Amm / Native Black Bee Discussion

Hello,
For those interested in Amm / Native Black Bees. Tell us about your bees, queen rearing groups, successes and failures.
Please feel free to post your experiences, observations, or questions regarding the above.

 

[Swarm]

Now you are the one at it. I have never attacked conservation.......I *specifically* took issue with the term 'genetic poisoning'. It might be about bees but you can make excuses for that smuggest of posters all you like, but racism (albeit reflected onto another species) it most definitely is.. at least in my book.

Yes you did but you've used the term before, this is not the first time.
My view on native bees is most definitely from a point of conservation, I am certainly not 'at it', which is why you see all of the posts have been removed.

 

[Swarm]

I’ve spent some time changing queens in my apiary this year, I was being chased from the apiary most days and not really enjoying my time with them so have requeened with AMM queens from different sources. I am hoping that going forward to let the bees raise their own but needed a change in genetics first! All my hives are much better behaved and a pleasure to work with, and productive! Anyway, a nice close up of one of the girls for reference.

View attachment 33977

I'm more interested in learning how Mabee trained that little bee
And hearing more about the group and future experiences.

 

[Swarm]

I was the one who deleted the posts, I did say earlier.
I'm not deleting this lot but if you want to carry on like this, take it elsewhere (better still, leave it and go watch your bees instead)
That's a polite request

 

[BeeAdmin]

The forum has a 24 hour remember on posts that are started. That quote could have been started yesterday then saved as a draft, and he could have the whole thing done, then hit the Post Reply button today.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Yes that’s the explanation I came up with. Thanks.

 

[Murox]

A conservationist would surely call for, believe that we should use all resources sustainably and manage bee populations/resources to ensure they will still exist in the future. The message some are trying to convey is no longer 'freedom of opinion/expression', it has crossed over to manipulation of the reader. How sad to see the display of baiting, overstatement, inflammatory language and bullying used to antagonise others, I do wonder what the 'pay off' is for the writer.

 

[buffon]

If anybody is interested in morphometry then I can recommend Deepwings as a dead easy starting point. The website is Deep Wings with more info at BeeHappy . I'm told a follow up scientific paper is being written about it.

 

[Erichalfbee]

That first link looks useful? I might try that on my bees.
Thanks
I’ve bookmarked it.

 

[buffon]

That first link looks useful? I might try that on my bees.
Thanks
I’ve bookmarked it.

I'm afraid you still have to fiddle about removing and photographing/scanning wings, but once that is done it is basically uploading the photos to the website.

 

[Mabee]

If anybody is interested in morphometry then I can recommend Deepwings as a dead easy starting point. The website is Deep Wings with more info at BeeHappy . I'm told a follow up scientific paper is being written about it.

I tried uploading pics I had of wings which I tried some morphometry with, but I get no results using the Deep Wings just now, I’ll try again using my laptop see if that makes a difference. Have you got results from it?

 

[Polymorph]

I'm afraid you still have to fiddle about removing and photographing/scanning wings, but once that is done it is basically uploading the photos to the website.

Just tried it and a big improvement on having to find the intersections manually. I've pulled the wings and then dropped on cellotape and then white card. So far most of the wings are strongly AMM but with some surprises.

I'm not minded to pay for a DNA test especially as its rather out of my hands what they mate with in the vicinity and I'm happy to work with a local strain. This article does also suggests the use of abdominal colour/pigmentation is a good indicator, which is effectivley a mk1 eyeball. Can introgression in M-lineage honey bees be detected by abdominal colour patterns? - Apidologie.

 

[Do224]

I’ve heard mention of dark coloured buckfasts and just out of curiosity would be interested in seeing some pictures if anybody has any? Would be interesting to see if there is a marked difference in appearance to AMM bees…

(Equally if there is such a thing as an orange buckfast coloured AMM colony then it would be interesting to see some pictures as well)

 

[Ian123]

I’ve heard mention of dark coloured buckfasts and just out of curiosity would be interested in seeing some pictures if anybody has any? Would be interesting to see if there is a marked difference in appearance to AMM bees…

(Equally if there is such a thing as an orange buckfast coloured AMM colony then it would be interesting to see some pictures as well)

https://beekeepingforum.co.uk/threads/anyone-want-a-guess.50179/#post-764325

 

[madasafish]

I have carniolans that are very dark (no pics and it is rather cold and damp so none to be taken)

 

[buffon]

I tried uploading pics I had of wings which I tried some morphometry with, but I get no results using the Deep Wings just now, I’ll try again using my laptop see if that makes a difference. Have you got results from it?

Yes I used it over the summer. I didn't get many failures, just the odd one. Works the same on laptop and mobile I think as the processing is done remotely. Things you could try (if you haven't already) is crop the photos so it is just the wing and nothing else, and adjust the brightness and/or the contrast. I would say a lighter photo is better as it allows you to see the markers better.

