Free sugar

[Swarm]

Look up B4 project.


No argument.


Sorry Swarm... I am fed up with the blatant trolling too!

Nos da

The same axe grinding over and over. Seems some people don't want black bees to exist.

 

[Quis Custodiet]

The same axe grinding over and over. Seems some people don't want black bees to exist.

I have not seen any suggestion that black bees or indeed any other type of bee should not exist, in fact quite the contrary view has been expressed several times.
What a number of posters, including myself, have found objectionable is the repeated references to Native Black Bees / Native AMM, when all the available evidence shows this sub species no longer exists. There have been many polite and genuine invitations to anyone who could show that this might not be the case, to kindly do so. To date no one has, or offered coherent argument and the only responses were I regret to say, bordering on the abusive.

 

[Swarm]

And there's reading between the lines of these 'polite' and 'genuine' invitations. Why is it that criminal incidents in Ireland creep into black bee threads? And now people 'wearing a wire' LOL.

 

[Beefriendly]

If you have a problem with Chalkbrood, have you tried Poly hives? I just don't see it any more and I think its because the bees stay much warmer and dryer overall making it harder for a fungus infection to get a grip... Just a thought.

They are in poly hives, but thanks for the suggestion. Their daughters also had it, so suspect its in their genes. Not saying it is typical of all Amm's but the ones I got are definitely suffering from it.
I may have to try slicing a banana and see what happens.

 

[For want of a better word]

I might (probably am) a bit dim but why are there 2 black bee groups (BIPCO and B4 Project) in Cornwall with supposedly the same aim?
Surely the aim of the groups is the same and would be better served by a single group?
Or is it politics, and the reason I don't get involved with groups anymore??
S

Stiffy you are most certainly not dim!
I hope can answer your question.. .

BIPCo ( Bee Improvement Programme for Cornwall is a group of beekeepers who have come together in Cornwall ( and now Devon and Somerset) sharing an interest in keeping and breeding the local native honeybee AKA the Cornish Black bee.

The B4 project Bring Back Black Bees) is a CIC ( Community Interest Company) that has research and education as its primary aim, funded from various charitable organisations and donations from corporate companies ( including TESCO)
Work so far has been to identify the Cornish Black Bee as a specific sub species, using sophisticated DNA techniques as well as morphometrical techniques ( Dimes?... in fact to date two genetic lines) of Apis melifera melifera that differ from the Irish, Colonsay, Northumbrian and Finnisterre, Swiss, etc etc, sub species.
B4 is also funding a training and educational facility in conjunction with local Universities in SW England at Mt Egbecumb on the Rame Peninsular where the first of the Cornish Amm were identified.
In conjunction with University of Plymouth and NERC there is funding in place for a PhD student who will be starting in September.



There is also BIBBA ( Bee Improvement and Bee Breeding Association ) formerly British Isles Bee Breeders Association.... and before that the Village Bee Breeders association..... that is a nationwide organisation that has its focus on bee improvement and bee breeding in the UK.


I had difficulty in why there was a West Cornwall Beekeepers Association and a Cornish beekeeping Association...... until I cycled from the Tamar Valley to Lands End..... a very long County!

Yeghes da

 

[Beefriendly]

en to identify the Cornish Black Bee as a specific sub species, using sophisticated DNA techniques as well as morphometrical techniques ( Dimes?... in fact to date two genetic lines) of Apis melifera melifera that differ from the Irish, Colonsay, Northumbrian and Finnisterre, Swiss, etc etc, sub species.

Come on Mr Hoppit, why not give the full truth, rather than your abbreviated version?
Tell me if this is close...it must be because I pinched it from the B4 project site . Your sophisticated DNA analysis showed that their genome was only between 50-80% Amm (i.e pretty much a mongrel, particularly at the lower 50% end) and what there was was more closely related to French Amm's rather than English.
http://www.b4project.co.uk/the-four...f-the-native-irish-bee-society/pg-2-page-001/
Me thinks yours may have originated from French imports. stowed away on your smugglers ships as they brought their cargoes of illicit Brandy and wine back from France and gradually bit by bit they ended up diluting the genepool of your original native Amm's
Now before you go straining your neck looking over bridge parapets that's not to preclude you may have a different mongrel than the rest of the UK and if that's what you wish to breed and preserve good luck to you all. Perhaps better to call it Les Cornish Amm......But a bit more truthfulness about their lineage would be appreciated by the rest of us. Makes it look like you are trying to hide the uncomfortable truth.
My offer of proper Amm queens to incorporate into your breeding program still stands, free gratis and I'l even pay postage.
It will boost their Ammishness, assuming cross is 80% x my 95%, up into the 90 percentile. Close enough to be a near Amm.

