AMM 99% pure against what?

[Finman]

Murox, this point always puzzles me. How can they be adapted for a local climate when they live their life cosied up in warm hives with insulation for the winter and fed as and when required. This is molly coddyling, not survival nor adaption to a "local" climate.

When I buy queens with its drone genes, it does not have time to adapt. Its genes must be ready to meet local seasons on right time.

Examples

- queens from Italy react to seasons correctly. Few queens continue brood rearing and starve to death before December.

- Fuckfasts from Cyprus reacted correctly to coming autumn, but they started brood rearing one month too early and did not get drinking water outside, because there was half metre snow.

- hygienic Italians from USA died because they continued brooding to December.

- hives from Australian queens do not go over Winter here.

- normal winter cluster of Russian bee is 3 frames. IT does not over winter in our climate, and if it is alive in spring, such colony cannot forage honey yield in our summer. Neither do other races with such colony size.

My opinion is that adaptation is trials and errors, when beekeeper have tried different stocks during decades.

 

[Finman]

I have always believed in keeping bees for local climate .

You may buy queens from much worse climate.

 

[Murox]

Murox, this point always puzzles me. How can they be adapted for a local climate when they live their life cosied up in warm hives with insulation for the winter and fed as and when required. This is molly coddyling, not survival nor adaption to a "local" climate.

I suppose I could have said local bees for local climates. That implies "mongrels".
I think Finmans subsequent posts pretty much sum things up. Human intervention usually geared at maximum honey production certainly skews any natural selection notion. Certainly some bee populations fair better in any given set of climatic conditions, and as Finman pointed out we bring bees into 'unsuitable for them conditions' ie mated queens, and wonder why they fail.
Where I live its wet and windy most of the time, but temperatures are usually around 10 degrees most of the winter, hardly ever get snow or hard frosts. So I want a bee that can work in damp and wind; other folks will need different traits from their bees.

 

[Finman]

.
What I know, every beekeeper has the best bees.

Seldom beeks think that bees are quite flexible in different beekeepers' hands.

 

[Beefriendly]

So I want a bee that can work in damp and wind; other folks will need different traits from their bees.

So how do you select one of those?

I was told the local mongrels best adapted...until I despaired of any serious honey yields and fed up of being chased around the apiary by them. So I experimented and tried a few exotic queens which I was assured wouldn't survive a North Yorkshire winter.

It opened my eyes as to what some decent breeding and genetics is capable of producing in modern day queens.
They wiped the floor with mongrels. In every department.
You will need to do the comparison yourself to see how they do in your neck of the woods.
For what it's worth when we had the recent gales, it blew a stack of wet supers over in my back yard. Despite the wind they were black with flying bees.....all exotics.

 

[birdsandbees]

The answer is not natural selection but human selection, you wouldn't put a mongrel dog into a race against Greyhounds and expect it to win, so why would you expect a random cross bred bee to be as good as one from selected breeding lines?
what most beekeepers do is buy in queens from breeders and compare them to dark crossbreeds and declare the dark bees to be amm and useless, no reason at all why any race of bee couldn't be selectively bred.

I believe the terminology is regression- if not selected for desirable characteristics they all eventually revert to a basic level.

 

[Finman]

Among varroa mites it is vain to talk about natural selection

When a swarm escapes from a hive, does it adapt to live with its own.

Many believe that such hive has unknown forces, when it has occupied a tree hole of a house wall gap. No natural adaptation happens in a second.

 

[Murox]

I think you have answered your own question Beefriendly. I would utilise thoughtfully chosen queen from known genetic material. Cattle breeders do it, some better dog breeders do it, even beekeepers do it. I might also try to maintain a drone population as well if I were to really get into it.

The bees I have right now are small and dark, very docile indeed but not the most productive; I shall assess them fully next year as they are from a July increase and where I am beekeeping is decidedly marginal - frugal forage and too much rain the year round.

 

[Swarm]

The answer is not natural selection but human selection, you wouldn't put a mongrel dog into a race against Greyhounds and expect it to win, so why would you expect a random cross bred bee to be as good as one from selected breeding lines?
what most beekeepers do is buy in queens from breeders and compare them to dark crossbreeds and declare the dark bees to be amm and useless, no reason at all why any race of bee couldn't be selectively bred.

I believe the terminology is regression- if not selected for desirable characteristics they all eventually revert to a basic level.