Co-Op

[Skyhook]

I think when most uk beekeepers think of New Zealand bees they are talking about the New Zealand Queens that are imported by some commercial sellers.

These bees are often Italian strain and so orange they look translusent in sunlight.

They also imported them into the uk up until a couple of years ago from hawaii.

Geneticly they are nown as cordovan type.

Corrrrrrrrrr!!!!! What a beauty! However, it does reinforce my point about NZ bees- a lot of peoples NZ means Carniolan- so the NZ appendage is completely unhelpful, what matters is if they are italian or carnolian.

 

[theengraver]

Last week i was given 3 1.5oz test jars of honey from the co op
from there scottish bees
the label said it was from the scottish bees and they had 200 hives
They told me that they only had taster jars as the hives had not produced that much honey

so i opened up a jar to test heres my feedback
jar 1 was solid it had crystalised
Jar 2 80% crystalised
jar 3 25% crystalised
desided not to bother tasting my wife had a taste her face spoke a thousand words ( not good words)

 

[Chris B]

Sounds peculiar. Why would they be giving it away when they don't have much, especially giving it to someone with their own bees? And even more unusual - a Scotsman telling us that he doesn't rate some Scottish honey!

 

[Haughton Honey]

Sounds peculiar. Why would they be giving it away when they don't have much, especially giving it to someone with their own bees? And even more unusual - a Scotsman telling us that he doesn't rate some Scottish honey!

Perhaps it's just cr*p and they can't sell it?

 

[Chris B]

Perhaps it's just cr*p and they can't sell it?

I don't think I've ever encountered British cr*p honey, except stuff I overheated myself once, and even that was good for cooking.

 

[Into the lions den]

Geneticly they are nown as cordovan type.

Cordovan shows up from time to time in all bee types. Its is a recessive gene for colour and is used as a marker in some breeding operations (Sue Cobey used to use it way back in the dim and distant), and acually is a melanin (black) deficiency.

We see it here occasionally in an otherwise dark colony where some of the bees are of a chocolate colour, the brown phase being where the black would normally be. In these cases everything that would be black is brown. It is most obvious in the drones if the queen is carrying any of this recessive gene, as a proportion of the drones carry the marker, and appear chocolate colour whilst the others remain black, and if none of the drones the queen mates to are cordovan the no workers will show that trait, it only showing up in the drones. Have seen it in bees of every hue, and yellow bees carrying cordovan are very light looking as even the legs and tips of the abdomen are merely milk chocolate coloured.

To get a handle on how common this is you have to bear in mind we have closing in on 3000 colonies and maybe see this in no more than 10 in any one year, so the normal small scale beekeeper may go his whole life and never encounter it. It is MUCH more common in certain lines (often of US/Hawaiian origin of Italian type bees).

Bees carrying visible cordovan colouration have a very poor reputation as honey getters. Because of their interesting colour Sue Cobey used to market them as 'red' bees and sold them for use in observation hives as something interesting.

We see all manner of odd things that others will never encounter.

A couple of examples would be.........

Extreme melanistic forms, especially in the drones, where even the wings are getting dark and the hairs intense black. Widespread anywhere there has been Caucasian genetica incorporated.

Drones with odd, sometimes VERY odd, eye colours. Last season we have had the following:- chocolate, chestnut, red, green, olive, yellow, and white. Most are just a few drones, but in the case of the green and yellow ones it is about half the drones in the hive, and they drift too. Only a couple of colonies, but really do look like bees from another planet, and their appearance in other colonies gives a good idea of drone drift, and it is surprising how far they go and how many other colonies they are in. See the odd one turning up in other hive groups from the original apiary, even a couple of miles away. As one might expect, usually in hives with a VQ either running or soon to be so.

 

[Into the lions den]

so i opened up a jar to test heres my feedback
jar 1 was solid it had crystalised
Jar 2 80% crystalised
jar 3 25% crystalised
desided not to bother tasting my wife had a taste her face spoke a thousand words ( not good words)

Long story.

The honey involved in that was from 2010, and from the first few boxes that the newly established bees produced. It was beautiful pale honey from clover, with just the slightest tang of lime, one of the nicest samples of blossom honey I ever produced. Into the drums it went and off to the packer. I still have the samples here we took before it went, and it is delicate and gorgeous, and as good clover does, just has a wee catch at the back of the throat.

