Your gallery of 2D plots

[gavin]

Let's make this one a 'Sticky', in other words it will always be at the top of this section.

Post your DrawWing or other 2D morphoplots here. One day I'm going to impress you all by doing a 3D plot, but I don't know how to get the software working on a web page.

If you struggle with posting plots, one of our members will be glad to help you out. Just ask. You ought to be able to upload it onto the site if you like, or can host it elsewhere (Photobucket, Flickr etc).

So, if you'd like to go public with your plots of wing venation patterns .... .... and feel free to add pictures of the bees themselves if you can ....

- Where are the bees (roughly)?
- Do they look native in other respects (brown or blackish, without the grey bands of Carniolans, stocky, couple of orange spots at most, white cappings)?
- What are you going to do with them now?

If this goes well we could end up with an Amm swap-shop for compatible areas in terms of Varroa and disease status.

[Jon]

Here are 5 of mine, the only 5 I have had tested in fact. I haven't been selecting based on Drawwing charts. I did send off samples of the bees which I thought had AMM characteristics and I have a few other colonies which are probably more hybridised.

These are well west of Stranraer just outside Belfast.

204 205 206 207 208

[Jon]

These two are from my father's apiary in Co. Tyrone. He has a near neighbour who has bought in Carnica queens which may explain the degree of hybridization.



209 210

[Jon]

This is one of Jimbo's from Rosneath Peninsula

211

[Jimbo]

Hi Guys,

Still trying to get an image on. I think I might not have the correct photo editing software. Will keep trying.
Did I mention there is a mars bar for the first person who submits an image with 50 dots in the red box

Jimbo

[Jon]

I could get 50 dots in the red box if I used a sample of about 80 bees. Is that cheating?

[Jimbo]

Hi Jon,

That is cheating. What some people will do for a mars bar! Making progress with the images . Can get the scan image onto a powerpoint, crop and paste etc and save that as a jpeg, however my version of powerpoint will not open the saved jpeg as I don't have the file converters. Will speak to my IT guys next week when I get back to work.

Jimbo

[Jimbo]

Hi Jon,

Just looked at your plots. Col 33 and Col 22 look good. What percentage of AMM did you get and did you change the AMM limits default value of 2.000 to 2.100 as recommended by BIBBA.

Jimbo

[Jon]

col 33 was 74% with the limit set at 2.0. Col 22 was also 74%.
Would have been a bit better at a limit of 2.1.
Those two are from unrelated queens. I have more rigmarole about it in my blog (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/entry.php?23-More-DrawWing-charts).

I have those two marked down for queen rearing but 33 is barely nuc sized at the moment as it was a very late colony headed by a queen which was mated in September last year.

[Jimbo]

Hi Jon,

I have so far 5 unrelated queens with a value from 70 -90% with the limit at 2.000. I have another 3 colonies that are poor and will not breed from. At present I have moved the poor colonies to another site so that any drones from them will not mate with my good AMM queens. There is also a couple of other beekeepers with good AMM queens with high values but have hybrid colonies close to them. We intend to take any queen cells from these colonies to my site with the high percentage of AMM for mating to try and preserve the AMM stock. Will keep you informed on how well it goes. It is our aim this year to produce as many black queens as possible and start to re-stock the hybrid colonies on our Peninsula.

Jimbo

[Jon]

I only have the one apiary. I take drone brood from preferred colonies and put it in others where I don't want them making drones.
This year I am hoping to link up with Ulster Bee Improvement Group.
Their mating apiary is only 7 miles from me and they have some Galtee queens so I hope to take some of my Apideas there. Some of my queens probably come into contact with those drones anyway given the relatively short distance involved.

Gavin - maybe you could make a few comments about the dangers of inbreeding and steps you can take to avoid it. I know there are also caveats attached to selecting on DrawWing plots alone.

[gavin]

Hi Guys

I suspect that Jim knows what he's doing. The risks of inbreeding are real but are sometimes exaggerated. Eric may have an opinion on that subject! If Jim's five unrelated queens really are unrelated ... then they may carry all of the diversity available in the region.* Building up from five unrelated queens to a larger population would be wise, as each generation offers a bottleneck particularly on the male side and you have one generation to convert all that diversity stored in the queen's spermatheca into the next generation of queens.

cheers

G.

* One queen has 2 alleles at the sex determination locus csd herself, and will carry sperm from maybe 10 drones. If the drones come from a well-mixed population then in one hive you can have most of the alleles in the whole local area (2+10 in theory).

However that queen will only produce drones with the two alleles she carries. Only her daughters benefit from that diversity she holds in her spermatheca. So start from 5, but try to go to many more queens in the next generation. Then you'll have a sustainable population. Of course you are probably not that isolated so diversity will come in each year from other males each year.

Have I lost everyone now?!

[Jon]

I suspect that Jim knows what he's doing.

I am sure he does, it's me I was worried about!
My queens are probably quite closely related as I built up from 3 colonies and a swarm I collected.
I like the idea of bringing in some fresh blood/genes/alleles whatever, from good AMM stock.

[Jimbo]

Hi Gavin/Jon

Good example and no you have not lost me. Inbreeding is in my opinion a bit over exaggerated but good on Eric for making people aware of the possibility. I have experienced pepper pot on sealed brood however it was due to the age of the Queen (she was into her 3rd year and starting to fail). If I was to suspect inbreeding I would just bring in new queens from other beekeepers on the Peninsula. At present there are 10 beekeepers and about 35 -40 colonies. All have been checked with Drawwing and show various amounts of AMM charateristics. Our long term aim is to have the Rosneath Peninsula a pure black AMM area and to produce AMM for other beekeepers (We have a few years to go yet!)
Jon, my day job is working on large scale human population genetics and I am familiar with molecular biology techniques. As an academic excercise I extracted Genomic DNA from a bees head over one lunch break, however I need to find somebody to put the DNA through their DNA analyser as all our equipment is set up for human studies.

Jimbo

[Jon]

Two geneticists on the one forum then - good to have the expertise here.


I extracted Genomic DNA from a bees head over one lunch break

That made me laugh. Most people have a sandwich.

Out of curiosity, How do you use DNA to determine AMM purity. Are there particular sequences which are known to be reliable markers for AMM or how does it work in practice?

[Jimbo]

Hi Jon,

It is quite complex to explain. Basically quantify your extracted DNA, dilute to the required concentration for PCR reaction, which makes lots of copies of the DNA sequence you are interested in and separate the bands either using gel electrophoresis or a DNA sequencer ( if you have a spare £3/4 M)
It may sound simple but there is a lot of work in getting the conditions correct to make it work, therefore it is best to send it to somebody who has already set it up and does it as routine.

Jimbo

[gavin]

... and yes, there are some bits of DNA which people can use to determine racial grouping. SSRs (simple sequence repeats aka microsatellites) have been used for this - they have the property of getting slightly longer or shorter than most stretches of DNA relatively quickly. Make a mix of a few of the ones known to differ between bee types, and Bob's yer Uncle! (I think).

G.

[Jon]

So who does this sort of analysis in the UK?

[gavin]

Leeds? York? Can't remember but there is a lab somewhere in England doing this I believe. We had a PhD student in our lab (not my student) looking at the csd locus in other hymenopterans. We hooked up with her supervisor (in Dundee University) and others for a proposal for the Insect Pollinators Initiative, but didn't get anywhere with it.

Anyone with a DNA lab and access to a sequencing or genotyping service could do it if they had the funds.

[Stromnessbees]

Gavin, do you mean funds like this one?

http://www.hlf.org.uk/news/Pages/Fundingforbiodiversityin2010.aspx

Surely our Amm would count as part of our biodiversity?

Doris

[gavin]

Possibly!

[Jon]

This is I swarm I collected (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/entry.php?60-Tiny-Tim-swarm-update.)with a friend on 19-5-10.
The bees were very black and looked good but are obviously heavily hybridized.
It was one of the biggest swarms I have ever seen.
TT put it in a double brood box and on checking yesterday it had over 12 sides of brood.
Not bad for 11 days work.
He said the temperament was bad.
Just goes to show that blackness is not a reliable indicator.

261

Edit. I mean 12 frames of brood, not 12 sides.

[Jon]

Just got another plot back from the colony I have designated for drone raising.
I have been putting frames of drone brood from this one in all my other colonies.
it is also my strongest colony so I am very pleased with the results 85% meeting AMM criteria.

262

This queen is a daughter of col19 (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?153-Your-gallery-of-2D-plots) from an earlier post.

[Jimbo]

Hi Jon,

I agree you swarm is a hybrid which will also be the case for it being a bit nippy.

Jimbo

[Stromnessbees]

3 plots from one of my colonies: the left and the right from workers, the one in the middle from the queen, which seems way out, but can't be compared directly with the workers.

I have collected all the queens' wings that I clipped this year (not easy when there is even just a gentle breeze), but not checked them yet. Has anybody else got morphometry results for queens?

Doris

[Stromnessbees]

These are bees belonging to the morphplot of the previous post (colony C1). They don't look dark and their tomenta make them look a bit like carnicas.

Any comments?

Doris

[Jimbo]

Hi Doris,

Your plot looks good but the actual bees look a bit what I would call yellow. What about the brood pattern. Is there nice white cappings and a pollen / honey pattern similar for black bees. You could try and measure hair length. I have heard that the thickness of the wire used in wax foundation is about the correct thickness for measuring although I have never tried to measure. I would also be tempted to take another sample and see if you get the same result as your original plot. I would do the drawwing measurement step by step to make certain it is accurate. Can you trace the history of your colonies i.e where did they originally come from etc.

Jimbo

Jimbo

[Stromnessbees]

Hi Jimbo

I feel the same as you, that they are rather light coloured. They are all very much the same, except for the one yellow bee in the photo that could have come over from the neighbouring hive which still has some hybrid bees in it, it's due to be requeened shortly.

The morphometry was done by Roger, who is quite experienced at it. If anybody else wants to have a go I can send the wings.
I will take a picture of their cappings & brood pattern when I go through them next time, I might also have a look at the hair length.

The history of this colony is as follows: the were last year's swarm in an area where the only beekeeper has got bees that go back a long time in Orkney. A previous owner of this strain is still alive and I am planning to meet her this summer to find out more about their history.

They are extremely hardy, as they have survived despite having been owned by a let-alone beekeeper for the last decade.
They are nice enough to work with, although there is still some room for improvement.

Everything seems to be right, except for their hair colour.
I wonder if they would be candidates for a genetic test, to see how native they are.

Doris

[Jimbo]

Hi Doris,

If you want you could send me a sample for morphometry for a second opinion. I could also keep the sample and extract the DNA for you but am not able to do the DNA analysis. You would be best to contact BIBBA for their contacts. I am currently working on samples from Andrew Abraham and also working on improving the quality and yield of extracted DNA. I remember someone in BIBBA commenting on that you can't just go on body colour but to take all other factors into consideration.

Jimbo

[Alvearium]

Here is an interesting result of wing morphometry from an isolated area. Don't know much about the bees yet but intend to follow this up. Picture of virgin queen from the hive.
Alvearium

[gavin]

Do you think that maybe the colonies with tight clusters might just be inbred and so genetically uniform? Maybe there is quite a lot of diversity in Amm naturally and that shows in most plots?

[Stromnessbees]

Hi Alvearium

It looks like you missed the marsbar by just one wing!

Doris

[Jimbo]

291

If only it was my colony.

Jimbo

[Jimbo]

Hi Everybody,

Should have said the plot gave 90% Amm characteristics. I also got new software for the ol' pooter so should now be able to post more plots. The mars bar is still waiting to be sent to the first 100% Amm plot with 50 points in the red box

[gavin]

Is there a a clear protocol for morphometry? I'm thinking of things like taking samples. Sure I read somewhere that it ought to be a sample of young bees shaken from a comb after the flying bees have gone. Obviously this would remove adult drifters and maximise the chance of grabbing that Mars bar.

John D also said that standardising on which wing to take was important.

G.

[Jon]

John D also said that standardising on which wing to take was important.
G.

I always use the right forewing but does the software not flip the image if the left wing is used?

[Alvearium]

I have tried flipping a left wing image and measuring up with beemorph; the results are subtly different. However if you use a large enough sample then it probably doesn't matter. Asymmetry between left an right wings may indicate stress factors in development and fluctuating wing asymmetry has been used in this way in CCD research as a measure of stress. Way back in the 1950s there was work done showing quite striking asymmetry when measuring wings and numbers of hamuli etc.
Interesting.....
Alvearium

[Jon]

407 408 409 410 411

Latest plots hot off the press. Thanks to Roger P. again for taking the time to do the samples.

Jimbo - there is a whiff of mars bar about 44 but I accept the sample size is small.
It looks to be well clustered.

[Jimbo]

Hi Jon,

Very impressive. I think with a set of results like that I need to send you a fun pack of mars bars. e-mail an address and I will send them over. Of course I would expect a queen or two back especially from Col 44. Only joking but well done.

Jimbo

[Rosie]

Hi Jon,Very impressive. I think with a set of results like that I need to send you a fun pack of mars bars.

Well played that man.

[Roger Patterson]

Hello All,

What Jon didn't tell you was that Colony 48 had 43 wings, seven of which didn't register because D/S was >-10°. At least one was -13°. This I think is a slight problem with MorphPlot, and I have previously discussed it with Peter Edwards, as I have experienced it on several occasions. If you get "999" in the D/S column, go back to DrawWing "Results" and check the file.

