Feral honey bee nest sites

[Erichalfbee]

I have two owl boxes and neither have bees. One had a Tawny family in it one year and squirrels since.

 

[For want of a better word]

They're hybrids, so wing morphometry indicates absolutely nothing.

Possibly.... school is still out on this hypotheses.

A lot of work still has to be done on wing morphometry, given now that we have the DNA full genome analyses coming more available and at not such a massive price, this may lead to better understanding.

We have a feral bee site in a valley where there has been little or no beekeeping carried out in the last 25 years, and prior to that the bees kept by the beekeepers ( and descendants) were not imports or yellow or even Abbey bees as the older beekeepers in these parts call the BA type bees.....
Three colonies in a 600 year old building and another some 3 miles away in a "restored" summer let.

Wing morph showed a distinctive negative discoidal shift.... and DNA samples showed Amm from one location... I have yet to sample the other colony, All are distinctively dark and have no yellow stripeyness,
Bees have been in occupation in these sites in one case for at least 200 years and probably more!

Yeghes da