I thought these videos might be interesting viewing for anyone interested in the most up to date genetic studies of Amm populations in the UK. Good news for Cornish beekeepers - concerted breeding efforts look to have made an impact on the level of purity there in just the three years from 2015 - 2018. Should be even better now.
For Wales specifically
And Ireland
wet afternoon on Saturday so started to see how the research presented by Lislarybees looked. I have no feeling one way or the other on AMM, but as a scientist I was more interested in the research carried out and data presented. I have worked with some of the molecular biologic techniques mentioned, and although no longer a bench scientist I still work with the data and outcomes to develop medicines. Many moons ago I supervised MSc students and acted as an external industrial examiner for PhDs.
If the Mods think this is an inappropriate post in this section happy for it to be deleted
Interesting presentation on Victoria’s PhD. By her own admission the current data raises a number of questions that would benefit from follow up research to clarify and increase the knowledge. The high variability within the colony when testing individual bees, due to polyamory mating of the queen with multiple drones, creates noise in the micro satellite data, making it difficult to be used for assigning for a breeding programme. SW obviously has a higher density of AMM type bees than other part of UK,
but as only those keeping bees considered native or near native (and no imports) seem to have been included in the sampling so the data is skewed rather than covering a representative sample
For the SNP analysis, I would like to know why an AMM standard from Switzerland was used when it looks like there was significant differences against the UK population. It was suggested that this could represent divergence in the UK population. UK wide samples were from beekeepers who thought they have native and near-native bees and had a variability between 20 to 94% AMM against the Swiss standard. Does illustrate the issues with using phenotype to make a decision on keeping and breeding bees. Other question was how much AMM genetics has been introduced through imports against background UK AMM genome and at what point this invalidates the conservation effort as a native species? Both not really answered, but could form basis for future research
From the questions a couple of other relevant comments was made. Firstly, conserving AMM is not the same thing as conserving / promoting local bees, and secondly it may not be possible to get a 'pure' AMM with the currently available population. The technology needed to achieve the level of analysis that Victoria carried out is well beyond most beekeepers
it’s a shame that Victoria didn’t take up beekeeping during her studies. I think it would have help her relate the work to the beekeepers involved. Some of the data is still fairly raw so needs additional refinement. Hopefully this will be represented once this work has been finalised. Slightly surprised that Andrew Brown, MD of B4 was a non academic supervisor for the PhD.
Anyone know if any further studies are planned at Plymouth to pick up on the questions the research has raised?
will try to look at the other presentations later in the week, unless this gets deleted
I like dark bees and have some empathy with those who love them. I think most of your strategies for bee-breeding make a lot of sense. For me, the colour of bee I got from a programme such as your own would take second place to all other attributes. But if dark colour and Amm. features were there in addition, that would be the cat's pyjamas. 
she was a three year old that superseded this season daughter and workers are the same
