memory they are 40 litres and 18 sq. cm (from memory), also I recall a study done in Australia which concluded queens reared that year...

Yes, Nucs are always best, move it a short distance, out of the way, it'll have only Nurse bees, these show less aggression to introduced queens. Many swear that Push In Cages are best. As for that Old Beeks tail of, it's more difficult to introduce a Queen of a different type to a colony...

I had a colony swarm on the 10th Oct. last year, it was a 2020 queen which had made no attempt to swarm before ... the beginning of Oct. last year was very sunny and mild, the bees were very busy, and I was feeding for Winter. They'll always catch you out!

Who says you can't, a randomly selected bee here in Ireland has a 98% chance of being Amm, from memory the bees on the eastern 3 miles of the Isle of Laeso (it's 12 miles long) give a 99% DNA result; there's research in Poland and in Ireland that concluded that Amm only mate with Amm! But...

Thank you for that, but what I really meant was that I am looking for something a bit more specific, such as what we have for Honey Bees; here you can see for 2020 , 1. the country of origin, 2. the number of consignments, 3. the number of queens, 4. the number of packages or Nucs, ... etc...

Does the UK (and Ireland) import Bumble bees, are they queens or / and colonies? If so are there numbers published like for the imports of Honey Bee Queens? I just learned that many greenhouse, etc. operations need bumble bees to pollinate their 'under glass' (or under plastic) crops. (I read...