It was water white, almost as pale as borage, and came from rural Aberdeenshire, where the clover on the grazing fields still looks like snow at the right time.

Then I saw the packed jars.......water white had become straw yellow, and straw yellow in a mini jar equates to a good bit darker in a big jar. The taste had been ruined, but not consistently so, as if there had been hotspots when the jars were being stabilised. Offering it as a clear honey was contrary to my recommendation anyway, as I said it should be in a smooth set form for distribution to members. The inevitable conclusion is that the packer has overheated it in an effort (apparently partly unsuccessful) to give a natural set honey shelf life in the clear form.

However, the face of a beekeeper or a family member of a beekeeper being 'screwed up' at the taste of anothers honey is a pretty standard response. We are all used to our own honey and it is the taste and texture we tend to like best. In beekeeing circles wherever I go the locals are always pretty well sure that 'the best honey in the world comes from round here'. When we produce honey for the open market, and this was, then we have to put our beekeeper (and sometimes self appointed honey judge) hat to one side and approach it from the pint of view of an ordinary member of the public. The product would not sell if this type of customer did not like it. It sells. Beekeepers are not the target market, the public, usually a lot less conditioned to a particular set of characteristics in what they buy, are the clients, and despite my less than enamoured response to what had happened to the stuff I was proud of, the feedback from the membership has been almost universally positive. I have seen the file of testimonials and the requests for the honey to be in store.

Yes, I was a little surprised too.

 

[Haughton Honey]

I don't think I've ever encountered British cr*p honey, except stuff I overheated myself once, and even that was good for cooking.

Ever eaten honey primarily from ragwort?

One to avoid, not only because of the taste.

 

[Into the lions den]

Sounds peculiar. Why would they be giving it away when they don't have much, especially giving it to someone with their own bees? !

They gave it away to *membership*. If some were beekeepers as well then that is just a coincidence. Membership part funded the project and even before it started the idea was that they would receive a sample of the product from the bees they invested in, just as a taster of what was going on. This year they have already drawn down and packed over a tonne of Ling into minis for the same scheme. I understand it may well be an annual thing, among other little samples they give away. The honey is calculated into the scheme at full market rate, so the section giving it away ARE paying full whack for it.

 

[Into the lions den]

Ever eaten honey primarily from ragwort?

One to avoid, not only because of the taste.

Dandelion. ( When pure that is)

EEEWWWWW

A guy brought a stack of it over here to try to sell me. I never bought jarred honey even thogh some of the beekeepers insisted they would jar their own honey so I would decline it (and often in doing so cause offence even if explaining all about rules and policies and quality control). However, this stuff was so strange that I bought the lot to incorporate in my 'chest of horrors' I often produce at talks where there is scope to go into such things. Yes, we can produce some putrid stuff here.

It has a cheesy, sweaty, musty kind of property about it, yet fudgy too, and the smell does remind one a bit of the dried sausages hanging up in a good Italian deli..................sniffed from next door to the laundry where my bee socks were being decontaminated.

Want a bad honey that still has a premium market? Arbutus........the Strawberry Tree

Very high priced stuff (Corsican is apparently the 'best') and has an aftertaste from hell...............bitter like the worst cough medicine you sould have had as a child.

 

[drstitson]

"Drones with odd, sometimes VERY odd, eye colours"

That's the joy of working with a species that uses a haplodiploid sex determination system. One sex will phenotypically express otherwise recessive de-novo mutations.

 

[greatbritishhoney]

As regards the Co-op..........I await further developments, but I know they were mightlily cheesed off with the 'bite the hand that feeds them' demeanour that some people adopted to an initiative they did with only a passing eye on the marketing side. There was also a general frustration with the 'persistent creativity' of certain correspondents attempting to organise the 'against' campaign.............so there are changes afoot, and whole rafts of things they were doing are to be scrapped (not our joint project though).
Not heard as of yet about any plans to scrap beekeeper help, but I know the shenanigans from the past season were causing serious irritation and a change of direction was being thought of. Since then there has been a change of personnel in the section that deals with bee matters, and another of the key figures announced her imminent 'moving on to pastures new' only this week. We will see what happens once the new appointee, whoever that may be, gets his or her feet on the ground.