Perhaps you could take the trouble to explain to us what the B4 project means by your Les Cornish Amm's having a "• careful, measured “maritime” brood cycle". I know you Cornish are good sailors but how on earth does it relate to your bees? It's certainly got me baffled, the only thing I can think is that a maritime brood cycle relates to the length of time take for the smuggling ships to return from France.

 

[PBee]

........
Also says they have "careful measured maritime brood cycles"...what the eff is this.....related to the tides????Peed myself laughing at this. Can any pro Cornish Amm fan please please explain this....Come to think of it can anyone explain this!
....

Maritime brood cycles refers to a synchronicity with floral resources. Some reading while you do the pelvic floor exercises ......

Louveaux et al.(1966) described behavioral differences in several A. mellifera populations in France, designated as ecotypes of the subspecies A. m. mellifera. One of the ecotypes, in the Landes of southwest France, inhabited a coastal plain stretching from Bordeaux south and east from the Atlantic to the city of Mont de Marsan. The regional flora was dominated by two major nectar producing plants, alder buckthorn (Rhamnusfrangula L.) in late May through early June and common heather (Calluna vulgaris L.) in September. By measuring the area of brood (developing larval and pupal bees) monthly throughout the season, Louveauxet al. (1966)were able to show that the colony produced more bees to coincide with these periods of high food availability. Specifically, they found that brood production increased slowly in the springtime, peaking immediately before the flowering of the black alder in May. After the black alder bloom, brood production decreased in late June and July, but increased again preceding the heather bloom in August. Subsequently, Louveaux(1973) moved several colonies of the Landes ecotype several hundred kilometers north to Bures-sur-Yvette, France and observed the same annual colony cycle, independent of location and to the detriment of the colony. While a late season colony population increase was beneficial in the presence of the heavily producing heather plant, it was maladaptive without a late season food source and Louveaux had difficulty keeping this ecotype alive in Bures-sur-Yvette. Furthermore, non-ecotypic colonies from the Paris Basin did not develop the ecotypic annual colony cycle when moved to the Landes. From 1966–1972 Louveaux (1973) made a series of genetic crosses between ecotypic and non-ecotypic bees. He found that intermediates in the annual brood cycle could be produced, and thus concluded that the brood cycle was genetically determined

http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/768/art%253A10.1051%252Fapido%253A2007012.pdf?originUrl=http%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.1051%2Fapido%3A2007012&token2=exp=1486840817~acl=%2Fstatic%2Fpdf%2F768%2Fart%25253A10.1051%25252Fapido%25253A2007012.pdf%3ForiginUrl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Flink.springer.com%252Farticle%252F10.1051%252Fapido%253A2007012*~hmac=53ba6c3c4a79bbfa2988069ef2f36892a8dd3c94645a6b316fa392a52bc80a57

 

[PBee]

Technology has moved on a little from that! The microphones on smart phones are incredibly sensitive and as everyone has such a phone, they are not noticed and can work in a handbag or pocket. .......

Good luck with the undercover work. Hope they can keep a low profile.

 

[Beefriendly]

Maritime brood cycles refers to a synchronicity with floral resources. Some reading while you do the pelvic floor exercises ......

Have I missed the bit in your very interesting quote where they define maritime brood cycles as meaning synchronizing to local floral cycles or is this a universal definition of bees synchronising their brood to local fauna? It's not a word in common usage. If this is what it means thanks for enlightening us.
Given Les Cornish Amm's French ancestry it seems appropriate they respond with a French synchronicity.

 

[Quis Custodiet]

Good luck with the undercover work. Hope they can keep a low profile........................................................................

I believe the rally has finished by now, one wonders how the Wall of Light impacted on the delegates? Candles (bees wax of course) were hardly a rival to Albert Speer's creation!

P.S. Was your photo taken at the gathering in Athlone?

 

[PBee]

Maritime brood cycles refers to a synchronicity with floral resources. Some reading while you do the pelvic floor exercises ......

Have I missed the bit in your very interesting quote where they define maritime brood cycles as meaning synchronizing to local floral cycles or is this a universal definition of bees synchronising their brood to local fauna? It's not a word in common usage. If this is what it means thanks for enlightening us.
Given Les Cornish Amm's French ancestry it seems appropriate they respond with a French synchronicity.