When Peter has time he will look at it and see if he can easily modify it.

Roger Patterson.

[Rosie]

Roger

Have you seen plots from Galtee? I wonder if they could be used a "gold standard" that we could all aim at but I have not yet managed to find plots from them .

Rosie

[gavin]

Bear in mind that Jon's are effectively already 50% Galtee!

I might prefer Colonsay as a Scottish standard, but then again I'm also a bit wary of relying on any standard when Amm in Ireland and the British Isles was and probably still is a variable entity.

In other words, let's find stuff that looks like real native honeybee stock for all sorts of reasons including a rough fit to the usual Amm criteria, and then see what we have in the way of any standards. As usual, I'm wary of going down the route to CI and DS 'perfection' and especially black/dark 'perfection' without really appreciating the diversity that there was for these things originally?

Feel free to argue! (Richard B will be along in a minute if I'm not careful. Wish I hadn't said that.)

Back to cutting up polystyrene sheets in case the Ice Age returns again this winter ....

Gavin

[Jon]

The queen heading colony 44 has some banding and is not jet black.
The mother of this in colony 31 (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?153-Your-gallery-of-2D-plots&p=1226&viewfull=1#post1226) is also brownish with some banding.
31's mother, 19 (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?153-Your-gallery-of-2D-plots&p=880&viewfull=1#post880), was brownish with some banding and 19's mother was a black queen heading a prime swarm I collected which came out of a roofspace where it had been resident for a year.

The least impressive of the scattergrams, 36 is headed by a black queen whose mother in colony 33 (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?153-Your-gallery-of-2D-plots&p=880&viewfull=1#post880)is very black and the mother of 33 was the one in the swarm I collected.

I reckon queen colour is a poor indicator of amm purity on this basis, although all the workers are very black.

I have a daughter of a pure galtee queen, a queen I swapped with Mervyn Eddie, but it is not with it's own progeny as I combined its nuc with a queenless colony.

I know several people who bought Galtee queens this year so I can get a sample at some point.


Bear in mind that Jon's are effectively already 50% Galtee!

Only 43 and 44.
The other 3 were mated in my own apiary.

[Rosie]

I might prefer Colonsay as a Scottish standard, but then again I'm also a bit wary of relying on any standard when Amm in Ireland and the British Isles was and probably still is a variable entity.

I can't disagree with that Gavin but my problem is that I don't know what the original AMM's were like in my area. I can and do select for behavioural traits and fitness for the locality but when I analyse a set of wings I am not sure where to draw the line to help reject bees for having too much exotic blood in them. At least a sight of Galtee wings would give me a clue.

My aim is to get bees that breed true but a colony that behaves like natives could still be highly hybridised and would stir things up again in the next generation.

Rosie

[Jon]

My aim is to get bees that breed true but a colony that behaves like natives could still be highly hybridised and would stir things up again in the next generation.
Rosie

I think that is one of the main uses of morphometry. It lets you reject a colony which on the face of it looks ok but has underlying genetics which are quite different and may throw a spanner in the works of the next generation.

I don't consider DrawWing to be some kind of 100% predictor re. amm purity but it does highlight stocks which are hybridised.

[Stromnessbees]

The queen heading colony 44 has some banding and is not jet black.
The mother of this in colony 31 (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?153-Your-gallery-of-2D-plots&p=1226&viewfull=1#post1226) is also brownish with some banding.
31's mother, 19 (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?153-Your-gallery-of-2D-plots&p=880&viewfull=1#post880), was brownish with some banding and 19's mother was a black queen ...

Hi Jon

Can you explain what exactly you mean by "banding"? You wouldn't have any photos of those queens?

Doris

[Jon]

banding = barred or striped.
My black queens are just black all over with no sign of any stripes but these ones have distinct bands.

Founds some images on the net.
My banded queens look a bit like this (http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3217/2902412889_b683cc5d8e_z.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.flickr.com/photos/valentepvz/2902412889/&usg=__cTy1A53hPqeE5eu6iGtGS0qBSSA=&h=480&w=640&sz=209&hl=en&start=1&sig2=5a5al4NUTyvj5OdQRvl9VQ&zoom=1&itbs=1&tbnid=Jlrg_S4_wWUo_M:&tbnh=103&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmellifera%2Bqueen%2Bbee%26hl%3Den%26s a%3DG%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=0o-0TOD4KoWAswbKnbivCA), but darker
The black ones look like this (http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://bid4bees.co.uk/photos/1429_1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://bid4bees.co.uk/auction.asp%3Fid%3D1429%26name%3DQueen-Bee-AMMellifera-2010-Hatch&usg=__bwo6zVOb2TmS6noUlBab3lV27BA=&h=422&w=670&sz=28&hl=en&start=18&sig2=D7Zdyazj14M1ft-4DkcFYg&zoom=1&itbs=1&tbnid=kcLKTh3RWQweUM:&tbnh=87&tbnw=138&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmellifera%2Bqueen%2Bbee%26hl%3Den%26s a%3DG%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=0o-0TOD4KoWAswbKnbivCA)

The workers are dark irrespective of the queen and I don't think I could tell them apart.
I was worried a couple of years ago that the banded queens might have some Carnica genetics but that doesn't seem to be the case.
colony 31 which has the mother of 44 was one of my colonies which did not try and swarm last year and it was my strongest colony as well.
I only had 4 out of 11 colonies make queen cells last summer and none of them swarmed as I removed the queens or split them.

I'll have to get my own photos.

[Roger Patterson]

I think we have some way to go on morphometry and that will fire up Richard B more than Gavin's feeble attempt!

I have come across several with >-10% D/S. I'm told there are some in South Wales, but haven't seen them. John Dews reckons he can tell where a sample originally comes from by it's position in the box.

I am beavering away at trying to find out a lot more than we already know. Drones are a major point as I think we can have a good queen that was mated with exotics and the scattergram will look awful, but her drones will be good. It would be a pity to cull her if she can still contribute to good local bees.

I tend to work on observation and logic and to me if anything is inside the amm box that would tend to suggest the queen is reasonably pure with the drone fairly pure as well. I have lately checked some that were sold as "Buckfast". The queens are bright yellow, and the bees are 50% Italian looking, 50% no yellow bands at all. The dark bees came up as about 30% in the amm box. The overall pattern was shot about all over the place. Going on Rosie's point any queens raised from these would be very variable. In any case how do you get anything in the amm box with a bright yellow queen?

Roger Patterson

[Jon]

I have lately checked some that were sold as "Buckfast". The queens are bright yellow, and the bees are 50% Italian looking, 50% no yellow bands at all. The dark bees came up as about 30% in the amm box. The overall pattern was shot about all over the place.

I would love to see some scattergrams from bees considered to be pure carnica or ligustica to have as a reference point.
Have you checked any samples or would their very presence in your home provoke an anxiety attack?

[Jon]

Here's another one.
This one was also mated with Galtee drones.
This is a daughter of 33 and sister of 36 from the last batch.
The queen is completely black.

The sample was taken from older bees at the entrance, same as the last batch I posted.

412

[Roger Patterson]

Jon,

I have no idea what an anxiety attack is. May need help on this one!

I am trying to source info on the others. It seems to me one major problem is that 100% pure anything no longer exists, but that is only anecdotal.

Last week I spoke to a Slovakian beekeeper and they are only allowed to keep carnica. I asked him if there were ever checks made for purity and he said no. I asked him if swarming is a problem and he said yes, so they are probably fairly pure!

Roger Patterson.

[Jon]

I thought it might be useful to compare the bees to the scattergrams.
It is 15c here today and the nucs behind the shed were very active.

416 417

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW8K7kOiZ04

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iEj0Y_Plco

PS. The queen heading this colony is a daughter of the Norwegian Blue. (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?344-Dead-queen-today&p=2564#post2564)

[gavin]

Nice to see behind your shed! And there was me expecting a Monty Python video .....

What weighting do people put on the Hantel Index? I see that col 44 didn't do so well when you include HI data, but col 46 above (see 8 Oct post) was more or less perfect apart from that one bee (which could have been a drifter).

G.

[Jon]

What weighting do people put on the Hantel Index?

I would love to know the answer to things like that.
Roger Patterson was also complaining the other day that there is a lack of guidance on the interpretation of DrawWing charts.
I was wondering about what weight to put on a scattergram with a tight cluster like that.
Perhaps it means no more than the queen mated with a dozen drones from a single colony as opposed to a dozen drones from several different colonies.
I imagine that mating with drones from a single colony would tend to lead to more uniformity in something like wing patterns as all the drones would be from the same mother and would be passing on very similar genetics.

PS. Behind that shed is a good spot for nucs as it is at least 80 feet from any neighbour's back door and there is no easy access for youngsters other than coming right through the garden. The shed forces the bees up over 8 feet before they can fly.

[Jon]

Here's another one.
This one is a daughter of a Galtee queen.

468

[EmsE]

I've a lovely diagram of a bees wing explaining how the Cubital index and Discoidal shift are worked out but nowhere has mentioned the Hantel index. How is this worked out?

[Jon]

Nice explanatory diagrams here.

http://www.cybis.se/cbeewing/pertxt/

[EmsE]

Very nice diagrams! Thanks Jon

[EmsE]

490

Hello, Hopefully this has worked- the morphometry results to one of my hives that Jimbo kindly did.

[gavin]

Hi Ems

I wonder if Open Office isn't rendering that red box properly? Jim shared the Excel file, so I can show you what it looks like in Excel. I think that looks like a really good colony. It isn't necessary to have all wings in the box but if most of them are there then the genetics of the colony is good, and that one looks good to me. If it lacks orange more than a couple of spots on some bees, is brown to black, has brown hair rather than pale hair, and doesn't have a slender, tapered look to the abdomen, then it is an ideal candidate for breeding.

Anyone else use Open Office?

cheers

Gavin

491

[Jimbo]

Hi EmsE

You forgot to tell everybody it came out at 85% Amm.
After doing a lot of scans I am coming to the conclussion that to get 100% Amm is more by luck. The majority of scans I see are falling between 80 - 90% for Amm which should be good enough for breeding. The hybrid colonies are quite easy to see as they tend to be a lot worse 20 - 30% Amm.
On the Rosneath Peninsula a lot of our colonies were in the 80% area without any selective breeding. For a number of years we tried to control colonies coming into the area to stop varroa and any new beekeeper was given local bees therefore we were protecting the local bees for years without knowing it. As I have said when all the colonies were surveyed in 2007 the majority were in the 80% area

[Jon]

Anything over 80% is good enough for me.
The two colonies I used for grafting last year were around 80% according to drawwing and I got some very nice queens from them.
It's important as well to avoid drawWing fever as I think it's main value is in eliminating dark hybridized stocks which superficially look like native bees.
These are the ones which may well give you problems a couple of generations down the line if you breed from them.

It looks like you have some good stock which you can start breeding from.

[EmsE]

Hi Ems

I wonder if Open Office isn't rendering that red box properly?


I would love to lay the blame with open office, however it is most likely that I've inadvertently moved the red lines when trying to copy & paste- too honest for my own good.

It's great to have an unexpectedly handy start to my bee breeding plans, now I need to learn what I'm doing:cool:

It's just taken me over 3 hours to get back from work (26 miles in total, an hour for the last 3)- who sent that snow storm over to the west!! Reading up on the different queen rearing techniques will cheer me up nicely (or maybe confuses me to the point I forget about the roads.)

[gavin]

Hi Folks

No wish to be heavy-handed, and I know that I'm the worst culprit, but I can see advantages in keeping this thread for discussions on and posting folks' morphometry plots. It might end up a useful record. So I've just moved some discussion on queen raising to a new thread. No slight to anyone intended, and as I said I'm the worst culprit .... but this thread is a bit different.

Everyone happy with that? [That was rhetorical by the way! Or answer on the new thread.] Keep posting the plots though ....

G.

[Jimbo]

492 I hope this plot works,

Jim

[Jimbo]

Dear all,
sorry about publishing the plots as a PDF but can't get the hang on getting a file into photoediting software etc493
Jimbo

[Jimbo]

Hi Guys,
A Pure Carniolan plot496

Jim

[Jon]

Here is one plotting a set of Carnica wings and a set of AMM wings.

Not much overlap!!

499

[gavin]

Excellent stuff guys. Jon, what about the plots with the Hantel Index? It seems likely that the HI discriminates carnica and ligustica, with carnica being the odd one out this time.

G.

[Jon]

Hantel on its own is not so good for separating AMM from Carnica.
I looked through some of my samples and they tend to have a lower value than Carnica although there is some overlap.

500501

[Jimbo]

Hi Folks,

I was checking the morphometry on a queen that mated this year. When I was taking the sample I noticed a number of the bees had large yellow bands. This is the first I have seen this in my colonies. I was expecting a poor Morphometry result and the colony to be a hybrid. I was suprised to find the colony was a good one with 96% Amm which is similar to my other colonies on this particular site although the other colonies were mated at various other sites.I removed some of the yellow banded bees and did them again just to check and they seem to be about 90% Amm although it is only a small sample. Does anybody have any idea about the colour and should we stop calling them black bees!502
503

Jimbo

[gavin]

Hantel on its own is not so good for separating AMM from Carnica.
I looked through some of my samples and they tend to have a lower value than Carnica although there is some overlap.