I think you have greater accuracy if you can take a photo/scan with back light as that minimises reflections (I used an old tablet displaying a white page as my backlight), but to be honest it didn't make that much difference to the numbers.

 

[buffon]

So far most of the wings are strongly AMM but with some surprises.

Quite a few of my bees gave incredibly high readings, like 99.999% mellifera, but a few gave very high readings for iberiensis. I'm guessing the latter is caused by introgression and the close relationship between mellifera and iberiensis, the system is getting confused.

All my bees are now dark, although they arrived as multicoloured swarms, so it is perhaps surprising that lingustica didn't feature more in the numbers. Carnica too had only low percentages. One of my colonies gave highish reading for caucasia (around 70% if I remember correctly). They are noticeably bigger bees. Again I'm not sure if that is caused by introgression of Caucasia (are they imported by anyone?) or the mix of genetics is confusing the system.

Only a small number of genes code the wing so it's worth reminding that the percentages don't represent the whole genetic purity. The percentages are the probability of belonging to a subspecies wing dataset.

 

[buffon]

I can't remember what is in this thread so I'll post these links in case they haven't been before:

Scoring hairs and tomenta on worker honey bees...
http://www.snhbs.scot/scoring-hairs-and-tomenta-on-worker-honey-bees/Dave Cushman's versionhttp://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/overhairtomenta.html
Ruttner's taxonomy book:
https://archive.org/details/ruttner-1988-bee-taxonomy/page/n1/mode/2up
Another of Rutter's books can be found by Googling "Breeding-Techniques-And-Selection-For-Breeding-Of-The-Honeybee-online-v1.pdf"

Beowulf Cooper's book can similarly be found with "The-Honeybees-of-The-British-Isles-text-only-NM2cp.pdf"

I have yet to find an online link for The Dark European Honeybee by Ruttner, Milner, Dews, nor can I get a physical copy, but I'm a bit sceptical about the information it may contain. Milner/Dews seem to have popularised via BIBBA the insistence on a negative Discordial Shift Angle, but that looks highly dubious to me.

 

[Apiarist]

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 learned that this was not strictly the case.

What it actually meant was the exclusion of all non-Amm bees (and compelling beekeepers in these areas to keep only the Amm), and then instead of conserving / preserving the genetics of the Amm, beekeepers would change the genetics by breeding in desirable characteristics (honey yield) and breed out undesirable characteristics (aggression):

Although all of us will change the genetics of our bees (by getting rid of queens from aggressive colonies) in doing so we are deleting some of their genetics (and may do so more than we realise) and are therefore NOT conserving the genetics of the Amm (which is the bee I and most of us keep).

It therefore would be helpful in discussing such (potentially emotional) topics for us to not use euphemisms but to use names / descriptions which more clearly reflect the meaning intended to be conveyed, for example, if you want to set up hives in a rural part of Scotland, Ireland, etc. and leave them ALONE but just monitor them (and maybe graft from, etc.) then this area could accurately be called a Conservation Area*; but if selective breeding occurs there-after then call it what it is 'an A. m. mellifera exclusive beekeeping area'.

* there is no need for the truly Conservation Area to be designated for a particular subspecie, because if the A. m. mellifera is the native bee, and has been here for thousands of years, then to paraphrase Beowulf Cooper's reasoning - it will have the best genetics for surviving here and will out-compete other subspecies, with it's genetics becoming increasingly dominant over time..

 

[Apiarist]

"...but a few gave very high readings for iberiensis. I'm guessing the latter is caused by introgression and the close relationship between mellifera and iberiensis,..."

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?

 

[buffon]

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.

You are wrong. Iberiensis is M lineage. This misidentification of iberiensis has been spotted by the researchers and will be (I think) discussed in the new paper. I have speculated that it is caused by a small introgression, but it could be a problem with the datasets. Wikipedia states "The Iberian Peninsula is an area of hybridization between the north of Africa and Europe, the influence of Apis mellifera mellifera is present in bees localized in the northern, and the influence of Apis mellifera intermissa is more present in the south, in the Apis mellifera iberiensis". So there is likely to be a bit of overlap with mellifera in the training datasets. Ultimately the system is only as good as the datasets, it uses amongst others Rutter's original samples, but Ruttner was concerned about the accuracy of his mellifera morphometric values due to hybridisation.

Also I would maybe question the accuracy of those results if they are giving you 99.999% purity?

I have not said they are 99.999% pure. In fact I specifically noted that the percentage does not represent purity.

You remind me of something I should have said though. When you run a wing it will give a percentage for the lineage, but for the 5 subspecies version this seems to be stuck on 100% and I would suggest should be ignored.