"Local bees"

[Bumble]

Some people here think it means any bees from the immediate area, say from no more than 10 miles away. Some say it means open-mated but from a the nearest commercial breeder they can find, whose original breeding stock might have been imported. Others think it means black bees.

What does "local bees" mean to you?

[madasafish]

I never saw honeybees in our garden before I kept bees. Ditto my neighbours. When I culled all but one of my hives last year dur to AFB, neighbours commented that they had no bees in their gardens...

So we have no "local bees". Or none I am aware of. Warmer Cheshire may be different.

[Bumble]

*tumbleweed

Goes to show I probably asked the wrong question.

BBKA et al tell us (encourages beekeepers) to get 'local bees', but nobody seems to know what it means. We've got some saying it's okay to get bees from a local dealer, who imports from almost anywhere that's cheap, whilst others say we should only get bees from a local breeder who raises their own queens from their own stock.

If we're confused, it's no wonder beginners don't know what to do.

[The Drone Ranger]

Some people here think it means any bees from the immediate area, say from no more than 10 miles away. Some say it means open-mated but from a the nearest commercial breeder they can find, whose original breeding stock might have been imported. Others think it means black bees.

What does "local bees" mean to you?

It's the ones in the hives on the field outside my house
Good point though because goodness knows who their parents were :)

[Bumble]

I don't think they mind who their parents are, and should we care? I'm happy enough with my fairly well behaved mongrels.

[prakel]

Well, I don't mind who their parents are :) but there is some research which suggests that they do mind! Whether this may have a deeper bearing on breeding vs natural populations could be an interesting subject for research.




Here we show that honeybee queens are not reared at random but are preferentially reared from rare “royal” sub families, which have extremely low frequencies in the colony’s worker force but a high frequency in the queens reared.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiE-ZzhtPLLAhVI3iwKHUd9A-sQFgguMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublicati on%2F7610474_Rare_royal_families_in_honeybees_Apis _mellifera&usg=AFQjCNFCB8eAjTIUUaGy7rAN-ZqqQwOHbw&sig2=Z2xRRxypG_7I2RI0uXNMtA

Rare royal families in honeybees, Apis mellifera. Moritz et al 2005

[The Drone Ranger]

Thats interesting prakel because it might give some encouragement to the AMM chaps
(Without having to rely on phenomenon that only are supposed to occur in that sub species )
So possibly thats half the equation
As a friend joked "we all want our queens to meet nice boys"
What appeals to me is the bees know best
So if you want to breed AMM
Break out those Snelgrove boards and put away the grafting gear boys :)

[Jon]

There is also research to show that there is some mechanism which allows certain drones to select queens or certain queens to select drones of the same subspecies.


Northern Poland is inhabited by native Apis mellifera mellifera (AMM) and the non-native A. m. carnica (AMC) which was introduced by beekeepers. However, hybrids between the two subspecies of honey bee are relatively rare. The lower than expected proportion of hybrids is hypothesised to be related to reproductive isolation between AMM and AMC. To verify this hypothesis, we allowed the AMM and AMC queens to be naturally inseminated in an area inhabited by both AMM and AMC drones. Genotype of the queens and their sexual partners were derived based on random samples of their worker offspring. Assignment of parental genotypes to the two subspecies was performed with a Bayesian clustering method. In colonies headed by AMM queens, workers were fathered mainly by AMM drones. On the other hand, in colonies headed by AMC queens workers were fathered by drones of both subspecies. The partial reproductive isolation reported here between AMM and AMC may facilitate conservation of the declining population of AMM.

Full paper (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-013-0212-y)

[Greengage]

I read this document by Wally Shaw in it he explains what he thinks are local bees, he has a number of Docs available on the net all easy to read and follow.
The Locally Adapted Bee
One of the reasons why the honey bee is so successful over such a wide range
of climatic regimes (from both the wet and dry tropics, through sub-tropical
to cold temperate climates) is that natural selection has created races (or
strains) that are adapted to the conditions where they live. These are what are
now termed ‘locally adapted bees’ and it is becoming widely accepted that,
for all sorts of reasons, these are preferable to bees from outside sources. In
this context, ‘outside sources’ refers particularly to bees imported from other
countries but also includes those from other parts of Britain where different
climatic conditions prevail. In the extreme oceanic climate of Wales, a strain of
bee containing genes predominately derived from the Northern Dark Bee (syn.
the Welsh Black bee – Apis mellifera mellifera) is likely to be the best adapted
bee for most areas.
http://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Simple-methods-of-making-Increase-Final-reduced1.pdf