buckspinfasts?

[Poly Hive]

Yes well that was the biggest load of rubbish that a so called learned person came out with.

As if he was even in a position to know.

PH

 

[For want of a better word]

A Hook /Newton situation .. or was it Faraday?

 

[Stiffy]

Not sure who you mean and very sorry if you have had a bad experiemce?
I have bought 2 nucs of local black bees and a queen from forum members, all where very good. Also I have never sold to anyone on this forum so not me governor

S

 

[the naked beekeeper]

I visit Buckfast Abbey regularly. Namely because I like the place.

Brother Adam was nothing if not a good promoter of his bees.
He knew how to sell them and me thinks that casting a wide assertion that AMM all died out, helped in no small way to propogate his 'strain'of bee. It was simply a chance not to be missed.
It could be presented as a better alternative when UK beekeepers morale was at an all time low. By presenting hope, in the form of the Buckfast bee, BA could capitalise and easily gain a vested interested in his bee, quickly, such was the despair in the country. All prominent leaders have exploited this sense of dispair in the public to their advantage.

The 'strain' relies on hybrid vigour and a docility. Both of which are easily lost in subsequent generations of a bee which shares a gene pool with so many different sub species. Bees from all over the world. The gene pool is so varied that 'rogue' colonies can easily crop up from subsequent natural matings with the local population of which they do not share all that much DNA. New blood is constantly needed to be injected to maintain this mythical 'strain'.

Oh yes, Brother Adam knew how to peddle a bee.

As for Buckie.....the 'tonic' is disgusting and sure enough, in certain streets in Scotland you can hear youths asking you 'eh laddie, can you ge' us a bottle eh Buckie?' lol

 

[For want of a better word]

TNB.... could not post this up on the forum.. so have set a PM !

 

[Jimbo]

Amm has not died out. They can be found is some areas of Scotland in particular in the varroa free areas

 

[Stiffy]

Amm has not died out. They can be found is some areas of Scotland in particular in the varroa free areas

I believe you are right. Not that there is anything wrong with a mongrel as buckfast are basically that. There are however lots of bees out there being claimed as AMM but really just mongrel local blacks. Some are good, others a complete nightmare!
S


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Norton]

Brother Adam did warn about not to confuse line hybrids with the general mongrels in the UK.

 

[Jimbo]

The Scottish Amm give values of 90-100% using DrawWing wing morphometry. These are bees that have never been selected or specially bred. They are just our native local bees. Some have had DNA analysis carried out which confirms they are Amm and we are waiting for more DNA results to confirm other stocks. There are plenty of mongel stocks that are still OK to work with but there are likely to be other pure Amm areas we have not found yet. To date we have found pure Amm on Orkney, Mull, Colonsay, Kilbrachan, Helensburgh, Wester Ross and Sutherland. In Scotland we encourage new beekeepers to use their local stocks and not import Queens or colonies into their area

 

[Alabamaeee]

Something that remains unexplained to this day...

Buckie taste better when drunk from the bottle, especially if it is still wrapped in a brown paper bag

 

[BeeJayBee]

I notice several posters referring to 'buckspinfasts'

I've read the thread, and am still not sure if the original question has been answered.

Can somebody please explain the origin of the made-up word 'buckspinfasts'?

Thanks.

 

[For want of a better word]

Brother Adam did warn about not to confuse line hybrids with the general mongrels in the UK.

​

I can trace my family tree back 400+ years... is that what you mean?

Charles ... a great great great uncle took quinine to Malaysia and saved millions of lives from malaria.. and red quinine bears the family name

AMMs exist in Cornwall to be sure

 

[Teemore]

There is a prevalence of black bees in my neck of the woods.... local beekeepers are trying to maintain stocks of black bees and that helps with the open mating of queens. the progeny of open mated queens from my home apiary show little or no colour banding. From conversations with local beekeepers of many years standing who have dabbled with local bees, buckfasts and carnies etc and who are now moving back to black bees, they comment that the tendancy has always been for open mated queens to progressively revert back to a black bee. This mirrors comments posted by ITLD earlier this year.
If you were to ask someone locally about Buckfast they would be thinking of the drink... the area formed by Armagh, Lurgan and Banbridge is sometimes referred to as the "Buckfast Triangle" due to dales of the drink... a lot of local bars have the stuff in optics.

 

[Stiffy]

​

AMMs exist in Cornwall to be sure

Rollocks
Too many other imported bees around for them to be pure AMM, just local blacks which I am sure most are fine? Scotland and some isolated colonies may have them though.
S


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[the naked beekeeper]

I agree with stiffy.

To me it matters not whether there are AMM still around or not. Working with and for the sake of labels gets us no where. I'm only interested in a good native/near-native, local bee. Whether they are 100 % or 80% AMM doesn't matter. We can't turn the clock back and neither should we try to. I want healthy colonies, able to produce in our maritime climate and which are sustainable, in the sense that, they do not contain completely foreign DNA capable of throwing up extreme traits.

 

[Poly Hive]

And what do you think your native bee is?

PH

 

[the naked beekeeper]

most of my colonies are black and exhibit native traits. bibba doesn't classify them as an amm strain, but for me that doesnt matter as they must be close enough and a good enough starting point for me. they're my local blacks! they might not ever classify them as amm material, but that wont stop me from breeding from them.

 

[Poly Hive]

I don't think BIBBA are actually interested any more in AMM, and when they had the whole deal handed to them at Perthshire they scuttled back to the home counties in a state of shock.

PH

 

[For want of a better word]

they scuttled back to the home counties in a state of shock

hit the nail on the head there... nice one PH !

stiffie... we will just have to agree to differ.... until the DNA analyses comes back !