Alternatives to Buckfast bees

[Finman]

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What bugs you are nursing there? No stings, no honey,

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[Finman]

its not all about honey production.

In which case why should it be so important to breed bees that produce loads of honey if other desirable traits are suppressed?

And what are those "other desirable traits"?

Every bee is bred so that first is honey production. If not, it is like a cow, which does not eate grass.

Who needs a honeybee, which does not make honey?

If you do not get honey from hive, you have poor pastures.

 

[Fusion_power]

If you do not get honey from hive, you have poor pastures.

or you have poor bees.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Mine are mostly small black bees - mainly stem from a local mongrel swarm - they are fine to handle, I've rarely had any signs of aggression from them and if I have it's only been the result of clumsy handling or opening up when the weather has been a bit iffy. Even then, compared to a friend who has the colonies from hell (stripey little beggars) that are all over you as soon as you take the lid off, mine don't even feature on the Richter scale of agressiveness.

It must really put people off when someone continually bleats that small black bees are not good - I love mine, they are well behaved, productive, survivors - yes they swarm occasionally - and they overwinter very well.

I think the lesson here is that ANY open mated Queens can end up producing bees with aggressive tendencies and if you find this is how they are then you have two options - live with them and put up with it, or change the queen for one from a known strain that is calmer to handle.

Don't be put off black bees - it's a gross generality being put foward here by our Finished member.

Well said

 

[Jthebeek]

I get 100lb per hive and yes no stings. Like I said location is the key. If my bees are aggressive I change the environment they are in. NOT THE QUEEN. My family has been keeping bees commercially for 4 generations and as a result I'm not from the modern school of beekeeping. There's a lot you can learn from working with your bees instead of forcing them to work for you. Having said that I understand everyone's different in the way they approach beekeeping. And if your way works for you i hope all goes well was just giving another angle to look at.

 

[For want of a better word]

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Black Bee has been imported to every continent, but it is everywhere abandoned in commercial honey production. Perhaps it has been noticed that i could be best in venom production.

Gene mapping has spoiled the whole Black Bee legenda beauty. 20 years ago it was thought that Black Bee is the oldst and original bee race in Europe and in the world. Now we know that it is youngest bee race which arrived from Africa. It has most African genes among European bees.
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But The Dream must live on....

Total load of tripe!
Finnman knows nothing of the endemic black bee that survived the ice age ( even if we are still in it)

When we get our independence from little europe back will we see an end to all this twaddle about how wonderful Finlania and the greater EU is to keep the wonderful super productive frankinbred monster bees??
Nos da

 

[maddydog]

NEVER GET STUNG!

Sorry but that reminded me of HMS Pinafore.

'what never?'
'yes never'
'what never?'
'well... hardly ever!'


If aggression is about forage and location how do you explain a colony that has been perfectly calm for a number of years turns mean after a succession of mongrel open mated queens even though the surrounding colonies remain calm?

 

[Finman]

Total load of tripe!
Finnman knows nothing of the endemic black bee that survived the ice age ( even if we are still in it)

When we get our independence from little europe back will we see an end to all this twaddle about how wonderful Finlania and the greater EU is to keep the wonderful super productive frankinbred monster bees??
Nos da

What ever, but do not come again to burn our seacost towns, pliis!!!

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[Finman]

Total load of tripe!
Finnman knows nothing of the endemic black bee that survived the ice age ( even if we are still in it)
:
Nos da

If you read British beekeeping history, you see that your native bees have been imported from Belgium 100 years ago. But never mind, it was the same Ice Ace in Belgium.
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And the British, who are genetically identical to Germans, were somewhere in Siberia and killed mammuthd with stone axes. Belgians were some tribe on Caucasian mountains. 10 tents iver there. As we say " 10 smokes in the village"
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[For want of a better word]

If you read British beekeeping history, you see that your native bees have been imported from Belgium 100 years ago. But never mind, it was the same Ice Ace in Belgium.
.
And the British, who are genetically identical to Germans, were somewhere in Siberia and killed mammuthd with stone axes. Belgians were some tribe on Caucasian mountains. 10 tents iver there. As we say " 10 smokes in the village"
.

Utter load of old tosh... then if you read the history of little europe according to the Prussians... they won the first world war!

Now I know where the Neanderthals went to live!!!

Yeghes da

 

[Fusion_power]

Finman was correct in stating that the black bee indigenous to Britain was a recent import from Africa. There were 4 major movements of honeybees over the millenia. The first spread was dispersal throughout Africa resulting in ten recognized races. Honeybees then spread east becoming the middle eastern group that differentiated into eight recognized geographical races. They next spread north and became the Southern European group including Ligustica and Carnica with ten recognized geographical races. Last, they moved from NorthWest Africa across the straits of Gibralter into Spain, then France, then the rest of Europe.