There could be a whiff of ligustica in with these carnica samples, and the lack of a clear distinction from your Amm data does hint at that. HI isn't good on its own, but as there seems to be a difference between Amm and Amc then a 3D plot might be useful.

[gavin]

Does anybody have any idea about the colour and should we stop calling them black bees!502


Hi Jim

Yes to the black bee thing - time to stop calling them that! They are usually brown (and Amc are also dark) so I'm trying to call them natives. I see that the HI for these colonies is a bit iffy. If you have a colony with more than a couple of orange dots then it can't be Amm - this just reinforces the thinking that you need to use a suite of characters when assessing a colony.

The CI resemblence to Amm is just chance, or possibly, given that you have been doing morphometry already, the Moritz effect. Jon can explain!

G.

[Jon]

the Moritz effect. Jon can explain!
G.

I was wondering about that even though my surname is not Bache.

I have noticed on the colonies I have tested so far that DS plotted against CI, which is the one which everyone prioritises, is much less variable than either of these plotted against hantel Index which 'could' possibly indicate a selection artifact for that particular wing pattern.
For example, colony 44 which I used in the above example with carnica is 100% AMM according to DS plotted against CI but 78% when you look at CI against Hantel and also 78% with DS against Hantel Index.

Just looking at some other plots with percentage data arranged like this (sorry too lazy to make and upload a table at the moment)
Col. number DS/CI DS/HI CI/HI

Col44 100 78 78
Col 36 63 32 21
Col 43 97 94 92
Col 48 97 91 92
Col 31 85 84 71
Col 57 73 60 66 (daughter of a galtee queen)
Col 34 52 63 38
Col 22 74 66 80
Col 33 74 52 39
Col 19 62 93 59
Col 26 60 67 53

[gavin]

Could be several reasons for that. Maybe the Hantel Index has a weaker genetic control and greater environmental influence, or simply the criteria for HI for Amm were set too strictly. I doubt that it reflects historical selection for CI and DS but not HI, if that is what you mean, but you never know.

G.

[Jon]

I replotted this one on the newer version of morphplot as it allows for DS greater than -10. I also added another dozen wings to the sample.

504

[Jon]

511

There was a lot of spring cleaning going on today so I collected a couple of dozen dead bees from the front of this colony. (Turn you head away Roger Patterson, I know it's not the correct way to take a sample.)
Looks like it could be another good one, a daughter of Q33 posted below, mated at my own apiary.

I also resampled this one taking dead bees cleaned out from the colony.
Roger did the original sample exactly a year ago.
It seems to have improved, but the morphplot limits have been widened from CI 2.0 to CI 2.1
This is my favourite colony, the quietest bees I have ever had and the colony I took most of my grafts from in 2010.

December 2009
510

December 2010
509

[Jon]

Here is another one (42)


These ones are all grafted sisters mated with galtee drones.
521522523

Edit.
I collected more bees from outside Col. 42 to make 59 in all and every one met amm criteria.
Anyone know how to set morph plot to plot more than 50 wings?
can you do it by tinkering with the macro.

524

[AlexJ]

I’ve noted with interest the comments on using a suite of observations in identifying our ‘native’ bee; hence my post which probably cuts across some other threads. I have attached some photos (some clipped from video) of a colony we acquired as the result of a swarm. We’re new to beekeeping so our comments are very much from a novice’s perspective.

The photo of the frame of brood was taken on 16/5/2010 at the ‘donor’ hive as was the queen on a frame in direct sunlight; they swarmed on 31/5/2010.

Very soon thereafter the queen was laying, and stores with noticeably white cappings were laid above the brood area. I’ve included a photo of bees at the entrance which may highlight their colouring more. Up until the third quarter of August sealed/unsealed brood was seen though the queen did seem to be slowing down considerably by that time. I had thought they might be displaying a brood cycle similar to the ‘Atlantic Coast’ type noted by Ruttner et al in The Dark European Honey Bee. Disappointingly, Varroa came with them, though in small numbers we are attempting to use IPM to keep the situation in check.

Queen cups were produced as were a few queen cells, and all were torn down by the bees, apart from one which I destroyed.

Up until the 1st of September the bees were very good to handle with no stings or questionable temperament displayed. From September onwards there was a noticeable change in their temperament resulting in about 4 stings per visit. Though disappointing we thought it was due to a change in the colony life cycle linked to the approaching winter, protecting their stores (we left a super on to see them through the winter) or some other environmental factor (it was a bit cooler and overcast on these visits).

In November I plotted a sample of the bees on DrawWing to discover that the software did not rate their lineage very highly. While new to beekeeping and the DrawWing software I think the printout is accurate.

Any thoughts on the future of this colony/queen given the DrawWing plot?

Alex

[Roger Patterson]

Alex,

Looking at the queen I have two observations:-

1.The unclipped wing looks a bit frayed, so guess she may be quite old, therefore she may have been superseded, hence the change in temper.

2.The marking looks as if it has been daubed on and this could lead to supersedure, as often happens if it partly covers the head or wings.

I think the grouping of the plots is quite good, but am a bit suspicious of them being towards the right. I'm wondering if you have the crosswires in the right place.

As already mentioned points 0 and 3 are often too far to the right, and if you haven't addressed this it would have the effect of increasing C/I that would have moved the plots upwards, but it seems as if you have that cracked, so let's look at D/S.

You need to look at points 2,4,6&18, I find 2 and 4 are usually in the right place and easy to deal with, but 6&18 need to be in the right place, otherwise you can easily be 2-3 deg out. I try to get them inside the cell and in a position where they are the furthest distance apart, which I know is not easy, but needs to be consistent. I find that 6 is usually about right, but 18 gives me problems. I suggest you rename it and have another go.

With that number you must expect there to be some way outside and this can be for a number of reasons, drifting, distortion, plotting error, queen mated with a couple of non Amm drones etc. I always go back and check these and often find an error.

In general I think you have quite a good plot, but may need refining.

Roger Patterson.

[gavin]

Hi Alex

Nice looking bees, nice looking hives, and lovely wee daughter too. Looks very like Enid lending a hand? The concentric rings of brood tell a tale of stop-start brood raising as well as bees building up with a well-organised brood nest.

First of all, Roger's observations. Yes, the queen looks old and supercedure is a possibility. If that happened you'll see the new queen when you look in in the spring. However I don't think that there was much wrong with the paint. If the paint induced supercedure it would have happened before she got old, and she is old. I'd agree with Roger that it would be worth checking the details of the plots in case the software has picked the wrong spots.

The bees look definitely Amm-ish. The plot suggests that they are more Amm than anything, but maybe there is a bit of something else in there too. Maybe some of the bees have a conspicuous halo of pale hairs around the thorax and look a bit gingery? Young bees are a bit like that but it could also be a sign of some other race, maybe Carniolan.

OK, so they may not be pure Amm but they are more Amm than anything else. As it is difficult to keep a pure line of anything when you have very few colonies, you might be better to just go with this line and her daughters for now. If you want to have something more pure then maybe Enid or someone can help you with eggs or queen cells at some time in the future.

About the deterioration in temper - could have been the conditions and doesn't have to be supercedure and mating with hybrid drones. See what the new season brings. As to the colony cycle traits they differ a lot within races. New queens, for example, usually head colonies which raise brood later than established queens.

Are you hoping to build up your colony numbers, or just stay with a garden-friendly couple of hives?

best wishes

Gavin

[AlexJ]

Roger,
Thanks for your advice, I reviewed the wings and moved point 6 to the inside edge of the radial cells which improved the plot slightly. I’m quite confident the wings are correctly marked – would it help if someone posted a correctly marked wing (Morphometry procedures and standards?) to assist those new to the technique.

Gavin,
Your comments are much appreciated; we had planned to try and raise queens from this stock given their first class behaviour prior to September. While we were surprised by the change in temperament, circumstances dictate we will increase from this stock. We have kept a sample of bees to take hair measurements etc. at a later date and will keep in mind your comments on the colour of the thorax hair.

We have made tentative enquiries with fellow bee keepers to source queens for the coming season with a view to increasing stock. We’re in no rush as we hope to keep Amm through selective and responsible queen rearing in keeping with our local area.

We are planning to build up colony numbers but as always, work, availability of sites and existing bee keeping activity in our area will dictate ultimate numbers in the short/medium term.

Alex

[Roger Patterson]

Gavin,

I have to disagree on the paint. It does look blodgy on my screen, and possibly on the wing root. As it appears to have come from a swarm it looks as if she has recently been clipped and marked, so it may be supersedure due to the paint.

I think if there was much Carniolan there the C/I would be much higher.

I agree with you they certainly look more Ammish than anything, and you and me agree on the possibility of wide variation.

Alex,

The shape of the cell ends where 6&18 are varies a lot and I'm not sure we always get the crosswires in the same place. Peter Edwards and myself have done some DrawWing workshops together and one of the points we make is that different people get different results from the same plots. The last one we ran was in November, we copied the same scans onto 14 machines and got a wide variety of results.

Would you mind copying those results to several of us who would be prepared to measure them so we can compare? I think this would be a good one to do it on because there is basically a nice tight bunch with a few scattered ones.

I'm not sure if you could email the file or it would have to be on a CD. Perhaps those who are prepared to measure can indicate, but I'm happy to do it. It might help solve one of the problems we all have.

Roger Patterson.

[AlexJ]

Roger,
The file sizes are too large for me to send by email. If you are R.A.F. Patterson in the BIBBA members book I'll send a disc.
Alex

[Jimbo]

Hi Alex/Roger,

Thanks to Kitta I have discovered Dropbox. If you both goggle it and sign up you can transfer and share large files. Dropbox is free unless you sign up for the optional more space

[Roger Patterson]

Thanks Jim and Kitta,

That could be really useful.

Would anyone else like to try Dropbox and measure Alex's scans?

Roger Patterson.

[AlexJ]

Hi Alex/Roger,

Thanks to Kitta I have discovered Dropbox. If you both goggle it and sign up you can transfer and share large files. Dropbox is free unless you sign up for the optional more space

Much appreciated Jimbo - I'll set up the account today and forward the link to anyone who wants to examine the wings.

[Jon]

540

Alex.
Your plot looks similar to this one of mine.
The queen which produced this plot is a daughter of a pure Galtee queen mated at an apiary with 12 colonies producing Galtee drones.
I swapped one of my own queens for this one last summer.
there is some suggestion that there may have been some crossing with Buckfast brought in by a neighbour near to the apiary where it was mated. However, there is no yellow banding in any of the progeny so I am not so sure.
Some of my own queens produced offspring with a DS of up to -14 but I don't think it matters how far negative the DS is, as long as it is negative.

[busybeephilip]

So John,
what races of bee would be involved if you found positive DS and a CI under 2.0 ?

P

[Jon]

Hi Phil.
Good to get another man from Ulster on the forum. Can't let these Scots have it all their own way!


what races of bee would be involved if you found positive DS and a CI under 2.0 ?

It's hard to say as I have only seen data from Carnica and AMM.
I tend to use wing morphometry to exclude queens which have mated with non AMM drones, ie where the scattergram has a lot of points outside the AMM box. I would guess a lot of these drones are just from local mongrel stock or possibly Buckfast type bees.

[gavin]

You Ulstermen are most welcome to argue about morphometry and the like if you wish. We seem to have fallen fairly quiet for now.

[Jon]

Autumn is upon us and winter approaches which means that the bee nerds are turning their minds to morphometry.

835

The queen heading this colony is from one of the first batches I grafted on 3rd May.
I requeened this colony with her in the middle of July so the bees sampled should all be her own offspring unless the odd one has drifted in.

In the sample of about 40 bees I noticed that 6 bees had a bit of yellow in the first segment. I scanned these separately as I thought they might produce different results but all 6 wings fell within the AMM limits.

This queen is a granddaughter of Galtee stock.

[Jimbo]

I had a colony last year that had this yellow banding in the first segment. I seperated the yellow from the black bees and did the morphometry and got the same result which was over 90% Amm.
No yellow banding seen in this years colonies and by selective breeding and mating at an isolated breeding site I have increased the number of colonies with high Amm results. If I can get these colonies through the winter I will be in a good position next year for producing Amm queens for local beekeepers

[Jon]

I have increased the number of colonies with high Amm results.

That's good to hear. I have another dozen or more still to sample and have high hopes for a few of them.
I still have several colonies headed by very good 2010 queens which I would like to graft from.

[Jon]

Another of this years queens.
A sister of q61, daughter of q57

836

[gavin]

It almost looks like you are trying to always have one bee outside the box Jon. Your post on 16th Dec last year seemed to have a Mars Bar winning plot. Did Jimbo deliver?!

I have a bag of fun-sized Mars Bars in my porch and the Guising/Trick-Treating season seems to have gone by without bands of kids entertaining us at the door. Anyone want to win a 2011 prize?!

Just remember that perfection in a plot - rather like in a potato sitting on a paper plate in a flower show - isn't a target worth getting too excited about. Get most of them in the box and you have Amm. Get them all in and you are either lucky or have inbred bees, not necessarily a good thing.

G.

[Jon]

Get most of them in the box and you have Amm.

