Bee imports post IWD

[SDM]

Google up Steele and Brodie and Amm imports, the old boy I started helping in the 80s had a stack of thier old boxes that the French bees arrived in. He started shortly after ww2

And theres a video somewhere of french bees arriving in Aberdeenshire, i think it was jonathan getty who posted a link to it on this site.

 

[SDM]

Ouch!

SDM, you don't have any access to what the Beekeeping world looked like in the subsequent years, if their numbers bounced back very quickly it may suggest imports played a part in it.

.

Ive no info on attendance and i accept that this isnt in anyway conclusive but in 1921 the same Berry family recorded a new record harvest from 1 hive of 323lb , the following year there was no honey at all. That sounds like Ligustica to me.

 

[SDM]

I've read a bit about IOW disease and reports of massive colony loss, as has already been suggested there may be many factors at play, war time losses (beekeepers and bees) transition from Skeps to box hives without the knowledge of managing them, shortages of money, time and Sugar availability to name a few.

research that has been carried out seems to say that the native bees certainly weren't wiped out as was reported but then if you are a bee breeder and seller of queens telling folk that there's no option but to buy your queens as the natives are either all dead or will die would make good business sense.

With so many Amm imports thered be no advantage to that. Claiming resistant native stock but selling black imports would have been a better money spinner if deceiving was your thing. Rather like many of the Amm sold today i imagine.
Also ive read a few reports on skepists being wiped out just as thoroughly. Sugar could well have played a part but on the whole the years fom 1905-1920 were considered above average honey years. I thought Amm didnt need feeding?

 

[Walrus]

From my interview with David Kemp:

When acarine wiped out thousands the government imported skeps of bees from Holland. They came over on the sailing barges when the Channel was calm, and they came into the port of Hull. There is photographic evidence, I saw a photograph, it was quite a large one, of these barges stacked up with skeps of the Dutch heath bee, a noted swarming bee.

When I was gamekeeping I can remember those Dutch bees. I knew a beekeeper that had them. Swarms of bees used to hang from this tree like bunches of grapes, and when you looked at them they were those brown heath bees, and their crosses.

 

[SDM]

It would be good to have some input from " the other side" . JBM mentioned his association didmt close as proof of no issue locally, bit neither did Conwy despite 99.4% or higher losses locally. Id like to see membership/hive numbers for tbe period 1905-1920 for any area claiming to be unaffected becausr currently the evidence says our native Amm are 90% imprted at best.

Ive found files for the beekeepers journal and Beekeepers advisor for 1873-1922 a weekly publication. That mentions in 1914 that they intend to compile losses to iow disease by district. Its about 500 pages per year so the next 7 yrs may take me a while. I've been reading mostly the reports referencing the disease itself but ill try and pick out any mention of restocking as well.

 

[SDM]

It turns out a lady 100m down the road headed a next gen dna sequencing project using bee samples from the gene pool at Edinburgh university and Oxford university's museum of natural history that predate restocking , so it seems a more definitive answer to how native our Amm are is possible. Her husband also a lecturer but now a commercial beekeeper laughed at the idea of a native bee when we spoke about it a year or 2 ago, but i hadnt known about his wifes work at the time or id have questioned further. Time for another chat.

 

[foghornleghorn]

It would be good to have some input from " the other side" . JBM mentioned his association didmt close as proof of no issue locally, bit neither did Conwy despite 99.4% or higher losses locally. Id like to see membership/hive numbers for tbe period 1905-1920 for any area claiming to be unaffected becausr currently the evidence says our native Amm are 90% imprted at best.

Ive found files for the beekeepers journal and Beekeepers advisor for 1873-1922 a weekly publication. That mentions in 1914 that they intend to compile losses to iow disease by district. Its about 500 pages per year so the next 7 yrs may take me a while. I've been reading mostly the reports referencing the disease itself but ill try and pick out any mention of restocking as well.

You've far too much time on your hands!

 

[SDM]

You've far too much time on your hands!

A talent for speed reading and the joys of sleep disorders.

 

[birdsandbees]

not my words but I was reading this earlier, would be nice to see the actual reports following the genetic testing.

Many experienced beekeepers in the 1920s and later, for example in the pages of the British Bee Journal, challenged the views that IOW disease was caused by acarine and that it caused extinction of any race of bees. L.E.Snelgrove commented in 1946, "... many writers have expressed the view that bees of pure British origin cannot now be found. The writer does not hold this view. Apart from the fact that he has continuously found British bees in certain country districts showing no sign of crossing with foreign races, the laws of heredity conflict with the supposition that a pure race can be eliminated by crossing alone. In 1936 sanctions were imposed on Italy by the British Government and the importation of queens from that country diminished from that time and ceased during the war. For some years, too, the importation of other races, Carniolans, Caucasians, etc., has been discontinued. The Italian element, as shown by colouring, is steadily disappearing and many of our bees are becoming dark and indistinguishable from the old British bees." (See below.)

The Isle of Wight phenomenon was thoroughly debunked on a scientific basis by Dr.Leslie Bailey of Rothamsted in 1981. According to Beowulf Cooper, founder of BIBBA, "Some of those personally involved in the restocking campaign have admitted that there was in fact no shortage of surviving native bees." And yet as Norman Carreck has recently written, "half a century after the explanation was found to be scientifically unsound, many beekeeping books and articles still perpetuate the myth the the IOW disease was caused by the tracheal mite Acarapis woodi "; a prominent example being H.R.C.Riches, President of the Central Association of Beekeepers and past President of the British Beekeepers Association in 1992. Even today similar claims are commonly made. However, in the last decade DNA studies by Pedersen and others in Denmark and elsewhere have conclusively shown that modern specimens of Dark Bees from the UK and Ireland fit into the genetic specification of Apis mellifera mellifera

 

[Quis Custodiet]

not my words but I was reading this earlier, ........................................[/B]

Very briefly;

(1) Just because a bee is dark/black coloured, it is not necessarily AMM.

