That's reassuring - usual alarmist claptrap then ?
Hopefully, no right thinking beekeeper would feed their bees on commercial honey - particularly honey from other parts of the world - anyway ?
Do not know anyone who does, irrespective of origin. The discrimination that equating the word 'foreign' with 'inferior' or 'contaminated' brings is both unfair and very often wrong.
This is no disease free idyllic group of Isles we live in, and in the case of imported bees it is more often not what they bring in but what they catch here that is the issue. UK honey can be carrying these problems just as much as most other provenances, in particular where the honey from a large number of colonies or even producers is bulked and blended. ( There are however certain provenances where contamination of the honey with AFB spores is almost ubiquitous.)
To itma, and your inaccurate and repeated from other threads statement about the origins of foreign bees into Wales, and some unknown and unknowable virus that they might contain that would devastate our bees and did not do so to theirs...............that is an argument that can be used to virtually shut down trade in any animal or vegetable product. Would suit some I know, but of course it can be used against you as well.
Welsh lamb, a fine product I eat and enjoy, should, under the same principle, be banned everywhere other than local sales in its area. There is also a tiny (vanishingly so, as with EU bees) possibility that they might be carrying something they are resistant to locally that could hit the flocks everywhere else. Where does the 'pull up the drawbridge' attitude lead in the end?
Like it or not, our definition of domestic origin stock has been redefined over the last 30 plus years (in particular by the so called Balaii Directive) to the borders of the EU, and no longer UK, constituent part of the UK, county, parish, village, or however small and parochial you choose to go. At least when they cross national boundaries they must have a proper health certificate, not so for UK or local sourced. If you can demonstrate that provenence X has a problem that is absent from destination Y you can still prevent imports from X, even within the EU.
Selecting stock merely because they are 'good survivors' and of local 'native' type is another matter altogether, and is akin to telling farmers they have to go back to primitive cattle or sheep, or cereal types, because they are the local type that can survive without management. What about manageability? Long term performance? There are a long list of reasons that certain stock types are favoured by certain beekeepers. The ideal of the best bee just being a local ecotype survivor is largely an amateur concept. Its not terribly often I agree with PBee, but he knows the subject of which he talks as regards bee types, and if his word is good, which I have no reason to doubt, he does better than most in his area, without being hogtied by having to use A.m.m. stock. I have had Galtee stock (direct from 'the man'), and *some* of the colonies headed by them were good, but they are NOT truly gentle stock and only the very best of them beat our local mongrels, so I understand PBee and his choices fairly well.