I agree, and my colonies have only a couple of feet between them so I am sure the odd bee drifts into a neighbouring colony.
The one I just posted also has 5 bees with a yellow segment and they all fell within the amm box.

Assuming temper and other behaviour is ok, either of those would be a candidate to graft from next year.

I declined Jimbo's Mars bar last year as it would probably have arrived deep fried and battered (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-fried_Mars_bar).

I only grafted one batch from that colony 44 with the perfect scattergram and most of them went to members of the queen rearing group. I kept two daughters and one was killed on introduction and the other was superseded within a month. The supersedure queen was mated at the end of September and seems to be doing well. I still have the original queen 44 in a colony in my garden and will graft from it next year. It didn't make any attempt to swarm which is a good sign and is going into winter as a big healthy colony. Roll on 2012.

[gavin]

Roll on 2012.

Absolutely!

The yellowness - I presume - means that you can't rely solely on any one trait as there are Amm hybrid offspring around, maybe generations down the line, but largely Amm in their make-up. Select on one trait and you might get near Amm but you can miss Amm hybrid derivatives. The more traits you look at the fewer such hybrid derivatives get through the net. I really should have a better look soon at the stocks we've gathered up at the association site - and an Amm-looking swarm that arrived in my apiary too (the previous stocks for mine were mixed).



I declined Jimbo's Mars bar last year as it would probably have arrived deep fried and battered (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-fried_Mars_bar).


Last week I had a foray to Stranraer in the pouring rain. I missed the best road coming back and so diverted right through the middle and, passing a chippy, my stomach reminded me it needed food. I went in for a single fish (the smell in the car has barely dispersed now, I'll not do that again in a hurry), and the two lads who went in right after me gave their orders.

'Deep fried Mars Bar' said the bolder one. Me, the guy behind the counter and the bloke's mate all seemed to think: Hang on, isn't this just something we hear about in comedy shows? His mate sounded incredulous, 'I've never seen one of those' (neither have I), and the man behind the counter did a brief double-take then proceeded to take a Mars Bar out of its wrapper, dip it in batter, then into the fryer. I got my order first and headed out, telling the Mars Bar guy that I'd love to have stayed to see what it is like but had a long drive home. You see some funny things in the isolated corners of Scotland.

There's me destroying this focussed thread with stories of culinary exotica.

[Jimbo]

Nothing wrong with a deep fried mars bar. Keeps me in a job sorting out the publics clogged up arteries!

[Jon]

And another
Also a sister of the previous two I posted.
Average CI is a bit higher in this one.
I also noticed a few bees with a bit of yellow on the first segment.

838

[Jimbo]

Very similar to my lot this year. High 70's for the Amm

[Jon]

Very similar to my lot this year. High 70's for the Amm

I still have these ones from 2010 which I hope to graft from next year.
I have requeened a lot of colonies with daughters of a queen unrelated to these two.

841 842

[Jon]

This one has disappointed me.
I requeened a colony with the queen from a cluster I rescued from beside my apiary in July.
I assumed this was a queen which had mated in my own apiary.
All the bees were dark as well - no yellow banding.

I think this is the best use for morphomety, ie it lets you know that what looks right superficially may well be hybridized.

Good for drone production but not for grafting.

846

[Rosie]

Jon

Do you have a theory on what drones will have been responsible for this? Also, if you grafted from it and happened to select a larva from bottom left of the plot, do you think you might be able to produce a fairly pure queen from it?

Rosie

[Jon]

My guess with this one is Carnica influence in the plots with high CI - or maybe just dark mongrels. The vast majority of beekeepers here have fairly mongrelised stock although there is often very obvious yellow banding.
I think the chances of getting a good AMM queen from a plot like this are about 50/50 so I would prefer to graft from others where the odds are better.
There is a distinct cluster bottom left though which I would guess is from drones in my own apiary.

I requeened this one in early September and am assuming that there should be very few bees left from the previous queen.
I will check it again in May but in my experience you don't see much change if you have waited 3 months before sampling.

This queen is a sister of 3 others I posted recently, 60, 61,and 68 and they seem to be quite uniform.

847848849

[Peter]

Hi Everyone

Have to confess that I have not been following this forum as I have been overwhelmed! However, I have just had three e-mails in quick succession telling me about messages that have been posted - not sure why they arrived now as I have never had any before; Gavin?

I notice that the plots shown are not from the latest version of MorphPlot. We have been on 2.2 for along time now and it is available from:
http://www.stratfordbeekeepers.homecall.co.uk/MorphPlotV2.2.XLS

With regard to sending screen shots, the simplest and best software that I have found is Gadwin PrintScreen - and it is free (go down the page to the free version):
http://www.gadwin.com/download/
Very simple to use: when it is loaded, press your PrintScreen button, draw a marquee around what you want to capture, press return and then give the file a name.

I might try to upload some plots when I have a moment!

Best wishes

Peter

[Peter]

Also:

There is a version for Carnica which Philipp Maier from Austria created. There is also an ico file in case you want to put a shortcut to MorphPlot on your desktop; everything is here:
http://www.stratfordbeekeepers.homecall.co.uk/

Best wishes

Peter

[Jon]

Hi Peter.

I use the latest version if I have wings beyond -10. Other than that the compact version looks better I think.

I got the Carnica version from your website last year and used it to make a composite plot contrasting AMM and Carnica using data from one of my queens and data from the NZ carnica which have been imported here.

850

[gavin]

Hi Peter

Good to see you posting. I think that this part of the forum is set up to send an email to a list of interested people when something is posted. The long gap since a previous email will just be due to the fact that the threads have been dormant here for a while.

I'm happy to remove this for one or all if you like - but I haven't changed the settings on here since we started this part of the forum.

best wishes

Gavin

[Peter]

Hi Gavin

Don't change anything!

Best wishes

Peter

[Peter]

Try this one.

Best wishes

Peter

851

[Jon]

Hi Peter
That looks quite similar to some of mine.
What is the geographic origin of the queen?
Any Galtee genetics in there?

If you look at the two I posted on the previous page, 44 and 48, these are sisters and 44 is mated with mainly Galtee drones (thanks Mervyn!) whereas 48 was mated in my own apiary where I had no (known) Galtee genetics at the time.

[Jon]

A queen mates with up to 15 drones.
Sometimes on a drawwing plot there seems to be a cluster of 4 or 5 points quite distinct from the rest of the wings plotted.
I imagine that this could be the influence of a single drone of the various drones the virgin queen mated with.
The problem is that the typical sample size is 40-50 wings which is small.
I wonder if 1000 wings from the same colony were plotted would these separate out into significantly distinct clusters- ie if the queen mated with 10 drones the scattergram would start to show several distinct groups which you will never see in a small sample size. If drones came from 4 different colonies you might start to see 4 distinct groupings appear.

In this one which I posted the other day there is a distinct group with a high CI and another with a positive DS. Even within the main cluster within the AMM limits it looks like there are several clusters within it. Pure speculation with a small sample size but might be interesting to keep sampling the same colony once a month to build up a really large sample.

Peter - is there a limit to the amount of data which can be posted into morphplot?

852

[Jimbo]

Hi Peter,

I also have some plots like your's I will need to have another go at posting plots to let you see them.
Jon you may be right about sample size. I know from my day job that sample size is important if you are looking for small changes. We tend to process thousands of samples in population genetics. If the sample size is too small you can miss some differences.
I have also seen variation in my results from the same colonies that I have now sampled twice. It will be interesting (if they make it through the winter as the queens are getting on a bit) to get a third sample in the spring from these colonies.
Even though there is some variation they are still between 85% and 95% Amm

[gavin]

85-95% on a plot probably means that it is what you want, unless you've taken stringent measures to avoid sampling bees that drifted. I remember a German video where they only sampled emerging workers individually with forceps, but for our purposes youngish bees from the brood nest, maybe after a light shake, should do the business. Not so easy at this time of year. It was quite instructive having a Buckfast colony a few years ago - they turned up everywhere and one colony in particular (not the closest) had larger numbers.

[Jon]

OK
I have a chance to do an experiment here.
I removed the queen 75 from an apidea at the start of September and requeened part of colony 45 which was only about 35% amm..
The apidea then made a scrub queen which never mated and has been dwindling since September.
I have just discovered that the bees in this apidea are dead/frozen.
All these bees should be from queen 75.
There are about 100.
I checked them one by one and not a single one has any yellow banding on it.
I will plot the wings now and see how they compare to the scattergram I posted above.
If the scattergrams don't coincide it means that the one above must still have had bees from the previous colony.
It is very unlikely that bees have drifted into an apidea with an unmated queen.
Watch this space.

[Jon]

Hmm.

The bees from the apidea gave a much better looking scattergram.
The other one I posted must still have had workers from the previous queen Q45.

853 854 855

[Rosie]

That's good news then Jon.

Can I take you back to my post No 105.

If it had been genuine with none of the previous queen's bees or drifters, the plot would suggest that she had mated with one or more drones of a different race. That means that the larvae she was producing are suspect. If you take a worker from the bottom left of the plot I would have thought that there is no way of knowing if that particular bee had inherited her mother's wings but her (exotic) father's other characteristics. Hence it could be almost as dangerous grafting from that position as the opposite corner. Perhaps it should be assumed that once you have a spread of wings in any plot then it would be very difficult to get back to anything pure, regardless of the number of grafted queens you are prepared to cull. Of course, if that's the best stock one has then we just have to accept that any breeding programme will be tedious and yield slow results.

Rosie

[Jon]

I am not sure it works like that. Maybe Gavin or Jimbo can explain better than me.

When you graft a larva with a view to turning it into a queen you have no way of knowing where it would have been on the scattergram had it developed as a worker.
If it develops as a queen, flies and mates with various drones, then the scattergram from this one will reflect these drones as well.

If you take a pure galtee virgin queen and inseminate it with semen from 5 galtee and 5 ligustica drones your chance of getting a pure galtee daughter from a graft will be 50/50 assuming that each drone donated 10% of the semen.
In each case a larva grafted will be the result of an egg from the mother galtee queen and a single sperm from her spermatheca, either one from a galtee drone or one from a ligustica. In this example you will average 50% pure galtee virgin queens, and 50% galtee/ligustica hybrid virgin queens from the larvae grafted.
And all drones would be pure galtee.

[Jon]

Here are photos from the apidea.

856

Scrub queen to the left of the worker. Similar size but note the longer leg and the reddish colour. This queen hatched in September and never mated.

857

74 workers scanned. All dark with no yellow banding at all.

858

Not enough bees in the apidea to be viable

[Rosie]

I am with you with all that Jon. The problem I have is once you have done your grafts and produced queens - some pure and some hybrids - how can you be confident that you are able to tell which is which and breed from the pure one next time?

[Jon]

Hi Steve
It will always be a percentages game to some extent unless you are grafting from a known pure amm queen such as a galtee.
I don't graft from any queen which has any yellow offspring or any queen with a ropey looking scattergram as I reckon that is asking for trouble even if the colony is even tempered.
It would be different if I didn't have better queens to chose from as I would have to take more risks and then be very strict about culling yellow daughters or any showing aggression.
I know they say that colour is a poor guide to discriminating bee races but I cannot see how yellow banding in amm indicates anything other than hybridization.

If you graft from a hybrid queen it is very unlikely you will get back to amm, I think due to Mendel's Law of Independent Assortment, as the eggs she produces are bound to carry hybrid dna irrespective of the sperm this queen has in her spermatheca.
In this sense it is clearly better to start from a pure race queen!
The queen I grafted from the most this year was a galtee daughter I got from Mervyn.
The scattergram was not 'perfect' , ie some wings outside the amm limits..

859 860

..but there were no yellow bees at all among her workers and the scattergram showed a distinct cluster indicating uniformity. I hatched at least 100 daughters from this one and every one was black. Temper seems to be very good so far. The mother of q57, the one in the picture, was a galtee mated in Tipperary.

I suspect that Galtees do not have a DS way to the left and I still have not got a sample for morphometry from a pure Galtee mated in Tipperary.

If you look at the scattergrams I have posted, 44 and 45 are sisters, daughters of 31. 44 has a scattergram 100% yet 45 is at 32%. In the case of 45, more than half the workers have yellow banding. In this case I am quite confident the yellow came from the drone side.

The other thing is that after 150 years of imports in GB and Ireland I think it is inevitable that there has been some introgression of dna from other races into AMM and that is a fact we have to live with.

And to finally attempt to answer your question!!


The problem I have is once you have done your grafts and produced queens - some pure and some hybrids - how can you be confident that you are able to tell which is which and breed from the pure one next time?

In the example I gave with ligustica drones, yellow is dominant over black so half the grafts are likely to give queens with some yellow banding and would be easily distinguished. With carnica or dark mongrel drones it must be far harder to separate out possible breeder queens. Serious breeders use II to get around all this. We have some plans in this area for next year.

[Peter]

[QUOTE=Jon;7732]Hi Peter
That looks quite similar to some of mine.
What is the geographic origin of the queen?

Orkney. I understand some there are from the 'Maud' strain on the mainland several years ago and that some were also imported from Colonsay (not sure when).

[Peter]

When I changed MorphPlot to accomodate your < -10 DsA, I also allowed for 100 wings (Dave Cushman said you should do 90, so I thought that 100 was a nice round number.

Seems enough to me (I am not into killing the whole colony - I dislike killing 30 or so!), but if you want to produce a version to do 1000 then you are welcome to modify it!