(2) AMM is a common bee in these islands. That is not disputed, what is disputed is that this bee is a native bee. It is the indigenous bee of NW Europe and any strains peculiar to some geographical entity must have long since been lost or been diluted to nothing.

(3) It is also worth considering that "The Buckfast Bee does its own propaganda and if it could not, it should be forgotten about". Why not apply the same to AMM.

Thanks for posting the above excerpts......beekeeping and politics have been intertwined for a long time it seems.....must be a financial consideration somewhere.

 

[Brian Bush]

It turns out a lady 100m down the road headed a next gen dna sequencing project using bee samples from the gene pool at Edinburgh university and Oxford university's museum of natural history that predate restocking , so it seems a more definitive answer to how native our Amm are is possible. Her husband also a lecturer but now a commercial beekeeper laughed at the idea of a native bee when we spoke about it a year or 2 ago, but i hadnt known about his wifes work at the time or id have questioned further. Time for another chat.

I, and I am sure many others would be very interested to read the results of this testing. Can you find out if there is a published paper?

 

[SDM]

I, and I am sure many others would be very interested to read the results of this testing. Can you find out if there is a published paper?

I plan to. Ive been meaning to call round for a while. From a quick vheck of her cv , she has the historical sequence but no paper published.

 

[foghornleghorn]

Very briefly;

(1) Just because a bee is dark/black coloured, it is not necessarily AMM.

(2) AMM is a common bee in these islands. That is not disputed, what is disputed is that this bee is a native bee. It is the indigenous bee of NW Europe and any strains peculiar to some geographical entity must have long since been lost or been diluted to nothing.

Amm is native to north western europe, if there is some irish amm with say dutch blood somewhere in them, it doesn't really change the fact that they are amm, which are the native bee to Ireland.

 

[SDM]

Amm is native to north western europe, if there is some irish amm with say dutch blood somewhere in them, it doesn't really change the fact that they are amm, which are the native bee to Ireland.

I completely agree. But for a long time the argument has been tgat the uk and irelands geographical isolation has meant our Amm is significantly different and in need of protected status/conservation becausr of this.
How many projects would be so well supported if it turned out that the onky conservation necessary was a yearly order of queens from france?

 

[foghornleghorn]

I completely agree. But for a long time the argument has been tgat the uk and irelands geographical isolation has meant our Amm is significantly different and in need of protected status/conservation becausr of this.
How many projects would be so well supported if it turned out that the onky conservation necessary was a yearly order of queens from france?

I do think amm needs conservation, whether it is an amm mix from a variety of areas or with individual areas all kept seperate doesn't make much difference imo. But I think in terms of creating a breeding programme that results in amm being an attractive bee for buckfast/carny beeks a pan European effort would give much better results

 

[TooBee...]

From my interview with David Kemp:

Any chance of getting him to give you a scanned copy of that photo, if he has it?

Also you said interview? When will your book "Interviews with beekeepers" be available?

 

[Walrus]

Any chance of getting him to give you a scanned copy of that photo, if he has it?

Also you said interview? When will your book "Interviews with beekeepers" be available?

Sorry, he hasn't got the photo & I couldn't find one on google.
The book should be out Spring 2019. Last interviews in California this month. My Dad was ill and died recently, and now my Mum is very ill too, so it has thrown a spanner in the works, but over winter I'll be working hard on the book!

 

[TooBee...]

...L.E.Snelgrove commented in 1946, "... many writers have expressed the view that bees of pure British origin cannot now be found. The writer ... has continuously found British bees ... showing no sign of crossing with foreign races, many of our bees are becoming dark and indistinguishable from the old British bees."

The author may be mistaking color with DNA (it wasn't identified until 1953), I remember reading somewhere that a Queens color is affected by the temperature she is kept at in her cell, although doubtful if it's hereditary? There are other bees that have dark coloring, I think Caucasians? But certainly AMM from France, why is he attributing "pure British origin" simply with color, when the eye cannot differentiate between a French or British AMM? - I don't think he is referring to more detailed examination such as Wing comparison?

The Isle of Wight phenomenon was thoroughly debunked on a scientific basis by Dr.Leslie Bailey of Rothamsted in 1981.

Does anyone have a copy of this research paper? This is the first I have heard of this.

...in the last decade DNA studies by Pedersen and others in Denmark and elsewhere have conclusively shown that modern specimens of Dark Bees from the UK and Ireland fit into the genetic specification of Apis mellifera mellifera

I don't think anyone is disputing this; it is just more likely that IF the AMM bees here in the British Isles sustained losses of 90% minimum up to 99%+ AND there were large imports of bee nucs and packages, from the easiest, most abundant and therefore cheapest source (northern coast of Europe) then the AMM bees that we have are (from a DNA perspective) mostly descended from northern France and the Low Lands: Still, we would need to nail down losses across the country and the level of imports as well.

 

[TooBee...]

Hi Walrus, sorry to hear that, I know I'm not the only one looking forward to the book, nice website by the way.

 

[Beefriendly]

The Isle of Wight phenomenon was thoroughly debunked on a scientific basis by Dr.Leslie Bailey of Rothamsted in 1981.

What Bailey debunked was that Acarine was the agent responsible. Not that IofW disease did not happen.