Dyslexic and incontinent? ....

By measuring the area of brood (developing larval and pupal bees) monthly throughout the season, Louveauxet al. (1966)were able to show that the colony produced more bees to coincide with these periods of high food availability

Landes is a maritime region.

 

[PBee]

......
All the evidence to date indicates the the AMM in Ireland is descended from AMM imported from the continent in the aftermath of the Isle of Wight disease. If anyone can show this is not the case, then please do so.

Can you link some of the evidence?

Dr. Les Bailey discounted the whole Acarine/Isle of Wight link as a myth, and the critique, coming from an eminent bee pathologist, is the only reasonable analysis of the period I have seen. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0005772X.1964.11097032
one excerpt....

There are all kinds of possible reasons for the death of bees, apart from infections, and there is little doubt that bees dying of non-infectious diseases were often included in the I.O.W. disease casualties. Imms found the most successful remedy was 'feeding cane sugar'. In Cumberland, where I.O.W. disease was said to be serious in 1915 and 1916 with between 5 and 20% of colonies 'affected', according to a report of their beekeepers' association at the time, it was said that '1916 was a poor season, many colonies were insufficiently provided for winter, and sugar was practically unobtainable'. I rather think, therefore, that starvation was often to blame for some losses included in I.O.W. disease casualties.

Sounds like a poor couple of years which is unlikely to wipe out a subspecies that survived the Little Ice Age?.

 

[Beefriendly]

Landes is a maritime region.

And pray tell how does the seafaring activities of the good Landes sailors become correlated with Les Amm's De Cornwall?

Me thinks tis a few bob short of a shilling...

 

[Beefriendly]

Can you link some of the evidence

Sounds like a poor couple of years which is unlikely to wipe out a subspecies that survived the Little Ice Age?.

Not in Northern Europe they didn't...unless you want to provide evidence that they made Igloo hives and lived on snow flowers.

More than a few bob short........ More like most of the pound has gone missing.

 

[Curley]

The Little Ice Age is a period between about 1300 and 1870 during which Europe and North America were subjected to much colder winters than during the 20th century. Not to be confused with The Ice Age. Play nice. Like your name suggests.

 

[For want of a better word]

Come on Mr Hoppit, why not give the full truth, rather than your abbreviated version?
Tell me if this is close...it must be because I pinched it from the B4 project site . Your sophisticated DNA analysis showed that their genome was only between 50-80% Amm (i.e pretty much a mongrel, particularly at the lower 50% end) and what there was was more closely related to French Amm's rather than English.
http://www.b4project.co.uk/the-four...f-the-native-irish-bee-society/pg-2-page-001/
Me thinks ( NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THEN) yours may have originated from French imports. stowed away on your smugglers ships as they brought their cargoes of illicit Brandy and wine back from France and gradually bit by bit they ended up diluting the genepool of your original native Amm's
Now before you go straining your neck looking over bridge parapets that's not to preclude you may have a different mongrel than the rest of the UK and if that's what you wish to breed and preserve good luck to you all. Perhaps better to call it Les Cornish Amm......But a bit more truthfulness about their lineage would be appreciated by the rest of us. Makes it look like you are trying to hide the uncomfortable truth.
My offer of proper Amm queens to incorporate into your breeding program still stands, free gratis and I'l even pay postage.
It will boost their Ammishness, assuming cross is 80% x my 95%, up into the 90 percentile. Close enough to be a near Amm. ( NO THANK YOU YOURS... ARE PROBABLY NORTHERN GERMAN IN ORIGIN)

Perhaps you could take the trouble to explain to us what the B4 project means by your Les Cornish Amm's having a "• careful, measured “maritime” brood cycle". I know you Cornish are good sailors but how on earth does it relate to your bees? It's certainly got me baffled, the only thing I can think is that a maritime brood cycle relates to the length of time take for the smuggling ships to return from France.

Of course you are correct.... given that the English Channel would not have possibly existed at the time that Amm were colinising northern Europe as the Ice cover retreated, there are many links* between the northern French states of Normandy and Brittany and Cornwall and even Wales. But I can not see how your claim that the Cornish Amm are in reality French Amm that were traded for a box of Cornish daffodils some time after 6Billion years ago and the present?
* Links in traditions and language that have survived despite "English" introgression!!
The Patriline statistical analyses can not be published as it is the IP of Defra and they have not, I am lead to believe, as yet finished the paper for publication. Is this is the "Evidence" you refer to in the link?