[Jimbo]

Hi Peter,

I have scanned wings for various beekeepers in Scotland. I had 3 colonies from Orkney. 2 were strong Amm but 1 was hybrid. Mull I have scanned so far 4 colonies all good Amm with a further 3 colonies to check. Colonsay was scanned and as expected was Amm. There are a few other areas on the mainland where Amm is showing up eg Wester Ross and further in Sutherland. All these areas are still, as far as we know, varroa free and would be worth protecting especially the Islands. Where else in the world is there varroa free areas and Amm bees? The Central belt is more hybridised but there are areas where Amm is showing up eg Kilbrachan and my own area Rosneath. Samples from these areas were passed on to Catherine Thomson for DNA analysis but I have had no results back yet. I am also certain there will be other areas of Scotland with Amm colonies we just have to find them.

[Peter]

Hi Jimbo

I think that Kate has now finished all her field work and should be starting her DNA work now (or very shortly) as I think the funding for it has just been sorted out. She did a very good presentation at the Central Association Stratford weekend.

Perhaps we will then know what all those 'out of the red box' plots are really telling us.

[Jon]

Seems enough to me (I am not into killing the whole colony - I dislike killing 30 or so!), but if you want to produce a version to do 1000 then you are welcome to modify it!

Hi Peter
Wasn't thinking of butchering them all at once but might be interesting to sample bees from a colony over a season to make a cumulative plot.
In the winter you can find a sample of a couple of hundred dead ones on the floor sometimes after a cold spell.
Catherine has samples from a couple of my colonies as well including that one which had a very negative DS.

Jimbo, were you not going to do some DNA work of your own?

[Peter]

Jon
>In the winter you can find a sample of a couple of hundred dead ones on the floor sometimes after a cold spell.

Not sure that I would choose those as they could be drifters (up to 30% of bees in a colony can be drifters); I always take young nurse bees from the centre of the nest.

[Jon]

Hi Peter
I know it's not ideal but no other choice at this time of year.
I have seen that 30% figure quoted before somewhere but I find it hard to believe under average conditions.
Maybe if you have a queenless colony beside a queenright one you could get a figure like 30%.

I am interested in finding out how strict you have to be with regards to sample taking.
If I have time I will collect samples from a few floors over the next week or two and then compare these samples to samples of young bees taken next may.
There may be a big difference but my gut instinct is that there wont be.

There is a lot of faffing about re. morphometry such as Roger's Bibba articles scanning a wing 10 times and noting slight changes to the left or right with DS, or marginal up/down with the CI.
I can't see what difference it makes in terms of selection of breeder queens even if there is a measuring error of plus or minus -0.5 in DS. The difference between a set of Carnica wings and a set of AMM wings is massive so tiny errors in measurement due to manual placement of the points on the vein junctions is neither here nor there imho.

Have you read the Moritz paper which seriously questions some of the basic tenets underlying morphometry?
I don't think there is enough in it to invalidate wing morphometry as a useful tool but there is enough in it to prevent a sensible man from betting the farm on it.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=40E944022B5FBCB674B52745189501 63?doi=10.1.1.69.393&rep=rep1&type=pdf

They have spent over 40 years in Germany trying to replace AMM with Carnica.
The German Carnica have 'perfect' Carnica wing venation yet the underlying genetics and other morphometric characteristics independent of wing venation have been found to be a mix of Carnica and AMM.
Wing venation has been one of the main selection criteria in Germany for decades.
The paragraph titled 'Biometrical analysis' on page 58 cuts to the chase.

This is the main point Richard Bache kept banging on about in the morphometry debate on the old bbka forum and this paper certainly should be given due consideration for those who use wing morphometry as part of the selection process.

It would be interesting to have your thoughts on this.

[Peter]

Bees do drift a great deal - and not just within the apiary. Of course, if you have mostly the same type of bee in your area then you might not notice the interlopers!
Yes, I was puzzled by Roger's tests - especially as he intervened manually thus, I would suggest, invalidating the whole thing. I have repeated the tests, with better control, but the errors are similar. I agree that the errors introduced by the scanner (there are none introduced by the software) are not significant, although it is possible to produce some quite large errors by incorrect placing of the landmarks. For me, the most important thing is the grouping.
My selection is based on a whole raft of traits (some would say too many!) and morphometry is just one more tool in the box; and because of the time required it is the last tool to be used and then only on colonies that look promising.
I had not seen the Moritz paper. I did not see it as trying to invalidate wing morphometry, rather trying to show that the German breeding programme has failed.
Of course, our aims are very different to those in Germany - we are trying to eliminate the exotic species - not our native bees! Certainly shows that we have an uphill struggle on our hands.
I did not follow Richard Bache's posts as I found his attitude rather unpleasant.

[Jon]

Hi Peter
In defence of RB, I think he was just trying to draw attention to the over exuberance of some practitioners with regard to what morphometry can tell us.
I think he over stated his case at times but I enjoyed the debate.

That Moritz paper certainly highlights some of the potential pitfalls.
It is very significant that CI and DS were perfect in the bees sampled, yet other morphometric characteristics which had not been selected for showed clear evidence of hybridization between Carnica and Mellifera, ie, you are getting the wings you have selected for but you are not necessarily getting the underlying genetics which the wings are supposed to be diagnostic of.
With regard to selecting breeder queens, I think the main use of wing morphometry is to use wing venation to rule out colonies which look right, on colour for example, as opposed to selecting queens based on the best patterns.
The most pleasing scenario is when you have a really nice quiet and productive colony, provisionally marked as a potential breeder, and the morphometry carried out at the end of the year indicates that the it falls within amm limits and is not hybridized.

[Rosie]

The thing I disliked at Richard Bache's argument was his assertion that BIBBA breeders were basing all selection on wing morphometry and neglecting other characteristics. Even the BIBBA wing morphometry training days spent a considerable amount of time explaining and stressing the importance of other selection criteria despite the fact that these other criteria were already being used by the participants who were there to gain the expertise to add wing morphometry to their arsenal.

The big advantage I see in wing morphometry is that it can detect bad matings in your breeding stock a generation earlier than behavioural assessments can.

Rosie

[Peter]

These show the problems that we are up against in this area - bees that look native, but do not score highly. This is where morphometry seems to me to be a valuable tool.

706 is two generations on from a very good Ratnieks queen. Obviously it has breeding potential because we know its pedigree, but we would probably have to cull more than 50% of the queens produced.

751 is a queen that swarmed from a local feral colony. They look as native as you could wish for, but what is their true origin? Obviously quite a lot of A.m.m. I would suggest, but what have they crossed with? Italian? Carniolan? Again, it probably has breeding potential, but with considerable culling.



876875

[Jon]

My guess would be Carnica influence especially if they are dark.
If the influence were from Ligustica or Buckfast I think you would see some yellow banding in the first generation workers.
I posted a couple of similar scattergrams from bees in my fathers apiary right at the start of this thread. He has a near neighbour who brought in some queens from Slovenia a few years ago.

These two.
877 878

[Peter]

Interesting that almost all of those have negative DsA - it is just the CI that has increased - as in my 706. However, in 751 the plots are heading Northeast.

Here we need answers from Kate!

[Jon]

Northeast is where you find Carnica on a scattergram!
Roll on the DNA analysis.

[gavin]

The Carnica influence is so insidious - superficially similar dark bees rather than colour-coded bees that are easy to spot.

As a practitioner of DNA methods I think that you may be putting too much faith in their ability to deliver a lot of clarity without a large amount of data. From what I've seen in the literature it is all to do with allele frequencies, and that means that characterizing individuals is hard. With a lot of DNA data you could say whether a particular sample matches this or that population, but are there reliable samples available of pure Amm from across the UK?

[gavin]

706 is two generations on from a very good Ratnieks queen. Obviously it has breeding potential because we know its pedigree, but we would probably have to cull more than 50% of the queens produced.

751 is a queen that swarmed from a local feral colony. They look as native as you could wish for, but what is their true origin? Obviously quite a lot of A.m.m. I would suggest, but what have they crossed with? Italian? Carniolan? Again, it probably has breeding potential, but with considerable culling.


Two generations on is too far to recover pure Amm, and how can you guarantee that the Sussex queen was not a hybrid anyway?

Presumably if they were Italian hybrids they would be yellow. Carnica hybrids should show the fringe of gingery rather than brown hairs - noticeable on the thorax - and short tergite hairs and maybe a more slender appearance. Can you spot these traits?

[Peter]

Well, we think there are pure samples in some areas - but will have to await Kate's verdict.

[Peter]

Not sure why two generations on is too far - can you explain? If true, then there is little hope for any of us!

We had a black bee in this area with all the right features of A.m.m. in terms of colour, size, shape, tomenta, comb building, cappings etc. However, they were a bit aggressive. mtDNA was found to be ligustica - but not a trace of yellow on them.

Carnica would have wide tomenta. 751 did not and there was no yellow either.

[Jon]

It comes back to Steve's question in post 122. If you have a mixed F2 population of 'pure' amm and hybrids which superficially look the same, how do you tell them apart with regard to selecting queens for breeding especially when there are no obvious colour clues?

Keeping a pure race pure is going to be very difficult unless all your neighbours keep the same race or you use II.
Once genetic material gets mixed up it cannot easily be unmixed.
You can select for the correct traits -which will give you something which looks and behaves like the original - but we are back to the Moritz paper here.

You must be familiar with Mervyn's system for keeping AMM pure. He requeens all his stock every year with daughters of his current year queen and at the end of each season buys a new Galtee queen from which he grafts the following year. His requeened colonies which are F1 Galtee produce a mixture of workers depending upon what his grafted queens happened to mate with on the wing, but their drones are pure Galtee. Once you let it go to F2 you are into a lottery re. the DNA in the eggs produced by your F2 queens and you cannot guarantee the purity of your drones.

[Rosie]

You can select for the correct traits -which will give you something which looks and behaves like the original - but we are back to the Moritz paper here.

My ambitions are not a lot higher than getting the appearance and behaviour right. The only other things I am aiming at is to get them to breed true and have them capable of mating with AMMs from outside the area without getting hybrid aggression. I hope to test the latter next season.

I doubt if anyone has pure bees now in any case - including Carnica, Ligustica and Galtee breeders.

Steve

[Jon]

I doubt if anyone has pure bees now in any case - including Carnica, Ligustica and Galtee breeders.
Steve

I would tend to agree with you but some are probably fairly close to the original.
I always remember those videos from the 1930s which showed French AMM being installed in apiaries around Scotland.

The point you make about breeding true is the crucial one.
I did not knowingly have any Galtee genetics in my apiary until last year but my queens in Apideas have crossed with Mervyn's drones at his mating site and the Galtee daughter I grafted from this year has crossed with my own drones without any signs of aggression so far.

[Rosie]

We desperately need a service whereby we can get our bees DNA tested with fast results so that we can use the results as part of our assessments. Although project Discovery is a great initiative I don't think it will help individuals a great deal. I remember Dave Cushman once predicting that beekeepers would be able to carry out DNA testing themselves one day.

It's interesting that Peter mentioned black bees that turned out to be Ligustica. I had something similar about 5 years ago. I knew they had mated with Buckfast/Greeks but they were as black as anything I had seen. There is talk on here of yellow being dominant but I don't think it's all that simple.

Steve

[Jon]

According to the Woyke paper yellow is dominant and Woyke is one of the big names in bee research over the past few decades.

http://jerzy_woyke.users.sggw.pl/hercol.pdf

I brought it up in this thread last year.

http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?350-Example-of-hybridization&highlight=woyke

It's not simple in that there are various genes involved but it does seem fairly clear cut that yellow is dominant.

[gavin]

Hi Peter


Not sure why two generations on is too far - can you explain? If true, then there is little hope for any of us!

I may have been a little hasty there. That's code for: I was wrong! Any individual which is a hybrid will give rise to only hybrid derivatives. On the other hand, a queen of a pure race which mated with some pure and some other drones will give a mix of pure and mixed progeny. Select the pure ones and you will be OK. There is still the potential for pure Amm daughter queens to emerge as long as every generation mates with at least some pure drones, and especially if the Amm line is selected for against the hybrids.



We had a black bee in this area with all the right features of A.m.m. in terms of colour, size, shape, tomenta, comb building, cappings etc. However, they were a bit aggressive. mtDNA was found to be ligustica - but not a trace of yellow on them.

Interesting. Suggests that it was an Aml x Amm hybrid which had backcrossed to Amm a few times. Or that the DNA test was less conclusive than claimed.

Quite a few plants (oaks spring to mind) show a pattern of cytoplasmic DNA (mitochondrial, chloroplast) variation that is completely different to the nuclear DNA and visible trait distribution. One possibility is that one oak species colonised an area then others came in and replaced it not by physical displacement but by successive rounds of hybridisation until to all intents and purposes it was the second species.

I wouldn't have put it past bees to have done the same thing, giving slightly different Amm types in different areas. This takes us back to DNA and Amm. How will anyone know that they have a real reference population of pure Amm for a given area? Without using extensive sets of historic specimens all you can do is to compare modern samples to modern reference populations. Colonsay and Galtee for example. Are they completely pure? Are they representative of 'good' Amm from other areas, or was there always some differentiation into lowland, eastern, heath, highland, western types? Doris told us about less dark types in Austria, the 'heath' bee was always regarded as particularly dark, but what of Warwickshire or lowland Perthshire Amm?