The black bee can be shown to have descended from A. M. Intermissa. As a recent import, it has differentiated very little from the original stock. There are no clearly recognized geographical races of the West European black bee. There were attempts in the late 1800's to assign geographical race names to some of the black bees but none of these are recognized today. We can speak of a German bee, a French bee, a Dutch bee, and a Finnish bee, but they are not different enough to receive unique names. The major difference in AMM as they spread north was adaptation to long cold winters.

I stated that I do not miss the old black bees. The reason is because they had an overwhelming tendency to swarm and they tended to collect the darkest honey imaginable. A good colony of Italians would produce a superb crop of light colored superbly flavored honey while a colony of black bees beside them would produce the darkest honey imaginable with mostly poor flavor.

We each get to choose the bees that we keep. If you like black bees, more power to you, and I wish you huge harvests of honey. As for me, I would not by choice go back to keeping a bee so clearly less capable than others like Carnica and Ligustica.

 

[Finman]

Now I know where the Neanderthals went to live!!!

da

Da da,

I know too. I gooled Neardental map. Tamar Valley was the most northern place.

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[For want of a better word]

Finman was correct in stating that the black bee indigenous to Britain was a recent import from Africa. There were 4 major movements of honeybees over the millenia. The first spread was dispersal throughout Africa resulting in ten recognized races. Honeybees then spread east becoming the middle eastern group that differentiated into eight recognized geographical races. They next spread north and became the Southern European group including Ligustica and Carnica with ten recognized geographical races. Last, they moved from NorthWest Africa across the straits of Gibralter into Spain, then France, then the rest of Europe.

The black bee can be shown to have descended from A. M. Intermissa. As a recent import, it has differentiated very little from the original stock. There are no clearly recognized geographical races of the West European black bee. There were attempts in the late 1800's to assign geographical race names to some of the black bees but none of these are recognized today. We can speak of a German bee, a French bee, a Dutch bee, and a Finnish bee, but they are not different enough to receive unique names. The major difference in AMM as they spread north was adaptation to long cold winters.

I stated that I do not miss the old black bees. The reason is because they had an overwhelming tendency to swarm and they tended to collect the darkest honey imaginable. A good colony of Italians would produce a superb crop of light colored superbly flavored honey while a colony of black bees beside them would produce the darkest honey imaginable with mostly poor flavor.

We each get to choose the bees that we keep. If you like black bees, more power to you, and I wish you huge harvests of honey. As for me, I would not by choice go back to keeping a bee so clearly less capable than others like Carnica and Ligustica.

Technical Hogwash... usual out of date cut and paste piffle!

Recent ( I mean less than 12 months) DNA analysis of Cornish Amm both Nuclear and mitochondrial carried out on behalf of B4 CIC by the Swiss labs shows that they are a distinctive sub species and very far away from the continental Amm groups... so not a reflection or remnant of the mass importation of foreign bees that could not survive here and died out... but of bees that survived in the Western fringes of the British Isles and still very much here today.
All academic any way as my own experience is showing the Cornish Black bee to be a very good honey producer, and a survivor!

Yeghes da

 

[For want of a better word]

Da da,

I know too. I gooled Neardental map. Tamar Valley was the most northern place.

.

OMG what piffle!
Has the snow come early this year?

Yeghes da

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I stated that I do not miss the old black bees. The reason is because they had an overwhelming tendency to swarm and they tended to collect the darkest honey imaginable.

Bloody hell, I wish mine would - I struggle to get some decent medium honey for the Royal Welsh every year!! as for swarming - a heck of a lot less likely than any of the stripey carnie italian lot that sometimes get brought into the area.

 

[Finman]

OMG what piffle!
Has the snow come early this year?

Yeghes da

Snow yes, I really hope. Today 28C.
Many hives have 50 kg honey.
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Snow came in February. It was -36C.. Yes, quite early, 50 cm.

 

[Finman]

I have never heard about Finnish bee. And varroa killed all Black Bee Mutants 20 y ago.
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[mbc]

Technical Hogwash... usual out of date cut and paste piffle!

nonsense.
Black bees collect darker honey?! Where's the old ignore button gone?

 

[Finman]

nonsense.
Black bees collect darker honey?! Where's the old ignore button gone?

The bee is not color proof.

 

[Fusion_power]

This reminds me of the old tale of 3 blind men describing of an elephant. One felt of the trunk, one of a leg, and one of the belly. All of them described something entirely different.

I describe the black bee that I remember from 25 years ago. You describe whatever you have now.

The mite tolerant bees I have today have a very strong influence from the black bees that were prevalent in this area at one time and are still there to be found if you know where to look. I've selected them for light colored good flavored honey, against aggression, and left them totally untreated for varroa for 11 years. What I have not been able to reduce is their tendency to swarm. I hope to change that next year as I produce young queens now and select for those that don't swarm next spring.

As for the argument they have unique subspecies, the British bees would arguably have one of the strongest claims given their relative isolation up to 120 years ago.