Caucasian queen wanted

[psafloyd]

Wow, what a response from you lot! Well said Bosleeu on the Buckfast front. I can see people seem to think we are not now a global entity, head in sand is best for some eh?
What NEW problems could a Causasian queen bring to us? (Probably regret asking that)
Lets all round up the immigrants then, (oops I married a daughter of a Polish immigrant)

Surely, local bees are best suited for local conditions?

It's like asking Usain Bolt to run in the rain in Glasgow and expecting him to break the World Record.

 

[rolande]

Surely, local bees are best suited for local conditions?

It's like asking Usain Bolt to run in the rain in Glasgow and expecting him to break the World Record.

Well, he might not set a world record but I reckon that he might do better than the locals.

 

[Norton]

 

[jp19sqn]

I have kept local Yorkshire bees in 2 apiaries and I have queens reared from an imported Buckfast breeder queen (Not cheap) in another 2 apiaries. I get double the yield from the buckfasts and they over-winter exactly the same. I find the buckfasts to be a joy to work with and the Yorkshires need very sunny conditions to be as docile as my worst Buckie..... On balance I would opt for genetic quality over local trash any day. Now I fully understand the frustrations of MasterBK however who has invested enormous energy into developing a strain of local that is actually fit for purpose, that must be very disappointing. On balance don't be frightened of getting the right genetic material from reputable sources....The problems arise when you buy from the cheapest. A properly mated queen should come with lineage marked on the cage and/or a certificate. If you import a queen take the time to do it properly from a source that can be trusted. Just from the mathematics associated with parthenogenesis (Febernache) the native honeybee would make a take over in very few generations if we found a real problem with genetics. As long as there is a repository of AMM drones. And there is.

 

[Arfermo]

I have kept local Yorkshire bees in 2 apiaries and I have queens reared from an imported Buckfast breeder queen (Not cheap) in another 2 apiaries. QUOTE]

Where did you get your Buckfast breeder queen from as I could do with a tamer hive or three. PM me if you prefer. Thanks.

 

[mbc]

To compare most remaining native bee populations with highly selected imports misses the point that one is selected for by man and the other by nature. It is my belief that there is still a largely untapped potential within our native bees waiting for well thought out breeding programs to steer them to better suit our needs as beekeepers. I find it rather depressing that so many British beekeepers are so ready to throw in the towel with our own bees in favour of piggybacking on the hard effort of our continental cousins. With a little more strategic planning rather than settling for a quick fix the future of British beekeeping could be far more assured of a prosperous, sustainable future.
Even with the fact that native bee breeding is still really in its infancy, at their current level of development I would reckon on good natives outdoing any imported stock in my area under anything but the most intensive management.

 

[Norton]

And your point is what? Bring the performance of AMM types up to the level of selected other types - the high performing bees already exist and don't you think that BA would have gone down this road if it were at all possible, instead of traveling thousands of kilometers, often in very trying circumstances, searching for suitable genetic material to add desirable characteristics to his lines. I'm sure he would much rather have been in his cell in the abbey.
He has stated quick precisely that AMM is not up to performance of modern selected bees.
Amm might be great survivors in adverse conditions, but the there are strains that do as well and many a time better.

The breeder queen mentioned above, not mine by the way, may seem a large outlay at the time. But you can produce as many daughters as you want from this queen with confidence that they will perform well, even when open mated with mongrel drones in the UK. You could also sell off some daughters to pay for the purchase and this then gives you free queens for your own use. The drones produced by these F1 queens are pure and will contribute good characteristics to the local population.

 

[mbc]

And your point is what?

Many apologies if my point was unclear, I was trying to get at that it would be preferable to develop our own bee for our own unique conditions rather than use highly bred queens developed from continental bees for optimum performance in continental conditions.

I'm sure he would much rather have been in his cell in the abbey.

Really??

He has stated quick precisely that AMM is not up to performance of modern selected bees.

This didnt go undisputed in his own time and it certainly doesnt now. Amm are more than up for trumping other bees in our conditions under sustainable management. IMHO we should be trying to shy away from the profligate use of tanker loads of invert syrup, as the good name of home produced honey could be badly tarnished if the press got hold of the story of just how much syrup is used by some beefarmers using buckfasts and following Danish style management systems.

The drones produced by these F1 queens are pure and will contribute good characteristics to the local population.

Others will see these drones as contributing instability and being nothing more than environmental pollution.

 

[Norton]

Others will see these drones as contributing instability and being nothing more than environmental pollution.

May the Lord enlighten them.

We see this negativity as regards any bee that is not of AMM type - yet we see little concern about the amount of honey imported into the UK. That is where the real damage is.

Back to the original post - I don't think it is possible anyway to import queen bees from Russia or Georgia. They are unable to provide the correct certification for the EU.

 

[mbc]

We see this negativity as regards any bee that is not of AMM type -

For my part I hope beneficial genes will withstand the test of time and endure, incorporated into the current local gene pool. The short term danger is that mass imports flood the air with unsuited drones and stack the odds against preserving usefull genes from stocks not artificially propagated in large numbers.
Our aim should be passing on bio diversity to our successors, and to my mind, in beekeeping terms this can be achieved by opposing the agenda of those who would seek to flood the country with imports for short term commercial gain.

