Import of NZ bees into UK

[Skyhook]

Not so. yes they are calm, but they are also very industrious, great comb builbers, hardy, and have overwintered well. This has already been stated.

If you look in the photos each has a caption. Look at the yield for Glenfenzie. Bear in mind that the figure is for heather alone.

I'm very worried about these alien queens. Perhaps I ought to take a couple into custody?

 

[Hombre]

Hi guys

i just want to ask about pollinatoin contracts with the co-op if all these bees are being brought in then surely the beekeepers that have provided pollination for the co-op are not going to get these contracts again so the Brit BEEK will lose again.

Also you say that you tried to source these bees from the UK but with no succes! who did you ask? (i did'nt get a call LOL)

I have to be honest and say that i think this is a bit of cop-out by the co-op and it looks like they have just gone for the most cost effective way to get bees

If you were to check, I think that you will find that the fruit production in the farms affected was fairly dire last year. A fact placed attributed to the previous pollination contractor having effectively pulled out of bees and become predominantly an equipment supplier. Did I mention Maesmore?

My facts may be wide of the mark, but I don't believe so.

I suspect that if ITLD was to get his knives out and try to carve you up the way it looks like you (collective) are dragging out obscure issues to stick in his back as well as his front, then I suspect that you might need a lot of cigarette papers for the nicks.

 

[Hivemaker.]

I do not know Ron Hoskins, or indeed anything about his work.

Bit of imformation About Ron Hoskins, as requested many many posts ago.

Quite a bit about Ron Hoskins can be found out on Google,i believe it's only small scale,so does not really make any difference,athough quite a lot in the press last summer. Some links below.

http://www.moraybeedinosaurs.co.uk/stanton_park.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...s-breeds-indestructible-bee-protect-mite.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/25/honeybees-virus-superbee-saviour-swindon

http://www.swindonlink.com/news/bee-populations-being-made-stronger-by-swindon-beekeepers-research-

 

[peteinwilts]

If you were to check, I think that you will find that the fruit production in the farms affected was fairly dire last year. A fact placed attributed to the previous pollination contractor having effectively pulled out of bees and become predominantly an equipment supplier. Did I mention Maesmore?

rumour (**disclaimer!**) has it Maisemore had about 100 hives with the CO-OP and were politely told to b*gger off when ITLD offered better options...

of course this is all hearsay and have no idea if it were true... the grapevine works well, but bits often fall off here and there!

 

[Into the lions den]

rumour (**disclaimer!**) has it Maisemore had about 100 hives with the CO-OP and were politely told to b*gger off when ITLD offered better options...

of course this is all hearsay and have no idea if it were true... the grapevine works well, but bits often fall off here and there!

As related to me in Manchester, re-iterated at a meeting at Down Ampney. Words of William Barnett, farm manager at Tillington...........

'We have had a problem with pollination on the orchards. We need 150 colonies, and historically used to get them, but last couple of seasons only about a third of the order was actually delivered.' Their words not mines. Their issues thus were not specifically to do with Down Ampney at all.

They were going to set up an 'in house' production and pollination unit anyway, and three of their areas farmed were under consideration. One was centred on Coldham in Cambridgeshire, and I am not actually sure where the third one was. Possibly Goole.

The pollination issue at Tillington made their decision for them, and as we had already worked with them successfully in Scotland, and were keen to go further with them, we were asked to source and manage the unit. It is on a partnership basis, to give both parties the incentive to get it right.

However, running a small unit at such a distance from home is plainly a non starter economically, so they adopted my figures, that for it to be viable, given there will be 2/3 resident staff, it needed to be a 600 colony outfit, albeit spread over several farms.

As it was put to me, the decision to change bee tenant was very much on the cards already, before this scheme came on the scene. There were several reasons given to me that do not need dragged out here as they are of just about nil relevance to the issue under discussion.

I did not outbid anyone or give anyone a better offer. Far from it, I stressed that I was not interested in ousting people. It was made plain to me that the decision had already been made and that they wanted the second in house unit to be on these farms.

As is often the case, the grapevine gets it partly right, but also rather subject to 'Chinese whispers', coloured a bit each time by the personal likes and dislikes of the reteller.

 

[Into the lions den]

[ Bit of imformation About Ron Hoskins, as requested many many posts ago.

Thank you. I had most of this from Gavin on Sunday anyway, but not all.

 

[Finman]

The genes of Africanised Bee are getting diluted more and more as it goes north.

That is an old "hope".

When DNA of bees have been researched, it has been found that they are often 100% African bees. African queen emerge 2 days earlier than mellifera and it has captured the genepool.

general reading: http://www.adkinsbeeremoval.com/africanized-honey-bee.php

 

[Finman]

.
The variety of Africanized genes in America

It born here and spreaded from here is not perhaps the truth about Africanized bees.
There are genes which are only In Texas. Some genes are found in USA and Argentina but not between these areas.


Here is a new research about origin of Africanized bees in USA.
http://comp.uark.edu/~aszalan/szalanski_magnus_ahb_usa_jar_2010.pdf

"The amount of genetic variation observed in Africanized
honey bees in the USA therefore supports the idea that there have been multiple introductions of AHB into the country."

The origin of the A4 and A26 mitotypes can be attributed to the
introduction of A. m. scutellata to Brazil in 1956 (Collet et al., 2006).
Interestingly, Sheppard et al. (1999) using Dra I PCR-RFLP of honey
bees from Argentina, attributed the A1 mitotype that he found to an
African A. m. intermissa origin.

The existence of more than one
subspecies of African A. mellifera in the New World could explain the
difference in migration of the different mitotypes, i.e. a greater
proportion of A1 mitotypes in North America and more A4 mitotypes
in South America.

