Brother Adam and Amm

[Skyhook]

Was reading an interesting article about Brother Adam today. http://www.beekeeping.com/articles/us/adam.htm

Apparently he considered that native British bees had been effectively wiped out by IOW disease, and that the black bees now present had recolonised from mainland Europe.

I assume this has been well discussed- can anyone bring me up to speed on this idea?

 

[Hivemaker.]

He believed they were wiped out,but some survived in isolated parts,yes there were lots of bee's imported from Europe and elsewhere to make up for the huge losses. And BA went on to breed one of the most wonderful bee's ever.

 

[Scutellator]

Hivemaker, do you really believe that the Amm bees of today are the same as 100 years ago?

In his words the English bee, as he remember it, no longer exists.

Does it matter if the bee's blood remained pure, when the economical qualities are not the same? Which of both is more important?

 

[Hivemaker.]

Hivemaker, do you really believe that the Amm bees of today are the same as 100 years ago?


No,i don't....where did i say that,or are you making it up? I don't believe anything stays the same.

 

[rix]

Karl Kehrle (Brother Adam): [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAeSPnKjSAY[/ame]

 

[Scutellator]

Hivemaker, do you really believe that the Amm bees of today are the same as 100 years ago?


No,i don't....where did i say that,or are you making it up? I don't believe anything stays the same.

It was a rhetorical question.
So, he is right then, and the English bee was truly wiped out. The name stays same,but not the bee. Just like the language - if someone start talking in Middle English you will not understand a word.

 

[Hivemaker.]

English bee

What is an English bee?

 

[Nellie]

one that watches Corrie and whinges how the carnie ones are out pinching their nectar and getting Dole money at the same time?

 

[Poly Hive]

Can we lay this one to rest.

BA whilst a genius was quite wrong about AMM.

Tell me this please, whilst the IOW was raging he was a novice monk. Read that again, a NOVICE MONK. How on earth with the communications of the time would he have known anything about the general population of the bees apart from how cold his flagstone was during his devotions?

I doubt very much as a novice, and a German speaker to boot whether he even had access to a news paper.

His thoughts came much later on and were again based on local southern observations. To my ken he never travelled north in the UK. Because of his reputation his statements were taken with possibly more "weight" than they at times deserved.

So is the original AMM still around. I strongly suspect so.

PH

 

[jameskilty]

Genetic studies are improving greatly. The most recent have esablished clearly that A.m.m continues strongly in some areas and is dominant in the bees in others in spite of importation of bees from southern Europe where climate and seasonal rhythm is very different. BIBBA is supporting a new study with inputs from beekeepers throughout these islands and by the end of the year I have been promised results for my selection of colonies.
Where we do have comparisons we find that our selection of dark bees outperforms imports and crosses consistently.
We are selecting for various forms of hygeine reducing varroa which we do find in the dark bee. They have been found in A.m.m. and A.m.c. by pioneers elseswere in the EU - anyone in the UK doing this work with southern European bees? Let's hear about it?

 

[mbc]

It was a rhetorical question.
So, he is right then, and the English bee was truly wiped out. The name stays same,but not the bee. Just like the language - if someone start talking in Middle English you will not understand a word.

Say what you like about middle english but I can read poems in Welsh from the 6th century and I bet I'd recognise their bees as well

 

[Skyhook]

Genetic studies are improving greatly. The most recent have esablished clearly that A.m.m continues strongly in some areas and is dominant in the bees in others in spite of importation of bees from southern Europe where climate and seasonal rhythm is very different.

While I'm quite prepared to accept he was wrong, this is an answer to a slightly different question. Amm as I understand it is the native bee of NW Europe. The fact that we still have Amm is not of itself proof that they are of British origin and not, as he suspected, re-colonised from, say, France or Germany. Can DNA or morphology be any more precise than subspecies?

 

[Norton]

Can DNA or morphology be any more precise than subspecies?

I don't think so.

 

[dilys]

I don't think so.

I do think so.

 

[Skyhook]

I do think so.

Can you provide any more details?

 

[dilys]

Genetic profiling is much more detailed than mere race. It is said that the AMM bees of Tasmania can be traced back to the part of England where they originated from. I am hoping that the current DNA study that BIBBA are conducting will shed some more recent light on the subject but they are expecting to, at least, be able to differentiate between Irish bees and British bees.

Now ask Norton for more details.