The brown bee

[Curly green finger's]

Hi morning, can anyone forward any details on the above title pls.
Do they still exist?.
By what I'm reading black bees from france and Holland were crossed with Italians to produce the brown bee for the moors ( mongrels)?
If you have and info can you share pls.
Cheers
Mark.

 

[Apiarist]

By what I'm reading black bees from france and Holland were crossed with Italians to produce the brown bee for the moors ( mongrels)?
If you have and info can you share pls.
Cheers
Mark.

NEVER heard nor read anything like that, and I've read extensively on the History of bees and bee breeding (I'm especially interested in pre WW2 beekeeping). I'd be VERY interested to read what you have been "reading" can you give a Link or name, etc.

However what I have read, after the Isle Of Wight Disease spread throughout the British Isles in the early 1900's, is that beekeepers (Individuals, Associations and Suppliers, etc.) imported large quantities of skeps mainly from Holland (genetic analysis here in Ireland shows some French A.m.m. as well) of their Black Bee the Apis mellifera mellifera. When I translate articles from German into English the term Brown often is used instead of Black - Brother Adam did this as well. That deals with your "black bees from france and Holland".

Brother Adam did not like the Swarmyness of the Dutch bees, so he opted to use the French bees (brought in from Gales Apiary, just south of Paris), he crossed their Drones with a northern Apis mellifera ligustica virgin, sometimes called a Ligurica, (Rob Manley did the same, it got rid of the aggression apparently), her name was B1 and from this all Buckfast bees are descended, he ONLY mated them on the moors (they were not bred "for the moors"), but after WW2 only took them to the moors for a honey crop less than 50% of the time because he felt that the nectar flow wasn't worth the effort. So that addresses your "crossed with Italians to produce the brown bee for the moors" I'm guessing.

As for "mongrels", just remember if the crossing between two animals with sufficient genetic differentiation (ie: different Breeds or sub-species, as in this case) is known and intentional then the off-spring should not be called mongrels, technically it would be a hybrid, after some generations (Brother Adam stated about ten years) the characteristics of the hybrid's offspring can be stabilized and this would be referred to as a Breed, such as the Buckfast breed of bee.

I don't like using nick names (although I often do it), which is what is happening when we use the term Black or Brown or maybe native in some cases, as it can be misleading, as I think this may have heppened here, I too was intially confused about the reference to the Brown Bee in old literature.

 

[Curly green finger's]

This is what I've been reading.

 

[user 20297]

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"Carniolians too, although alpine bees, do riot." I wouldn't trust a book with typographical errors such as that one; maybe "brown" should say "black"?

 

[mbc]

Hi morning, can anyone forward any details on the above title pls.
Do they still exist?.
By what I'm reading black bees from france and Holland were crossed with Italians to produce the brown bee for the moors ( mongrels)?
If you have and info can you share pls.
Cheers
Mark.

Griff Jenkins, a famous breeder of native bees just twenty or so miles up the road from me, always maintained that some of his best native stock were brown rather than black in colour.

 

[Apiarist]

It seems quite straight forward from reading that;

It appears the nicknames Black and Brown are being used for the same sub-specie, the A. m. mellifera, but there does appear to be a claim that the Brown (maybe more brown than other A.m.m.) are mainly from Holland.

The nicknames Dutch and Heath are both used for the same bee: Dutch to designate from where they originate and Heath for what they are known to mainly forage on, in their homeland.

SO, in answer to your question... YES, the Brown Bee is the Dutch Bee (also referred to as the Heath Bee), the Brown Bee is a strain within the Black Bees (so the book would seem to claim) and they are all A.m.m.

Here in Ireland there was a genetic survey done in 2017, the bees were tested to determine from where they came from, the largest group was Dutch, I think from memory two thirds of our Am.m. bees here are from Holland.

 

[rolande]

Brown is, I think, the term that Robson uses at chain Bridge to describe his bees. If I remember correctly he mentioned in the first edition of his book - Reflections on Beekeeping - that he occasionally sees colonies of black bees which he thinks are probably throwbacks to the 'old English bee'.

'Brown' was certainly the general description of the Dutch bees as used by such as Manley although he clearly differentiated the French stock as 'black'.