Wing morphology

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I'm fascinated. Unfortunately I have missed recent wing morphology sessions so my knowledge is very sketchy. All things considered, are there any other 'rough and ready' indicators, apart from temperament and behaviour? My bees are quite dark. The only certain reply that I can give to the question "What strain of bees are yours?" is "they're dark ones"!

Moggs, there are no rough and ready indicators. White cappings is one trait of AMM which could be seen without a microscope. They leave an air gap under the wax so the cappings look "white".

I think most bees in England are local mongrels unless you are able to breed in an isolated area from known stock of AMM. Feral pockets of AMM are said to exist in Scotland and Wales (cue PolyHive).

Most of the measurements I've done show AMM mixed with Ligustica/Carniolian/Caucasican in different proportions.

Someone on this forum (mbc) has bees with wings that seem to be almost 100% AMM. Note that I didn't say they were almost 100% AMM. DNA analysis is probably the only way of being totally sure.

Temperament and behaviour are the way to go if you are breeding and if you get a high percentage of AMM so much the better!
 
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Dear Wilderness!
Unfortunately, I didn’t find any fresh news for me by using this references. This material was known to me before. This material don’t confirm your data of numerical values of DS-ranges (there is qualitative only: <0, 0 or >0) and HI-ranges for AM Caucasica and AM Ligustica. Anyway, I render thanks for shown attention and I hope that you don’t forget to share this information to your Russian colleague in case of its coming up. My e-mail is [email protected].
Good luck and God bless you.
Best regards, Anatoly.

P.S. I’d like to share my findings to you:
1 http://www.jas.org.pl/jas_1_2003.pdf I found here searched data about DS (p. 103, fig. 2, but this information seems to be strange for me, doesn’t it?)
2 http://www.dunkle-biene.de/01ae2f93421461006/01ae2f9343140ec2f/index.html, http://www.dunkle-biene.de/01ae2f93421461006/01ae2f93481318312/index.html (there is information of CI and DS (DV) for Mellifera and Carnica in this reference)
3. http://www.dunkle-biene.de/01ae2f93421461006/01ae2f934312bfa0d/index.html (there is all indexes for Mellifera, Carnica, Backfast & Landbiene in this reference)
4 http://www.kvarnhult.de/index.php?id=4&type=1 (there is HI for Ligustica (>0.94) in this reference. I didn’t find for Caucasica only.)
 
Hi, how are the measurements taken? I don't know much about the subject either.
Can you do it on anaesthetised bees or dead bees?
 
I am babysitting swarm central collection point for the association this year. Interesting how different the bees look. There are some small dark bees with a rather over defensive temperament that I will send a sample to if anyone wants it.
 
I am babysitting swarm central collection point for the association this year. Interesting how different the bees look. There are some small dark bees with a rather over defensive temperament that I will send a sample to if anyone wants it.

If they are small and defensive they will likely be a cross. That's largely where the bad reputation of Amm came from. We are still amassing starter stocks of nearish Amm for our II group five year project so morphometry is part of our bag (after lots of other criteria).

Anything with morphometry scores of 80% and above and native-type behaviours...
 
Hi, how are the measurements taken? I don't know much about the subject either.
Can you do it on anaesthetised bees or dead bees?

Dead bees...they lose a wing. Some of the process is mechanised (scan and final calculation/plot), the sorting of the wings and selection of points on every wing is manual and no heavy breathing...lol.
 
When I was doing this I mounted 30 wings on though actualy in, a special slide and projected it on the wall and then took the measurements.

I had one sample actually off the BIBBA scale at -12. I kid you not, from an apiary near Elgin on the Moray Firth Coast.

The numbers for the different bee strains are in Ruttner.

PH
 
Advice on using Drawwing and Beemorph

Hi all,
A colleague of mine is attempting to successfully scan wings and feed them into either of these programs without much success. He has tried several different scanners with less than a 30% success rate and even built a light box and used a professional camera to produce the enclosed image, but Drawwing is having none of it.

It would be great if someone with experience of this could see if they can feed the enclosed image into Drawwing or just comment on the image generally.

Can anyone give us any pointers on how to make this work please? What kit are you using to feed images into Drawwing and how is it configured?

Thanks

Simon Cavill
Fleet Beekeepers
 
Hi all,
A colleague of mine is attempting to successfully scan wings and feed them into either of these programs without much success. He has tried several different scanners with less than a 30% success rate and even built a light box and used a professional camera to produce the enclosed image, but Drawwing is having none of it.

It would be great if someone with experience of this could see if they can feed the enclosed image into Drawwing or just comment on the image generally.

Can anyone give us any pointers on how to make this work please? What kit are you using to feed images into Drawwing and how is it configured?

Thanks

Simon Cavill
Fleet Beekeepers

There's an informative thread on the Scottish forum giving details of the most suitable scanners and techniques, I followed the advice and got an Epsom perfection v330 transparency scanner and it all works easily enough though my computer (or my incompetence!) struggles with drawwing.
http://www.*************/sbai_forum/showthread.php?379-Best-scanner-for-morphometry
http://www.*************/sbai_forum/showthread.php?938-Need-help-with-drawing-and-morphplot
 
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Wing Morf

My latest BeeMorf result and how I do it.​

The Hive to carry out these tests needs to be queen right and the bees need to be easy to manage by the beekeeper, queen laying pattern needs to be exceptionally good, be able to store a good honey harvest. Queen to appear to be Black and also her offspring.
Use a large matchbox as you need at least 30/35 bees. These bees should be nurse bees. ie: bees that are actually tending to the needs of the young eggs, larvae, and brood. These bees have not ventured outside of the hive yet so there is only a small likelyhood of bees from outside of this colony contaminating your sample.
Clearly mark the matchbox with date and hive details, especially if you have several hives, don’t trust to memory, as this is valuable information and takes hours to get results you might not get another chance to carry out this procedure again until next season.
After returning home place the matchbox in the deepfreeze for at least 24 hours, this will kill the bees and any Varroa you have collected. The Varroa can be inspected later.
The next thing is to remove the RH forewing of the bee. I then mount each wing on a sheet of white card, this takes quite a while to do and you have to remember not to sneeze or exhale too quickly or the wings will take off. Pic 1.
Once mounted on the sheet I then number each wing, for no other reason but to identify when taking Photos. I sometimes use a sheet of glass to keep the wings flat as this helps to focus, I have a macro lens for my Canon EOS 500D also a ring flash so no problems with lighting, it’s difficult to take macro pictures without a tripod, but it is possible.
Once on the Camera each frame is cropped and resized to 10 x 5 and given a number, this is the time you find crumpled folded wings that are of no use. Hence the need for 30 plus wings. Once this is done then its all computer work.
A program is available free trial for 30 days called Beemorf. Downloadable from the BIBBA website. After 30 days a subscription is required of £25 payable to the software author who then sends you a password to enable.
The program is reasonably user friendly, but you need plenty of time to complete all the info input as I have found it not so good to go away from and come back later, make sure as soon as you have any kind of result you save it somewhere on the computer where you can find it again easily. There is a set procedure to input the wing points onto the software. I do a printout of the results as soon as I can see them, just to make sure they are not lost if the computer crashes. There is no software for the Apple mac.
Bobsbees.
ps. Sorry the order of Pictures is not correct, but I guess most of you will be able to understand.
 

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