 

[Finman]

.
Intermissa bee

http://www.ibra.org.uk/articles/Removal-of-jacobsoni-by-honey-bees

Apis mellifera intermissa

This is a North African race of honeybee found north of the Sahara from Lybia to Morocco. The bee is reputedly very aggressive and swarms frequently. During droughts over 80% of colonies may die but owing to intensive swarming colony numbers increase when conditions improve.

2. Apis mellifera lamarckii

Egyptian bees found in North East Africa primarily in Egypt and the Sudan along the Nile Valley. Like intermissa they rear numerous queens with one colony recorded as rearing 368 queen cells and producing one small swarm with 30 queens!

3. Apis mellifera scutellata

Bees from the savannahs of central and equatorial East Africa and most of South Africa. This is a small bee with a short tongue which is highly aggressive and swarms frequently and is able to nest in a broad range of sites from cavities to open nests.


The removal and grooming behaviour of Apis mellifera intermissa against Varroa jacobsoni was investigated in Tunisia. Workers in 15 test colonies detected and removed up to 75% of artificially infested brood and removed up to 97%-99% of freeze-killed brood in each of two trials. Likewise, A. m. intermissa actively groomed off V. jacobsoni, as shown by a great number of injured mites dropping from naturally infested colonies. Both grooming and removal activities of A. m. intermissa provide evidence for active mechanisms of resistance against V. jacobsoni.

 

[Finman]

Beebreeders are working behind the official truth?

http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/28969

Descendents of Apis mellifera scutellata Lepeletier (Hymenoptera: Apidae) (the Africanized honey bee) arrived in the United States in 1990. Whether this was the first introduction is uncertain. A survey of feral honey bees from non-Africanized areas of the southern United States revealed three colonies (from Georgia, Texas, and New Mexico) with a diagnostic African mitochondrial DNA cytochrome b/BgIl fragment pattern. To assess maternal origin of these colonies, we developed a primer pair for amplification of a cytochrome b fragment and sequenced using internal sequencing primers. Samples of the three reported honey bee colonies plus another 42 representing the 10 subspecies known to have been introduced in the United States were sequenced. Of the three colonies, the colonies from Texas and New Mexico matched subspecies of European maternal ancestry, whereas the colony from Georgia was of African ancestry. Contrary to expectations, the mitotype of the latter colony was more similar to that exhibited by sub-Saharan A. m. scutellata than to the mitotypes common in north African A. m. intermissa Maa or Portuguese and Spanish A. m. iberiensis Engel. This finding was consistent with anecdotal evidence that A. m. scutellata has been sporadically introduced into the United States before the arrival of the Africanized honey bee from South America.

 

[Finman]

.
Why I wrote about Africanized bees?

The modern gene research prove that it is not official route via which new genes flow into some country. The whole truth of honey bees origin has changed after bee genome mapping.

I know here a beekeeper who has queens from Africa, China, France, USA and what else?

And not to mention The British invaders who moved National Black to every continent where they moved.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Thanks. Finman for some really interesting articles.

 

[Poly Hive]

Re the Africanised bees there is a real classic here.

The Americans spent millions of dollars flooding the border with drones in the hope they could dilute the gene pool.

Then when it obviously failed they checked and found the Africanised virgins emerged early and killed the European ones.

They fatally assumed........

PH

 

[Finman]

.
Varroa came to Finland over Russain border about 1975-77. Russian warned us about mite and in Finland it was planned to make "a beeless zone". But mite had arrived allready over border. It toolk about 10 years mite to go across the country. Nothing helped.

Many bee disease has been noticed that "now we found it first time it it has been years here"

Varroa concured the whole Europe in few years. It must be so that beekeepers move bees and mites.

Early 1960s Japan, USSR
1960s-1970s Eastern Europe
1971 Brazil
Late 1970s South America
1980 Poland
1982 France
1984 Switzerland, Spain, Italy
1987 Portugal
1987 USA
1989 Canada
1992 England[4]
2000 New Zealand (North Island)
2006 New Zealand (South Island)[5]
2007 Hawaiian Islands[6]

 

[Finman]

.
What is the connection between South America and East Europe?

My opinion: The boath use Caucasian bee race

 

[Scutellator]

Re the Africanised bees there is a real classic here.

The Americans spent millions of dollars flooding the border with drones in the hope they could dilute the gene pool.

Then when it obviously failed they checked and found the Africanised virgins emerged early and killed the European ones.

They fatally assumed........

PH

I haven't heard the "killer bees" to be still a problem in Agrentina. Only in USA they complain about them (maybe because they're trying to separate the EHB populations from AHB). Moreover (in Argentina and USA) they claim that after the arrival of the A.m. scutellata the crops increased substantially. The "killer bees" somehow could predict the forthcoming honeyflow (they knew when; timing is important).

Even the most defensive behaviour can be weed out more easily than you can imagine.

 

[Finman]

August 2006
The Ministry of Agrarian Subjects of Buenos Aires Province informed, through the Experimental farm, .....that the apiaries are populated in a 92% by the Italian bee, a 3% of European bee (mixes African with Iberian) and only a 5% of africanized bee.

*****

I have read new information that Africanized bees live in northern forest areas in Argentina but it has not able to spread to main vountry.

 

[Finman]

Even the most defensive behaviour can be weed out more easily than you can imagine.

I wonder how?

 

[taff..]

I may have missed this question in the hundreds of posts that are on this thread, but.......

if you have hundreds of colonies in scotland, why couldn't work to raise your own colonies to service the 'down south' contracts rather than importing?

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

taff - yes easy to miss, but from way back

I already breed around 2000 queens a year. I cannot guarantee their freedom from disease. I cannot guarantee their availablity in such numbers before July.
My home unit is located within the Scottish EFB area. No matter the temptation to do otherwise I would not ship them out of that area.