Lots of things to think about, including that gale out there that might once again have knocked hives over ...

G.

[Jon]

Here are 4 more.
57 is properly sampled but the other 3 are from dead bees I collected at the front of each colony after midweek spring cleaning.

54 is a nice colony.
This queen came from a supersedure cell I rescued in 2010.
It made no attempt to swarm this year and was a strong colony most of the summer.
I used it as a queenright cell raiser for a few weeks.
I grafted a few from it but mostly grafted from 57 this year as it is unrelated to any of my other colonies.

881 880 879 882

[gavin]

My gran used to read tea-leaves for people. She spent time in various jobs at least one in a catering environment, and in her spare time would meet her friends for cups of tea and cake in other ones, where she made sure that the roles were reversed. I suspect that it was in her customer role where the tea-leaf reading came into its own. She started doing it as a joke but as the years passed everyone - perhaps her included - started to think that it had some predictive value. Isn't it sad that tea usually comes in little paper (or even plastic) pounches these days? Another dying tradition.

So, at this unique time of year I'm thinking of family, past, present and even future. And tradition. Let's ensure that gran's skills and her sustaining of tradition (I'm assuming that she had an elderly relative who did something similar in her childhood) are not entirely lost. I'm going to start interpreting these plots.

Maybe I should try doing it after a drink. Perhaps even something stronger than tea. However, for now, in Jon's plots I can see a house (a big broad bungalow), a snowman (with, I think, bees buzzing around his head - although they could be flies), and a large conifer leaning across a fence and spreading branches across a garden. The last one is beyond me for now. I may try again after a drink this evening. What does it all mean? Your guess is as good as anyone's. Maybe there is something big about to happen at houses or a specific house, that it involves models of rotund gentlemen, and that winter trees are part of the picture? Ideas anyone?

May you all enjoy whatever solstice festivals you take part in.

Gavin

[Jimbo]

Using my crystal ball, as we only have tea bags in our house. I can make out the letters M- - RS B-R for Col 54. The others I can't see anything.

Have a great Christmas holiday and hope that all your colonies make it through the winter.

[Jon]

hope that all your colonies make it through the winter.

Fingers crossed. I have a couple of understrength nucs are highly unlikely to make it but the rest of them are in decent enough shape.
I hope 54 makes it through as I only have 1 daughter queen from her and half the bees in that colony are yellow so obviously strayed into bad company on the mating flight. I did graft a couple of batches but for some reason they all ended up in other peoples apideas. One is in a beginners WBC hive in his garden and the colony was doing well when I helped him with it a month ago. There are probably about a dozen more in various apiaries belonging to members of the queen rearing group.

[Rosie]

Here's a plot I did last week. The samples were taken from dead bees on the ground infront of a hive so some could be drifters. It's a colony I supplied last season to a beginner. They are from my strain that has good cubital index but rubbish discoidal shift but ideal for beginners because they are so tame. There are a few very low cubital index ones here despite the high doscoildal shift. I am dying to find out what Catherine Thompson makes of them.

Rosie
889

[gavin]

Invoking the spirit of Jessie Smith, I think that I can see a puppy leaping and twisting to snatch at a bee in flight. Or maybe it is a small deer. No, I think that it is more likely to be a puppy. Deer just don't do that.

I was hoping to see a plantation of leeks or maybe a hive or two bobbling along in a stream, but in all honesty I only see the dog.

Oh, and there are lots of dots well outside of the red box. You have a hybrid line there, unless Welsh natives lean to the right naturally of course. If they have furry bottoms and air spaces below the cappings, give them a home. Tame sounds good.

[Rosie]

Invoking the spirit of Jessie Smith, I think that I can see a puppy leaping and twisting to snatch at a bee in flight. Or maybe it is a small deer. No, I think that it is more likely to be a puppy. Deer just don't do that.

I was hoping to see a plantation of leeks or maybe a hive or two bobbling along in a stream, but in all honesty I only see the dog.

Oh, and there are lots of dots well outside of the red box. You have a hybrid line there, unless Welsh natives lean to the right naturally of course. If they have furry bottoms and air spaces below the cappings, give them a home. Tame sounds good.

I can see that damn puppy now.

As for hybrids I tend to agree but I am still waiting for Catherine's results. If you see p38 of "The Dark European Honey Bee" you will see that of the three Linnaean honey bees tested, the third one had a positive d.s in the right wing and a negative one in the left. These bees had been collected in 1758 by Linne himself so their authenticity cannot be challenged. Having said that it seems that positive d.s is uncommon and, according to the few samples in that book, were never more than +1.

Oddly enough most of my bees' ancestry came from the East Midlands although the wing pattern of this strain is similar to many found in this region.

edit: I just had another look and realised the bee the puppy is after is the one with high C.I. He's welcome to that one.

Rosie

[gavin]

A well trained puppy, trying to eliminate an obvious drifter. The flaw in that argument is that I don't think that you get well trained puppies.

Well, Amm was and is a variable entity. Who can say that it isn't allowed to creep a few points eastwards on the DS axis? At least it isn't away off into a top right corner off the scale of the plot.

East Midlands - how can that be? I thought that I read somewhere recently that Amm can't be found there? (I'm just on the wind-up S, calm down ... ). However a wee bit of searching reveals the scale and care the group there were investing in this just a few years ago, despite the invasion of imported stocks into their area. Are they continuing?

http://www.bibba.com/group_eastmids.php

Gavin

PS Bad me. I'm starting to take this rather focussed thread off in new directions. Shouldn't.

[Rosie]

If I can continue along the east Midlands tangent, east Midlands group have recently been revitalised. I believe they were the original BIBBA group set up in the early days right in Beo's hunting ground. It was populated with BIBBA heavy weights like Albert Knight who,despite his age and health problems, is still as keen and active as his health will allow. They seemed to go through the doldrums a few years back but I am told that they are now up and running again and very active. I think they were very influential in the setting up of the Galtee Group which, of course, has developed into a force to be reckoned with. Hopefully east Midlands will eventually achieve similar success again.

My east Mids bees were originally from a remote apiary in Nottinghamshire. That had been populated in about 1960 with bees from Derbyshire (in fact from the very village I happened to be living in)under the guidance of Beo himself. They pre-date Galtee and probably East Midlands group also. The owner of the apiary is still keeping bees well into his 80s and occasionally sends me samples for wing testing. They are still quite pure, more so than mine which have suffered from the importation of Greek Hybrid Buckfasts. I found it hard work keeping them true in my part of Derbyshire despite the general population of the area showing more AMM than any other race.

I did once cadge some grafts from east Mids Group but the resultant mini nuc boxes became overwhelmed by swarms from a pseudo bee farmer's Greek hybrids which he dumped in a rape field nearby and proceeded to let them swarm out of control. I eventually ended up destroying the single queen that survived it. She turned out to be in charge of a hive of killers which went berserk when I took her out.

I suspect the bees in the Notts apiary are probably original east Midland natives as the owner has never imported bees from anywhere else and he started before Irish bees were available, for example. The Santa lookalike once offered to collect samples from him for Project Discovery. If he did and their provenance is proven perhaps people will step up to the mark and help preserve them. It's difficult for me to help now because all my stock are slowly turning Welsh and I am not even trying to discourage them.

Rosie

[gavin]

That is really interesting Rosie, thanks. I hope that they have enough people and time to make a real difference.

Did that Notts old beekeeper do anything special to keep his stocks pure? I can't imagine that he is *that* isolated and he must be really lucky if he hasn't had some beginner start up somewhere in his locality with exotic or mixed bees. Does he weed out hybrids on their looks?

[Rosie]

The Notts beekeeper did nothing special to keep them pure. He did not even test wings until I helped with some 2 or 3 years ago. He was quite isolated until recently as he had Clumber Park all to himself with miles of forest and farmland between him and anyone else. The only forage he had available was a huge avenue of old limes that were about 6 deep each side and about a mile long (if my memory is to be relied on) so few took their bees there. I remember reading once (I think it was Clive De Bruyn) that the limes at Clumber don't yield but my old beekeper used to get a substantial crop every year. His bees used to build slowly and were at their peak at lime time. He bred from the bees that performed the best and I suspect his locality favoured natives.

He never caught a swarm, even his own, claiming that if bees wanted to swarm they were welcome to go. I suspect that his lost swarms colonised the park and formed a genetic buffer for him. He said though that he had reached the stage where his bees rarely swarmed in any case and because he was largely let-alone he could only detect supersedure the following summer when a colony's productivity increased.

Rosie

[Jon]

Rosie

I suspect that the Galtee bees do not have a very negative DS.
This is the one I did most of my grafting from last year, a Galtee daughter mated in Mervyn's apiary with a dozen colonies producing Galtee drones.
Some of my own non Galtee origin colonies have a far more negative DS.
This thing about this one is that 100% of her workers were black. Mervyn complained about a near neighbour who brought in a couple of colonies of Buckfast at some point over that summer. However, I think I would have easily picked up any Buckfast introgression via yellow banding in the workers and there was none. I suspect that Galtee has a negaqtive DS but not strongly. The daughters of this one which I have sampled are producing an average DS of about -2.

890

[Rosie]

Hi Jon.
I have a bit of a problem with Discoidal Shift. DrawWing usually places point 18 too high which is over-optimistic in my view. I carefully position 18 and 6 to achieve the biggest chord length possible. I suspect others might be positioning them where 2 vertical tangents strike the end arcs of the cell. By sight DrawWing seems to do that but it can't make sense as the wings are not all orientated the same way on the page. Some slope differently to others. One day, when I've got nothing better to do, I will let drawing choose the point locations and see just how much DrawWing's DS differs from mine. By behaviour and appearance discoidal shift seems to be of little consequence. I remember Jacob Kahn, at the last BIBBA conference, saying that discoidal shift is influence by nurture as opposed to cubital index which is purely genetic. This is yet another thing that reduces my confidence in discoidal shift.

All the best

Rosie

[Jon]

I do 18 and 6 the same way as you but I do get some colonies with very negative DS.


We should e-mail each other a few scans and then compare the plots we get to see if we are all on the same hymnsheet.

[Peter]

Hi Rosie

That is one of the reasons you should always work in Interactive mode. Landmarks 0, 1, 3, 6 and 18 are not placed acurately enough - but it takes little effort to correct them.

My understanding is that the line from 6 to 18 is defined as the greatest chord across the cell as you have indicated.

I have noted that in a number of scientific papers that CI is often quoted, but not DsA. I wonder whether that is because of natural variability, or difficulty in measuring accurately - certainly a minute movement of landmarks 6 and 18 causes a considerable change to DsA. It is also said that DsA has a geographic variation as you move from south to north - although I am not sure how that ties in with Jon's DsA results of < -10.

[Rosie]

Good idea Jon but I have tried emailing complete scans before and they are too big. Perhaps one wing will do initially and then swap CDs with complete scans at some convenient time.

I'm glad you also have some concerns about DS Peter. It seems that we are all coming to similar conclusions but from differeing perspectives. It's good to compare notes and on this forum you can do it without some trouble maker chipping in and turning everything into a fruitless argument about BIBBA and the idiocy of wanting to explore the subject of black bees. People who have not experienced other bee forums will not know what I'm talking about!

Rosie

[Peter]

No problem with e-mailing jpg.

I have just opened a bmp file with 15 wings and then saved it as jpg.

File size for bmp 13.472MB
File size or jpg 1.236MB

No difference in CI or DsA from these two files.

[Jon]

- although I am not sure how that ties in with Jon's DsA results of < -10.

..and that colony is headed by a granddaughter queen of a swarm I collected 3 years ago which did not come from my apiary so I don't have a great deal of history to go on.

[Rosie]

No problem with e-mailing jpg.

I have just opened a bmp file with 15 wings and then saved it as jpg.

File size for bmp 13.472MB
File size or jpg 1.236MB

No difference in CI or DsA from these two files.

fairynuff then. Lets get emailing! I'll send 1 or 2 to Jon tomorrow. Do you want to participate Peter?

[Jon]

Steve - what is the biggest file size you can send?
Maybe Gavin could set up an area where we could upload a few scans and then run them through drawwwing and morphplot.

[gavin]

If anyone wants to email me stuff I'll happily FTP it to a folder on the server if that helps.

I could see if I can alter the upload options for individuals, but I'd rather not start giving out the passwords for the server which is what you'd need to upload directly to the server yourself rather than through the forum software.

[Jon]

If anyone wants to email me stuff I'll happily FTP it to a folder on the server if that helps.


It might be good to put a set of scanned wings on the server and then anyone who wanted could download them to compare to an existing plot.

Steve and Peter. I have just sent you 5 scanned slides, jpgs, about 2mb each, each one with about 15 wings. They are all from the same colony so should be plotted together.

Gav - I can send you the same set if you want to make them available.

[gavin]

OK, let's make them available.

img174.jpg (http://www.sbai.org.uk/scans/img174.jpg)
img176.jpg (http://www.sbai.org.uk/scans/img176.jpg)
img177.jpg (http://www.sbai.org.uk/scans/img177.jpg)
img178.jpg (http://www.sbai.org.uk/scans/img178.jpg)
img179.jpg (http://www.sbai.org.uk/scans/img179.jpg)

G.