 

[Norton]

The short term danger is that mass imports flood the air with unsuited drones and stack the odds against preserving usefull genes from stocks not artificially propagated in large numbers.
Our aim should be passing on bio diversity to our successors, and to my mind, in beekeeping terms this can be achieved by opposing the agenda of those who would seek to flood the country with imports for short term commercial gain.

Yes we do export queen bees to the UK, yes we do sell them - we are not a charity. We make a living from breeding and selling queen bees.
Unfortunately your post above does not hold up when we look at the figures.
Year Number of queen bees imported
2014 9678
2013 8625
2012 7977
2011 4163
2010 7291
(Data from FERA)

If we say that on average about 8,000 queen bees a year are imported. IF they are all introduced successfully, something I doubt very much, and that each and every queen holds up for two years, we can see that at most there are 16,000 imported queen bees at any time in England and Wales. What is the total number of colonies? I have been told it is around 250,000. So do the calculation: It is about 6,5%.
So, where do you get the idea that the imported queens are flooding the air with undesirable genes? I say that the imported, don't forget it is selected material, is at a severe disadvantage in the mating area, something in the region of 12:1 against.

Re: Danish Buckfast material: I too have been very disappointed with some of these - some breeders' material is OK. Had I had my first experience with "Buckfast" bees from a certain source I would probably have not had anything to do with them. Luckily, my first experience was with some of the last Buckfast queens to have been exported from the USA to the UK in 1986. This really showed what bees can do and I have never looked back since.

You mention biodiversity, actually the UK had a genetic treasure house of genetic diversity at Buckfast, which was taken from the UK to other European countries, thank God, whilst the material at the Abbey was just left to die out.

 

[mbc]

Yes we do export queen bees to the UK,

Nothing personal Norton, I've already stated I'm happy that some genetic elements of the good imported bees will win through and become a part of the gene pool, its the mass imports of cheap queens which worry me, and if you think the official figures paint an accurate picture you're having a giraffe!

 

[Norton]

If we cannot rely on official statistics published by FERA, then it is just guesswork. Are you suggesting that large numbers of queen bees are imported into the UK illegally? If so, where did you get this information from?

When a health certificate is issued for intra-community trade, the details are entered in the TRACES system so that there is a separate record of the movement. FERA are automatically notified as well.

Yes there are some cheap queens being sold. Are they any good? I don't know as I have not tried them. Maybe those suppliers are able to produce queens cheaply, maybe they use a different system and have cheap labour available - again we don't actually know and cannot do anything other than guess.

 

[BeeJayBee]

Yes there are some cheap queens being sold. Are they any good? I don't know as I have not tried them.

More to the point, are these cheap queens what they are advertised to be? How does a beekeeper, particularly a new beekeper, know for sure that they have got the Carniolan or Buckfast colony they've ordered? How many will be passed off a local cross, with no particular pedigree, because the dealer is confident the beekeeper won't be able to tell the difference?

 

[Norton]

I think that some nuc suppliers just get the cheapest queens they can find and introduce them into a nuc, that is often of an inferior standard - old/tatty combs etc, the novice picks them up and six months later doesn't understand what happened and orders another nuc for the next season or gives up disappointed.

 

[rolande]

More to the point, are these cheap queens what they are advertised to be?

I think that the people buying cheap queens have a pretty good idea of what they're getting (if they do a little advance homework before parting with their cash) because they're probably buying direct from the breeder. If, once those queens hit our shores they're put on the resale market, they cease to be 'cheap'.

 

[Maddmax1]

If a strain of bees was so smartly selected ,and therefore so well adapted, how come that it gets displaced by other newer strains? Biology 101: The fittest survive the others succumb.

 

[Finman]

If a strain of bees was so smartly selected ,and therefore so well adapted, how come that it gets displaced by other newer strains? Biology 101: The fittest survive the others succumb.

That is not true.
If we look for biology, the most madly angry and most swarming survive in nature. And that is not domestic animal.

Most of beekeepers do not select or change queens. They have not base where from to select.

 

[Maddmax1]

It IS true.
Importing new stocks has the potential/certainty to spread diseases.

But let us look at the advantage of introgressing new genetic materials into local stocks

If an alien queen, smuggled into a Country through another Country has a fit genome, it will spread genes into the resident population. Many of us don't care about the purity in our hives: we care about fitness.
I have been beekeeping in Montana (1500 meters of altitude) for many years. I had mongrel bees ligustica x caucasica backcrossed to ligustica and I was absolutely happy with them. Granted they weren't the gentlest bees on Earth but they managed to stay alive despite the 5/6 months under the snow, badgers, skunks and summer snowstorms (they were fenced for bears, though).
In my opinion the concept of pure purity of the stocks has to be revisited.
Maddmax

 

[Finman]

.
When I had Caucasian race hives 40 years ago. They were gentle, nonswarmy big hives. But quite lazy compared to Italians, what I got later. Origin was from Canada.

Caucasian is not popular in the World's beekeeping, and it tells something.

Maddmax lives in Italy, and Italy has very high level bee strains.