Amm

[rourkie]

Hi Can anyone advise of breeders of amm north of the border who sell queens or nucs. I have seen a website for II amm queens from Sussex at £85 each seems a bit steep. Any info welcome. Regards Rourkie

[gavin]

Hi Rourkie

Not an easy one! Andrew Abrahams on Colonsay, but I doubt that he can supply the demand there is for Amm. There are Amm beekeepers in Scotland but they are either not interested in supplying bees or are already heavily involved in supplying bees to their local beginners and other beekeepers as a first priority. It also looks like 2009-2010 might be another bad winter for losses.

There are probably lots of fairly pure Amm across Scotland, but finding those colonies isn't so straightforward. Just looking at them can often give you a good idea on their make-up though. Stocky bees, brown to blackish but not the lead-grey to black of some continental types, any orange on the abdomen only as occasional spots and not bands. The pollen stored right round the brood area and the white honey cappings due to the air space are good signs too.

John Durkacz is an enthusiast and is speaking in Dundee on 15th March, should you be in the area (I know ... seems unlikely).

Is it worth your while buying expensive artificially inseminated Amm? These queens could be useful for breeding stock but their AI/II nature usually means that they will be less productive and long-lived than normal - or am I wrong? And do you know where that Amm stock came from ultimately?

As with many things, your local association might be a good place to try. You might find people happy to share the task of looking hard at what you already have locally.

If this forum goes well we might consider queen cell/virgin/mated queen exchanges amongst the members who can be sure of the kinds of stocks they have?

best wishes

Gavin

[rourkie]

Hi gavin the ii queens originate from colonsay plus are collection only and sussex is 450 miles away. I do have some on order from dna tested stock, but they will be later in the year,Bickerstaffs advertise amm queens from greece but iam loathe to import.regards Rourkie

[gavin]

In that case, maybe someone local in Sussex could buy them for you and immediately stick them in the post? They will travel OK in the normal mail as long as you let them breathe and have queen candy (honey stiffened with caster sugar) and attendents in the cage.

If you plan to build-up from a few queens with Colonsay parentage in an isolated area, then try to make as many queens as you can in one step. Naturally out-mated queens carry semen from 10-20 drones. The upshot of that is that if you make 10-20 queens you will keep most of that genetic diversity which came originally in the queen's spermatheca in addition to her own genes (only two variants of each gene there). Make one daughter queen, then do your build-up in the next generation and you will have at most three variants of each gene, rather than up to 22.

Basically, as long as your II queen was inseminated with well-mixed sperm, you can avoid significant inbreeding in the way I've described. In theory anyway!

G.

[Calum]

Hi,
it is maybe a silly question, but are the scottish black bees any different from the black bees being bred in switzerland?
If there is a problem with supply from Colonsay maybe Swiss imports could be acceptable to the black bee project..

[Jimbo]

Hi rourkie,
I would suggest you check your own local bees first to calculate the percentage of hybridisation in your own stocks. We did this in 2007 and was quite surprised at the percentage of black or near black bees we had. We set up a breeding group to select the best colonies and now have some pure black bees. We are not in the situation at the moment to sell any of these queens as we need to increase our breeding stock to repopulate our local area with native black bees. To check the percentage of hybridisation we used drawwing software with morplot to calculate the result. We would like to carry out a Scottish survey to identify black bee colonies in other areas of Scotland and feed the information into BIBBA's project discovery. John Durkacz is intending to cover the east coast and I will be covering the West Coast. If you would like me to check you bees or if you require help in checking the bees yourself please get in contact. It is also intended to run a morphometry course for beginners in Fife some time in Sept.

[Jon]

Jimbo.
have you any drawWing charts you could post from samples you have taken. I have posted a few in my blog here (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/entry.php?23-More-DrawWing-charts). They are far from pure AMM but I think the raw material is worth improving.

[Jimbo]

Hi Jon,

I have 21 results from our beekeepers in our area from a survey carried out in 2007 using the Beemorph software program. I also carried out the survey again in 2009 using Beemorph but changed to Drawwing software. I have so far 32 results with some more samples to scan. In my opinion the Drawwing software is more accurate as you eliminate operator error, however I have noticed a slight difference in the results from a sample taken from the same hive but scanned twice. I have also tried to compare results from the same sample but analysed using both programs, again in my opinion the results are slightly different.
In the end all this is not important as we only use the software as a tool for selecting our black or near black queens for breeding. You should still look at all the other characteristics of the black bee which we hope to do this year. We have also collected some of our best black stock and are about to extract the DNA with a view to getting it analysed at a later date.
If somebody could give me information on how to load some of the scans onto a blog I will post some of the best and worst results

[Jon]

I do it like this.
Open the DrawWing Excel file and use the PrtSc button to make a copy.
Post this in your Photoediting software and crop down to the chart.
It will need to be compressed or reduced in size as well.
Save to a folder.

To upload here, to either a blog or a post, select the Go Advanced button at the bottom right.
Use the paper clip icon to upload the image(s) from your computer.
Tick the box on each image you want to insert and then chose the option insert inline

I spent ages futtering with this before I got it to work right.
Gavin might be able to tell you a quicker way to do it.

[gavin]

Great to see you here Jim.

Create a JPG or similar as Jon says. Then in any kind of 'reply' or new blog post I wouldn't create an attachment but just click the 'Insert image' icon immediately above the box for text, it is to the right of the letter icon for 'Insert email link'.

You then have a choice (usually) of uploading from your computer or from the internet.

I have to say that sometimes the software seems to offer people different options from the norm, but I seem to have no control over that.

best wishes

Gavin

PS There is a limit (maybe 8?) to the number you can add to any one post.

[Jon]

There is still a glitch with the 'insert image' icon. I just checked it again and it gives me the URL only option with no option to upload from my computer.
I can only upload with the attachment/paperclip icon but that does the job fine.