It's the best bit.
I am near Derrygonnelly - not on the coast. The term “wild” seems to be used to describe any colony not kept and managed by a beekeeper - for example a colony in a hollow tree, building etc. It does not mean a free-living native honey bee. Most of these colonies die out after a few years.
Better beekeeping country than out where I am! Although it’s some run of weather at the moment even by the sea.
My understanding is that NUIG as part of this next study will maintain genetic testing of a fairly large cohort of free living colonies on an annual basis - which should give an accurate account of survivability and hopefully answer that question once and for all.
I've tried a 4 Irish amm queens and though 3 swiftly died despite my v conservative introduction into nucs made of hopelessly queenless nurse bees, the 4th made it through the winter with no extra feed. Unfortunately she was also very prone to Chalkbrood and was superseded early in the season despite only buying her last year, her daughter was exactly the same even whilst still producing v black bees. It's my local association's passion to breed for amm and thoug I haven't bought any colonies for a few years, those are locally adapted but preferentially bred towards amm. I've since continued breeding from my best and culling my worst with disease resistance and temperament my main criteria and have found that to have an unexpectedly quick improvement in my bees, colour I disregard - they can be blue for all I care, so personally, I'm a little disenchanted with the notion of amm, from my purely anecdotal and small sample size of experience. I think being v discriminating in your choice of bees to breed from - I'm just a hobbyist but have 100 colonies so appreciate I'm relatively able to be picky - makes the biggest difference. I'm in sheep country in Northumberland and v lucky to be the only beekeeper or one of v few, within flying distance, so I practise drone flooding too.
Very interesting post Rory I’m at the start of my career breeding bees third year in now , I’m also running a little over 100 colony’s and trying to select from amm type bees and some of what you say I’m finding so true , thanks for this post
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Is it possible to source queens from Chain Bridge honey? I listened to Willie Robsons talk from the National Honey Show and if I understood correctly he said they were in partnership with a queen rearer raising Northumberland AMM. That has to be a good genetic base for anyone to start from or to improve their apiary
I think you mean Michael collier who lives down in Nash about 3 miles from me .
I likely do! Thanks for the clarification, I'd written it down at the time too somewhere, but helpfully can't recall where. I'd a feeling when posting I'd got the first name wrong and was keanibg towards correcting to Nigel but now you mention it, that name chimes with my own recollection. Does Micheal sell bees? I'd be v keen to try some as Willie's have had little input of bought in genetics for over 50yrs and seem v thrifty and I guess a little like Jolanta queens, bree to build up strongly late on for the heather. Thanks so much for the invaluable correction, would never have got there by myself.
I’m not sure , I know he does talks now and again at the association, I did hear he was breeding for someone in Scotland but that was a while back I have got his number somewhere and I have tried to contact him a while back asking if he would mentor me in queen rearing but I ended up learning on my own mainly I did have an Irish mentor who lived near clun but he’s passed away .
I listened back to the talk and he says it’s Michael Collier - they have a partnership to breed Amm from Chain Bridge. Queen rearing takes place in Shropshire and the plan is to raise a lot more native queens. What prompted it was recent testing that showed Chain Bridge bees were 90% plus pure Amm. With no particular effort to select for that only choosing native looking bees that worked well in a tough environment.
Thanks for that perhaps I might try and contact him again thanks.
Willie says that his father and then initially he, bought in a load of Dutch, Belgian and particularly French bees I think- and he's mentioned that it's the French ones that gave been the basis for most of his amm traits, so, without Google give I'm not sure of the distinction between phenotype and halotype but I seem.to recall him suggesting that his 'amm' were genetically largely the same as the French black bee. Like I say though, ECT utterly wombled my memory so I could even have the roles of the Dutch and French bees conflated. He's a great raconteur if ever you get the chance- we see him with our local association a few times a year usually and should really organise another association trip to Chain Bridge for his reminiscences alone. I know a few years ago he experienced losses of between 1/3rd and 50% and drone virility is something he often bemoans with a theory that an awful lots of drones are infertile and those that aren't are negatively impacted by the pathogen load of one of the two types of DWV - a notion I'm sure David Evans has similarly espoused, and, utterly anecdotally, I've found my spring mated queens to be circa 75% less likely to turn drone layer the following spring compared to autumn matings, so I now try to get my breeding done early before the pathogen load vectored by varroa builds up too much
