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]

Some time ago I found a single cell with the Oak tree colony and moved the queen to a new hive. The last time I inspected, I found another single cell so I decided to leave them to it, I hadn't seen the queen but I wasn't concerned as there was BIAS and it was obvious they had decided the old girl had come to the end of her time. After doing some routine stuff today, I decided to have a look and check their status. Three frames in I found sealed worker brood, as I got to the central frames I found a nice frame of eggs and tiny larvae so had a close look and spotted a lovely, dark unmarked queen trotting over the comb. As the next frame was the one I marked, I had a quick look to check the cell remnants and who should I see, calmly walking about? The old, white queen.

 

[Penninetrader]

I am a big softie so that story made my day

 

[Swarm]

What a strange bunch we are getting attached to insects, eh?
As things stand, because she won't be around next year , I will have her daughter in this hive and I already have another daughter in the original hive, currently sitting under six supers
Not forgetting ....

And this little virgin from the Oak tree queen went to my friend's apiary. The picture shows her being run in and making straight for a cell of nectar, acceptance was flawless.
View attachment 40360

So three of her progeny and time will tell if they follow the same traits, as the Oak tree queen herself was the result of supersedure. The supersedure line traces back to 2017 which was the last sign of swarming, when they left their hive and swarmed into an empty nuc on the same stand as witnessed by the landowner. They have been in the same location since then and we've had some fun over the years. One memorable occasion was a huge cluster of bees under the hive after I sealed up some 'home made' new entrances the bees had made at the rear of their floor. I forgot to consider how long they'd been using them (which was obviously quite some time) and they were returning to find no entrance, undershooting the gap and collecting on the OMF. The colony was massive at the time and they were quite upset being messed about, we had to brush them off onto a sheet, and block off the OMF to stop them returning. The hive was directly above the stand support so that made life more difficult. I can honestly say the bees followed that day but I forgave them.

 

[Swarm]

So we are done and dusted for another season, the honey is off and the bees are settled, all that remains is to complete Autumn treatments and tuck the bees away for another Winter. Seasons don't seem to last very long any more.
We seemed to wait ages this year before we opened any hives and then we had weeks and weeks wondering if the rain would ever cease but the bees still had the remnants of their Winter stores to see them through this miserable period. Nothing stops the bees and I knew they would be building and would go through their routine, rain or no rain and as expected, the cells began to appear by the end of April or early May. I really don't mind this as I find these early queens have always been reliable and the honey crop is rarely affected, nothing worse than a colony hitting swarm mode just as Summer is about to start.
At my friend's apiary he had a raft of failed matings which we were able to fix with a few nice virgins from cells harvested at the farm apiary and here I had my star colony for the year, a colony headed by a 2023 Amm. Despite having eighteen frames of brood and bees removed to create nucs, they were still a large colony and made 148 lbs of honey and the four new queens they provided are now heading their own colonies.
We sold a few colonies at the start of the year and they all went on to do well apart from one where I had to break the news to the new beekeeper that he had missed a swarm. That was disappointing because I had been through this colony with him earlier on and it was a double brood and heaving with the most docile bees.
The honey crop average was down this year to 71 lbs per production hive, they are currently thumping the Balsam and also lots of Ivy pollen going in, a week of half decent weather forecast so I expect the stench of Ivy this week as I treat the hives.
Each year we feed less and less, only the nucs and single boxes have had a feed and this is just a small slurp of half a gallon to make up for losing their supers.