Can you elaborate on this Murray?
As far as I could see the "anti" campaign never really got off the ground apart from the mutual hot air on here. I can't see why the co-op would have particularly been bothered about a few beekeepers sounding off.
Scrapping help for new beekeepers because a few established beekeepers criticised them seems a bit petulant.

 

[dpearce4]

"Drones with odd, sometimes VERY odd, eye colours"

That's the joy of working with a species that uses a haplodiploid sex determination system. One sex will phenotypically express otherwise recessive de-novo mutations.

Doc can we have this in english please

 

[Into the lions den]

Can you elaborate on this Murray?
As far as I could see the "anti" campaign never really got off the ground apart from the mutual hot air on here. I can't see why the co-op would have particularly been bothered about a few beekeepers sounding off.
Scrapping help for new beekeepers because a few established beekeepers criticised them seems a bit petulant.

All will come clear once new people are in place. I suspect they will continue with it for now from the drift I am getting,as those most cheesed are the ones who have moved on. However they are still getting letters quoting Somerfords original stuff and the 'fact' we have apparently single handedly destroyed Ron Hoskins lifes work. I have also been informed that we introduced AFB and EFB into Herefordshire (despite our bees being inspected thoroughly at the heather after the finds in the Hereford/Ledbury areas and found completely clear). I have had two passed to me this week alone already in that very vein.

Much of the letter writing seems to have come from small beekeepers, usually far removed from the local areas involved, and from non beekeepers.

The facebook campaign was discounted right from the start due to being set up in such a way as to only show one side, so that was a non issue, and far smaller than some of the campaigns they get against their normal agricultural practices.

The hot air on here was only a little thing really, but it was a useful medium to actually get some facts out there instead of the stuff being said. The one thing that caused a real ripple of alarm was the recommendation to 'torch the lot', which was echoed in direct e-mails and a couple of letters. Although not taken completely seriously, hence no police involvement at that stage, it was enough to put them on guard and ready to bring them in if it got worse. They also had a small group threatening to picket their stores too, but decided to just ride that one out if it happened. It did all rather fade away once it was apparent that the world as we know it did not end. We are assuming that the letters will eventually dry up too. All will still be politely answered though.

Priorities in general are changing there, and another of their beekeepers (not the one on here) has been told all sorts of initiatives, such as 'farm to fork' are to be abandoned or rebranded, and the 'produced by us' range, that the bees were intended to supply, is being phased out. The bees will instead produce for the bulk market, as much of Co-op agricultural produce already is anyway.

What awaits Plan B etc? No idea right now if it is tangled up in the big changes going on or not, but the complainers ( not just about the bees project, about Plan B in general) have been aplenty, and if it causes them hassle you never know what they could do.

 

[Into the lions den]

Doc can we have this in english please

lol..............he is basically condensing what I said about things being expressed in the drones alone into straight scientific language.....perfectly clear to me.

 

[greatbritishhoney]

Thanks for the update.
The only thing I had seen, aside from the facebook campaign, was the online petition which, last time I looked, had about 16 signatures.

Hope the potential change of direction doesn't affect your side of things.

 

[drstitson]

"Doc can we have this in english please"

most genetic defects involve loss of function. you need to lose both copies for the problem to show up. drones only have one copy to start with so nothing "normal" to cover up the mutation.

eye colour variants depend upon mutations at various points in the pigment production pathway(s).

simple example - think cancer - you need to acquire two hits to knock out a particular cancer preventing gene. hence why most cancer occurs late in life. however if born into a "cancer family" you inherit one faulty copy and need acquire only one more change. hence occurence of tumours earlier in life or multiple tumours.

 

[dpearce4]

lol..............he is basically condensing what I said about things being expressed in the drones alone into straight scientific language.....perfectly clear to me.

thats cose your scottish and what he wrote looked like scottish to me lol lol lol

 

[dpearce4]

simple example - think cancer - you need to acquire two hits to knock out a particular cancer preventing gene. hence why most cancer occurs late in life. however if born into a "cancer family" you inherit one faulty copy and need acquire only one more change. hence occurence of tumours earlier in life or multiple tumours.

that makes alot of sense as in my family my nan,mum and sis and mums sis have all had breast and cervical cancer. proves that it runs in the family doesnt it.

 

[Tom Bick]

Perhaps or perhaps not a few voices from the sidelines have derailed the coop’s bee plans.

Or perhaps its just big business deciding to save costs in this economic times and they are cutting their losses.