[Rosie]

Steve - what is the biggest file size you can send?
Maybe Gavin could set up an area where we could upload a few scans and then run them through drawwwing and morphplot.

I don't know since changing my broadband system recently. However, I have just successfully sent you and Peter a file of 36 wings in jpeg format taking 1.2MB.

I think I might have failed in the past when trying to send a complete DrawWing results file.

Rosie

[Jon]

Hi Steve.
This is the result I got from the scans you sent me.
It coincides pretty well with the one you posted in #152 (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?153-Your-gallery-of-2D-plots&p=8010&viewfull=1#post8010)

891

[gavin]

No leaping puppy though. I think that I can now see a penguin in there. Icy weather on the way for Wales?

[Jon]

Emperor or Gentoo?

I did the plot quickly in a cafe after downloading the file.
I would say a neutral observer would match the two plots fairly quickly plotting the penguin wings to the legs of the pup.

[gavin]

Emperor with a belly like that. But yes, parts of the penguin anatomy map onto the pup.

[Rosie]

Puppy or penguin I think that correlation is pretty good. It gives me confidence anyway that 2 people who have mastered the system completely independently came out with plots that are so similar.

I'll have to find time to analyse yours.

Do you want me to send you the scan Gavin to put on the site?

Rosie

[Peter]

All emails received OK. Sorry not to have done any analysis so far - we have had a number of health issues over the Christmas and I have been working hard on re-arranging a holiday that we had to postpone. All a bit of a nightmare - especially flights. I will try to do some if I get a minute, but I have an article to finish for BIM and an association newsletter to write (it might be a bit short - and mainly borrowed!).

[gavin]

Do you want me to send you the scan Gavin to put on the site?

Rosie

I'm happy to do so if you like. The benefit would be for others who would like to try the software and produce plots themselves which match quite well those produced by folk with experience.

[kevboab]

Having never ventured down the road of morphometry I have a couple of questions.

Apart from using morphometry to determine AMM traits is there any use for morphometry to the beekeeper who stocks Italian, Buckfast, Carnies or even local crosses?

Are diagrams available showing where these other stocks should be plotting?

[Jimbo]

Hi Kevboab,

The answer is you could possibly use it to check how pure your strain was assuming that you have a pure strain to check. The problem is that most of the work using morphometry is used for checking Amm. If you look back through these posts in this thread you will see a plot for NZ carniolans posted by Jon,which was a pure strain and plots far away from Amm plot. I am unaware of anybody plotting other strains so you would need to obtain samples of these and see where they plot. DrawWing is a useful tool to determine if you have hybrid colonies or something near a pure Amm etc. You would also look at all the other traits for the species of interest eg Amm produce white cappings, have longer body hair, dark colour, narrow tomenta etc.
There is I think an american site where they used morphometry to eliminate their Amm and to improve their carniolans. The reverse of what we try to do in the UK

[Rosie]

I don't know of any scatterdiagrams that show other races but you can work it out for yourself using standard morphology data for other races. Dave Cushman's website has a good summary:

http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/morphometry.html (http://website.lineone.net/%7Edave.cushman/morphometry.html)

It will give you all the wing details you need as well as plenty of other features such as hair length and colour.

I have never seen much talk about morphologyy of Buckfasts. I suspect each strain is different and they probably vary a lot within each colony. The Germans have used wing morphometry with carniolans and had considerable success. The main strength is that it shows up colonies that are different to the norm and this usually means that you have had a bad mating which has diluted the purity of the line. It also shows you when there exists a wide variety of genetics within a single colony which would make breeding from it a lottery. If you want to select for a mongrel strain you can define your own target shape, perhaps by copying your best colony, and that would help you select similar strains to mate with it. I suspect though that it would take many more generations to get a mongrel strain to become established and breeding true than it would a pure strain. It would also be more difficult to maintain the strain so you might never be able to stop the careful selection process.

Rosie

[Rosie]

This is what I made of Jon's data.

892

While doing them I noticed the scan seems a bit sharper than mine. Yours was in colour as opposed to my greyscale and you use 2 slides where I put my wings onto the platten. I wonder what else is different with Jon's set-up. Jon, I think you said that you use the Epson V300 at 2400 dpi. You must use the positive film setting as I do so I can't think of anything else you might do differently.

I also noticed that 2 of the wings had that freaky short vein.

I remembered this evening, by the way, that I had not done much of the analysis on the sample I posted. It was done under my supervision by someone who had never done it before. I just did the first few wings to demonstrate the method. That shows how simple it is.

Rosie

[Jon]

Hi Steve.
This was my version.
looks like a reasonable match.

893

I use the Epson V330 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B0040ZP3ZI) at 2400 dpi.

I noticed the truncated veins as well. They seem to crop up on a regular basis.
You can see the difference here.

897898

[Rosie]

Mine's a V330 too. I will try scanning mine in colour next time and see what happens. It could be that the system focusses just above the platten where a projector slide would sit. In which case the bottom slide is helpful after all.

I think your plot and mine are near enough to say the system is repeatable for practical purposes. The only significant difference is the three wings with high CI on mine. I just double checked them and would stand by 2 but the third could be a fraction lower although still over the red line.

Rosie

[Rosie]

Jon

Out of interest I just checked your normal wing in post 183. I got CI=1.5453 and DS=-3.1434

I wonder what you would get.

Rosie

[gavin]

Here are the wings of a colony of Rosie's under discussion, CD18 (http://www.sbai.org.uk/scans/img001.jpg).

Enjoy!

[gavin]

This is what I made of Jon's data.

892

Rosie

I see a man in an egg-and-spoon race, wearing some kind of weird head-dress of long feather plumes.

[Jon]

On my original scan from December I had

cubital_index 1.6804
discoidal_shift -3.9159

I did it again 5 minutes ago taking more care than normal at high magnification and got:

cubital_index 1.5753
discoidal_shift -3.3571

Tiny movements of the points can make quite a difference to the values but if the sample is large enough I imagine it all evens out.
In the original reading I hadn't moved the points manually so that is where drawwing placed them by default.

[Jon]

I see a man in an egg-and-spoon race, wearing some kind of weird head-dress of long feather plumes.

Have you been smoking something funny?

Must be Quetzalcóatl, the feathered serpent (http://www.google.com/imgres?q=quetzalcoatl&hl=en&sa=G&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=ZL8uqW_02qf-RM:&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatl&docid=E2QN_rlOSRbvwM&imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/Quetzalcoatl_1.jpg/200px-Quetzalcoatl_1.jpg&w=200&h=300&ei=mcYMT9iWNMiNsQKZm6yVBg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=332&vpy=149&dur=4018&hovh=240&hovw=160&tx=33&ty=264&sig=103674924053826583097&page=1&tbnh=112&tbnw=75&start=0&ndsp=28&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0&biw=1366&bih=603).

[gavin]

That's the one! It wasn't an egg and spoon after all but the thing that Quetzalcoatl is holding looks like the instrument doctors use to look into into your ear. Not smoking, but I'll admit to nice single malt after the exertions of two nights out on beekeeping talk duty. A god of fertility (OK, that fits) and internal political structures .... I wonder if Alex Salmond is involved. No, sorry, should stay clear of politics ...

[Jon]

I think your plot and mine are near enough to say the system is repeatable for practical purposes. The only significant difference is the three wings with high CI on mine. I just double checked them and would stand by 2 but the third could be a fraction lower although still over the red line.

Hi Steve.
I have to hang my head.
I checked all the high CI wings and I also had 3 higher than originally plotted:

2.118 -0.735 0.9858 img174_15R.dw.png
2.275 -1.592 0.8392 img177_10R.dw.png
2.323 -3.214 0.9076 img178_12L.dw.png

I still think it's neither here nor there though!
I would be quite happy to graft from that queen.

[Rosie]

Hi Jon

I agree I wouldn't hesitate to graft from them and and also agree that the original plot was close enough to make the decision on. Out of interest the exact values I obtained were:
2.13 - 175_14
2.2544 -177_10
2.3 - 178_12
So practically the same as your figures. The two systems almost gave the wings the same labels too.

Rosie

[Peter]

Hi Kevboab

Morphometry is certainly used in Austria and Germany for Carniolans. If you download the latest version of MorphPlot (2.2) from here: http://www.stratfordbeekeepers.homecall.co.uk/ and have a look at the MorphPlot sheet you will see that there are red boxes that define the commonly accepted limits for A.m.m. However, you can change this by using the BIG menu at the top to give the limits for the other main races. A problem with Carniolans is that the CI can be above 3, so Philipp Maier in Austria produced a modified version spcifically for Carniolans and that is also available from the site.
Buckfast are hybrids and are of no interest to me.

[Peter]

Hi Steve.
This is the result I got from the scans you sent me.
It coincides pretty well with the one you posted in #152 (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?153-Your-gallery-of-2D-plots&p=8010&viewfull=1#post8010)

891

I have just (quickly!) done Steve's CD18. Result attached (I hope - still not sure about how all this works!).

Average CI 1.642, DsA +0.833.
29% in the box for A.m.m. unless you change the lower limit to 1.0 in which case we have 32% in the box.

[Rosie]

Thanks Peter

I think your plot looks pretty much like mine and Jon's. I would love to know what sort of ancestry produces such a low CI and high DS. I'm still waiting for Catherine to provide all the answers. So no pressure Catherine if you're watching.:)

As for the lower limit of of CI, I wonder, as no other race we know of has such low CI, why there should be a lower limit at all. It's the same with the lower limit of DS. Perhaps Gavin might have a clue as to whether crossing AMM with a race that has high CI could possibly cause the CI to fall below that of an AMM. It sounds unlikely to me.

I fear that we don't have enough historical samples to define the limits with much accuracy.

Rosie

[Peter]

Dorian Pritchard says that DsA varies from North to South (not sure about Ireland!). Perhaps that is why CI alone is often quoted in scientific papers.

Agree on low CI. I would suggest that we might set the lower limit to 1.0 - but perhaps not until Kate has some results!

[Rosie]

I wonder of we could get a few more people like Dorian to contribute to this discussion. It would be an excellent way of passing on all their experience.

Another question that niggles me about colony 18 is that the range of the Discoidal shift is fairly narrow. That, to me, suggests some sort of stability or racial purity and yet the average, coupled with the average CI suggests mongrelisation. On the other hand the CI location suggests purity but its spread is large. There must be people around with enough experience to interpret the various plots.

Rosie

[Jimbo]

I have been reading the posts with interest. Dorian's quote that DS varies from north to south is interesting and we may be in a position to look at this. I have a number of scans over the years from Scottish beekeepers. From Orkney, Mull, Colonsay, Argyll & Bute, The central belt of Scotland (Glasgow Paisley) and a few from the East coast. If the DS was compared to results from Ireland, North Wales, Stratford-upon-Avon etc we could confirm if the DS varies from north to south

[Rosie]

900902901

Hi Jimbo

Here are a few plots that might be of interest.

GT LLD2 is from an apiary in LLangollen which has been established for many years and has had no outside colonies added as long as we can remember.

DJ hive 2 is a feral swarm from Wrexham

Colony V JW is from my old friend in Nottinghamshire who obtained his bees during the late 1960s from Derbyshire and has not imported anything since.

I have plenty of other interesting plots but most are from apiaries that have moved or have had bees added from elsewhere. I picked these 3 out because they are the most likely to be indigenous to their particular area.

Rosiehttp://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/images/misc/pencil.png

[gavin]

On Thursdays clearly my gran's spirit doesn't stop by as I seem unable to interpret these plots in the traditional manner.

Any chance of caucasica introgression in these stocks with DS a little to the right? Hybrids must be hard to spot on other grounds.

John Durkacz (he hasn't posted here for a while) had a plot from a Sutherland sample which showed a tight knot of (Amm) spots. I remember saying that these may be inbred (the situation would imply so) and so maybe that spread that you see Rosie is simply reflecting a broad genetic base, probably a good thing.

[Rosie]

Does anyone know how many caucasions were imported? There is very little reference to them in the literature so I have always assumed that very few made it here and hence tend to discount their contribution to the gene pool.

Rosie

[Jimbo]

Hi Rosie,

They were imported to Scotland at one time. I think Grizzly mentioned them once on this forum and he is from the South of Scotland. I also once had a discussion with one of our older beekeepers who mentioned them in a discussion about propolis and how they propolised everything and how it took him years to get back to a normal hive, so they have been in the Central Belt of Scotland at one time.

[EmsE]

I've managed to get my first lot of wings scanned and through drawWing (with guidance- thank you Jimbo :)). The colony IB1 (the first plot) has come in at 77% AMM. Jimbo kindly assessed her mothers colony earlier in the year, colony IB, and have placed the results here for comparison (the 2nd plot). This colony came in at 70% AMM.

[Jimbo]

Well done, Did you get your scanner to scan a number of wings? If you are still scanning single wings Jon or Rosie may be able to advise on the settings they use for the V330 scanner. How about a bit of history for these colonies. Where did you get your original colony? Was it from Ian Craig? What do you think other beekeepers in Renfrew / Kilbrachan have?

[Rosie]

It's good to see you posting plots EmsE. It's also heart warming to see good plots coming from your area. I would also be interested to know the origin of these bees? I wonder what Gavin's Granny would make of them.