B4 are seeking funding to further research the Cornish sub species so that Science can better understand the probable way in which the sub species evolved, and why the Cornish Amm has become adapted to the Environmental conditions extant in Cornwall.

There seems to be some DNA and anthropological evidence that the Northumbrian Amm are more closely linked to colonisation from the peoples who lived in Northern Germany and were brought in by the so called Vikings.

In my own bee breeding efforts for the Cornish Amm I have been quite selective in only using bees from stocks within Cornwall... although I have had offers of Amm queens from Nothumbria, Colonsay, Isle of Man, Wales, Ulster and Eire.

I never though that Tesco giving a local beebreeding group a bag of sugar could raise some beekeepers blood pressure so much!

My forum user name is ICANHOPIT.. taken from the Associated Motorcycle Company Ltd tellegraphic address, when they manufactured motorcycles in Plumstead London.

HOPIT was the tellegraphic address of the AJS factory somewhere in the Midlands ( Bought out by Matchless to form AMC)

Myttin da

 

[alldigging]

And pray tell how does the seafaring activities of the good Landes sailors become correlated with Les Amm's De Cornwall?

http://www.-------------/news_and_e...reate_cell_cultures_from_honeybees_starts_up_

Last year the BBKA gave a grant of £25,000 to help set up this new laboratory at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth. The Hive laboratory supported by the BBKA at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth has started work

There's obviously lots of connections ..?

 

[Swarm]

The Little Ice Age is a period between about 1300 and 1870 during which Europe and North America were subjected to much colder winters than during the 20th century. Not to be confused with The Ice Age. Play nice. Like your name suggests.

Indeed it was, the Thames was a place to skate and hold markets. Winters were very severe by today's standards.

PBee, probably a few beekeepers lost during that period as well that would only add to the situation.

 

[Beefriendly]

http://www.-------------/news_and_e...reate_cell_cultures_from_honeybees_starts_up_

Last year the BBKA gave a grant of £25,000 to help set up this new laboratory at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth. The Hive laboratory supported by the BBKA at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth has started work

There's obviously lots of connections ..?

Sorry, but no matter how I look at the sentence "careful, measured maritime brood cycle" it is still nonsensical and meaningless. No matter how many maritime regions are connected.
Definition of maritime. 1 : of, relating to, or bordering on the sea <a maritime province> 2 : of or relating to navigation or commerce on the sea. 3 : having the characteristics of a mariner.

So what it is saying is that you have one of the following.... a careful measured bordering on the sea brood cycle.
or careful measured navigation on the sea brood cycle.
Or even a brood cycle that has the characteristics of a mariner.

All of which are clearly nonsense.

 

[Beefriendly]

But I can not see how your claim that the Cornish Amm are in reality French Amm that were traded for a box of Cornish daffodils some time after 6Billion years ago

I thought it was pasties and clotted cream they traded for them....
But I was jerking your chain about that, sorry....
The data says they are closer to French Amm's than anything else in the UK. That, as I'm sure you know, does not mean they came from France. Just they are a sub variety that has more in common (genetically) with French Amm's than any other UK reference Amm's. Yours may have developed in their own unique way in Cornwall, isolated (relatively) from the rest of the UK.
It sounds as though you have quite an interesting Ammish Bee down there and it will be very interesting to know the results of all the DNA profiling, when it's available.

It's worth noting that this is as should be expected over a region. There will be differences related to distance and geography. Ruttner described some of these differences with his "lowland" and what he called heather bees. Beowolf Cooper noted that the temper of Amm's changed as you went east to west over the UK. Can't remember which way round it was, but one direction they became more aggressive. Br. Adam noted that the temper of the French Amms increased as you went South to North. These would (or would have been) differences that gene profiling would have identified as different varieties of the same sub-species.... had anyone wanted to study this at that level.
And as for introgression, they all have foreign genes somewhere in their genome. It's too late to put that genie back in the bottle so perhaps best to live within the actual limitations of what is there now. You don't need a 100% purity (whatever that really means) to have strains of bees that behave to all practical intents and purpose as their ancestors.

So good luck to the project. Alas I shall now probably always refer to them as
Les amms de Cornouailles.....but please realise it will be meant tongue in cheek.

Oh and my Amm's speak with an Irish brogue.....