Rose

[gavin]

First one has a swallowtail butterfly zooming down to the corner. Second one evades me for now, maybe the message will get through this evening?

70-77% Amm means that it is Amm or near Amm, as long as the bees show the other traits too (at most a couple of orange spots, thick-set bodies, long hairs on the bum, air spaces under the super cappings) with maybe some drifters, or some bees that developed atypically, or a bit or hybridization in the dim and distant past. That's me just repeating the message that morphometry is only one tool, and one that is best at spotting obvious hybrids.

No obvious traces of the races from the far top right of the scale, ligustica and carnica.

[EmsE]

Well done, Did you get your scanner to scan a number of wings? If you are still scanning single wings Jon or Rosie may be able to advise on the settings they use for the V330 scanner. How about a bit of history for these colonies. Where did you get your original colony? Was it from Ian Craig? What do you think other beekeepers in Renfrew / Kilbrachan have?

I did scan all the wings 1 by 1, but will try again at some point to scan more at the same time. I think part of the problem was changing the threshold for extraction too much. The other problem was that although I enabled macro's in morph plot, they wouldn't work in open office, so had to map over the 3 values for each of the 44 wings.
My first colony was from Ian and the queen in the colony IB is the a daughter from this, mated in the local area. Ian says that the bees are mongrels so it is possible that there will be quite a bit of variety in the area- it would be interesting to find out.

The queen in colony IB1 is the daughter of IB, and although mated locally, one of the other hives in the apiary (IA1) was headed by the daughter of a queen (IA) that had been taken out of the area to mate with drones from a feral colony. The plot for colony IA is in this thread (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?153-Your-gallery-of-2D-plots&p=3138&viewfull=1#post3138), #

I'm looking forward to checking the other colonies and will try and get some pictures of the bees too & look at the other characteristics (although some may be beyond me)

I saw an aeroplane & the second a young foul. As you mentioned butterfly's Gavin, I saw one today in the garden which came as a surprise, but it wasn't able to fly (poor thing)

[gavin]

Spot on! They're as clear as day, an aeroplane and a foal. I'm starting to think that this is a woman's skill and - despite my ancestry - my feminine side just isn't quite strong enough.

On the other hand, maybe I was predicting that you were going to see a butterfly, and that after the event people are free to see other things in the leaves? Scary, huh?!

In weather like this, after putting out scraps for the birds (and waiting for them to disperse of course), maybe we should all be putting out some fondant for the butterflies.

[Rosie]

1021

This is a plot I did today. I hauled 5 colonies all the way from Nottinghamshire to be distributed to various queen rearers in our area. This one wasn't mine unfortunately but this is the best of the 2 tested so far.

This blood line was selected for my Nottingham friend by Beowulf himself and they seem to still be fairly pure. I think they will prove to be an asset to our patch as they will bring a new strain of decent bees that can outcross with the existing ones.

Rosie

[Jon]

That looks decent all right. What do the bees look like? Is there any evidence of yellow banding?

[Jimbo]

Hi Rosie,

A good plot. Pity it is 2 points short of a mars bar. Do you have any theory for the outliers?

[Wraith]

Can I hang my head in shame and post this.....
http://i595.photobucket.com/albums/tt38/Wraith_Brewery/Beemorphometry.jpg

So I now know i have a hybrid bunch of bees, the aim is to get fresh queens and kill this exsisting blood line and start fresh.

[Rosie]

No yellow banding and on about 14 frames. I inspected them in poor conditions without gloves and they were as sweet as can be. So far they seem faultless apart from a small amount of chalk but it's early days.

Rosie

[Rosie]

Hi Jimbo

The bees were taken from the top box where there were fewer brood frames as I almost forgot to take the sample altogether. Hence the sample might include a few drifters. I plan to repeat the process, taking a bit more care next time I visit them. The hive that I ended up with was nothing like as good so they could have drifted from there.

Wraith, whenever I have seen plots like yours the bees have been both swarmy and grumpy. From what you told me yours are no exception but it's great that you are working at improving your stock. You'll get plenty of help from BIBBA members.

Rosie

[Jon]

Wraith. That plot is almost certainly a hybrid between AMM and carnica as the plot is intermediate between the two.
I plotted two sets of wings. one from one of my Amm colonies and a Carnica colony from a commercial beekeeper to make this plot.

1022

[gavin]

It is so strikingly intermediate that it may be the first cross. In that case your colony could be producing Amm drones (if the mother was Amm) and a cross to a virgin from a purer stock might work wonders.

[Jon]

I would never let a colony like that produce a queen although like you say the drones could be fine if it is an F1 cross.
Unless I was very sure about the queen heading the colony I would not let it make drones either.
I get the odd poor plot but if I have several generations of decent plots from the queens forebears and the queen looks right, I presume the queen encountered non AMM drones on a mating flight and it should still be ok as a drone producer.

And wraith, no need to hang your head in shame, most uk beekeepers end up with hybrid colonies due to the constant wave of imports coming in.
Getting involved with a local breeding group is the best way to stabilise the genetics of what is in your area.

[Rosie]

I would guess that the opposite has happened. Someone has imported a Carnica queen to Wraith's area and its virgin has mated with the locals which which have all sorts in it, mainly AMM. If I am correct the next generation will be the dreaded F2 one.

Rosie

[Wraith]

I haven't made any Morphmetery from the original bee's I had, basically I got a swarm from a beek, who didn't realise it was her swarm, so I ended up with a 1 yr old queen. This then was so prolific, they were artifically swarmed 1 month later ( looking back now with more knowledge that should of set alarm bells off!!) So the F2 gen was born mated with in days last year, this was 20-30 miles form orginal area, so mated around my area with a commercial beek somewhere in the area. This queen isn't much different in temperment than the mother, but still prolific, both colonies aren't the freindlyist of bees, I have just had another artifical swarm with the daughter queen, so I have 3 generations, I'm certainly going to look at the drones once my equip is running, but ulitimate aim requeen with good Amm stock and then flood area with drones

[Rosie]

This is a corker. Both ends of the errant vein are missing. I had 2 wings like this in this particular sample and also there were the other two faults at 18 and above 0. The overall plot was rubbish and nothing like the parent colony.

Rosie1031

[Jon]

I posted links to a couple of papers in the morphometry area which might explain the anomalies, either a mutation or developmental issues.

[Rosie]

1079

How about this one? It's one of mine this time. There are a few in the sample with a kink in vein 1 to 4 but only one with this stubby vein.

Rosie

[gavin]

The spirit of Jessie Smith says that she sees a route-map of parts of N Wales with some of the bridges washed away during the April floods.

[Jon]

I grafted a few from this one

1200

[Rosie]

That's a pretty good plot but in my opinion the morphplot percentages don't do it justice. The wings that are outside the box are only marginally outside but they drag down the percentage just as much as they would have done had they been in the middle of the carniolan range. I don't understand why discoidal shift can't be plus one in any case as they were in some of the original museum samples.

I would be very happy to graft from that one provided, of course, that its other traits were right.

Steve

[Jon]

I don't worry about the percentages.
Having a reasonably tight cluster is good in my opinion.
There are no yellow bees at all in this colony.
Lost the queen though when I was away for 3 weeks but have quite a few of her daughters heading nucs.

This year I have about 8 colonies I am equally happy to graft from.

Most of the grafts for our queen rearing group came from this one which is unrelated to the one above.
No yellow workers in this one either and a very docile colony.

1201

[gavin]

Its an earthworm's eye view of a mole passing overhead. Do earthworms have eyes?

[Jon]

I'll have a glass of whatever you're drinking!

[gavin]

Just the usual antioxidant-rich plonk. That other scatterplot has me foxed. There's a hint of a thing with big floppy wings. A dove, a moth, or one of those bizarre cyclist-dove hybrids in the Olympics opening ceremony.

[Jon]

Ok all you morphometry nerds.
Here is the first two of my 2012 queens.
Small sample size and will get better samples later but looks promising enough.
86 is a graft from a Galtee daughter queen mated late June, 93 is a daughter of one of my own clipped queens which swarmed in July when I was away, mated in August

12931292

Nearly 30 more still to check, mostly in nucs made up in July and August with queens from Apideas.

[Rosie]

Jon

Are you planning to rob bees from the nucs during the winter for testing? I had planned to wait until spring to test mine.

Good plots, by the way.

[Jon]

I don't think 30 bees makes any difference to winter survival of a nuc.
Anything which looks weak I would leave alone.
Plot 86 is from a nuc but it is a 7 frame correx nuc and it is well filled.
Sometimes I take a few dead bees from the floor to get a rough idea of where things are and i take a proper sample when the colony is stronger.

There are a couple I re-queened quite recently which I won't be able to test until next year when the older bees have died off and a couple where I added a frame of brood.

Sure it whiles away those chilly autumn evenings!

If anyone is interested in having a go a morphometry but doesn't want to pull the wings off bees, I can send you a few scans to check.
The software is free to download, drawwing is the software for measuring the wings (http://www.drawwing.org/node/2) and Morphplot is Peter Edwards' excel sheet (http://www.stratfordbeekeepers.org.uk/Links.htm#Morphometry) for representing the data.

Bibba also has links (http://www.bibba.com/downloads.php) to the downloads

[Rosie]

Beware of BIBBA's links. They were out of date when I last checked them.

I have a backlog of other people's samples to keep me busy for quite a few winter nights.

[Peter]

Hi Folks

Up-to-date links to DrawWing and Morphplot (and much more) on our Links page here:
http://www.stratfordbeekeepers.org.uk/Links.htm#Morphometry

[gavin]

Here is the first two of my 2012 queens.

Right hand one is a pair of specs, obviously, but I'm not getting anything from the first. Maybe there weren't enough bees in that nuc to get a proper signal. Could be a disc sanding device.



Nearly 30 more still to check ...

Good.

[Jon]

Jimbo.
I claim my first Mars bar of the season.
This one is a sister of 86 which I posted the other day but this one mated from an apidea in my garden.
I made up a nuc with her at the start of August and it is now a decent sized colony in a 7 frame correx box.

1259

[gavin]

That one is so good you should be able to have it deep-fried.

Is it one of those moon buggy things with an antenna dish on the side?

[Jimbo]

Sorry only a mini mars bar as there were only 35 wings. You get a full size bar with 50 wings and a king size with near 100 wings. But well done anyway
I havn't taken any samples so far this year as the mating was so poor and I lost a few of my better queens so I am not expecting anything great this year

[Jon]

You are a cruel man Jimbo - expecting me to lure another 15 bees from that nuc to their doom in the scanner.

I have another one here but barely worth a punnet of broccoli.

This was a queen which hatched from a cell I missed in the top box and the virgin pulled down a row of grafted cells.
I am not even 100% sure of the origin as I put brood frames from a couple of different colonies in the top cellraiser box.
Nice calm colony.

1260

[Jon]

Yet another plot.
I am glad this one looks decent as it is a queen I had marked down as a potential breeder a couple of months ago. The colony is really calm and very strong. It is in a 7 frame nuc and I have already taken a couple of frames of brood from it to bolster weaker colonies.
A great granddaughter of a Galtee queen.
This one also mated from an apidea in my garden.
No yellow banding visible in any of the workers.

1261

This one looks decent as well

1294

[Jon]

This is a screenshot of the scanner settings I use
Epson V330

I use the zoom function after locating the slide with the wings in preview.

1279

[Jon]

12841285

Two more scans



Steve or Jimbo or any other nerd.
What do you make of a plot like 106 or 111
The points are well clustered but a lot of them are just outside the limits.
There was not a single bee showing yellow banding and the low CI would suggest no Carnica influence.

The queen these were grafted from was this one Col.75.
It had a DS from -7 to +1.5


1283

[gavin]

I'd say gran says it looks like the Brandenberg Gate but I'd be lying - can't see the images on this phone!

Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk

[Jon]

Another two

12971298

[gavin]

105: the wisps of steam arising from a freshly made Bullshit Hive

88: silhouete of a cow's head leaning down to eat grass, the first step in the manufacture of a Bullshit Hive

94: can't get that one yet, looks complex but I'm sure that there's something there.

106: maybe I can only do two at a time? The power must dilute as it goes down the generations and especially when it crosses the gender gap. Or maybe Jessie is cross with me for joining in the piss-taking of the Natural Beekeepers.

111: yeah, the power has gone

75: Seem to have seen this one before. Is it the earthworm's view of a mole passing overhead?

110: I'm getting a faint signal of an electric guitar

99: yeah, I've lost it.

[Jimbo]

Gavin you will need to stop eating that honey that came from a single source plant. Did you not say in a previous post that the plant was related to the hemp family?

[gavin]

No, the powers are dropping - I need more! I suspect that it may be the red wine in deficit.

[gavin]

Reappraisal of #105. Still could be wisps of steam arising from freshly deposited (or composting) cow poo, but I'm also getting a hint of the DNA double helix. There's a bit missing or faded at the top, maybe that bit mutated or something.

[Jon]

That is my Watson and Crick colony. I can see a map of France in 110 and the outlier is Lance Armstrong heading north after a transfusion too many

[gavin]

LOL! When I was away in Berlin earlier in the week one of the speakers said that he'd been watching CNN that morning and a bookshop in Scotland was shown where they were shifting Armstrong's autobiography from the Autobiographies to the Fiction sections. He was making a point about evidence-based decision making. Not in beekeeping but in regards to health policy.