Drone Congregation

[Troutnabout]

I'm hoping to make a couple of nuc's from my last surving hive, and have been wondering about the effects of potential inbreeding if the new queens mated with drones who were her "brothers". So I have been looking into the subject of drone congregation areas and read the 2010 thread on DCA's on this forum.

Has anyone any knowledge of a "DCA Map" for Scotland, South Lanarkshire?

Is "inbreeding" likely to be a problem?

[Jon]

Is "inbreeding" likely to be a problem?

Highly unlikely unless you live somewhere with an isolated population of bees and a small number of colonies.
Drones can fly 10 miles and can hop from hive to hive meaning they can cover much larger distances in a series of jumps.

Offshore islands are probably the only likely areas to have an inbreeding problem.
How many beekeepers would you have within a 10 mile radius?

[Neils]

If you're registered on Beebase it'll tell you how many other apiaries are registered within 10 miles of you. I think you could safely assume that the number will be greater than what they have in their system.

[Adam]

Beebase will tell you the number of recorded apiaries within 10 km. I was amazed how many there are supposed to be within that distance. For me, 57 for my home apiary and 32 for my out apiary just a couple of km away.

[Neils]

Pfft. 138 round mine!

[Troutnabout]

Thanks for the info

[nemphlar]

I'm only a couple of miles up the road as you know, but my experience of breeding in the valley years ago was poor with some some very aggressive mixes, moving 300ft higher and 2 MLS up the valley gave a more reliable type. I'm not convinced that I get this influx of fresh drones and for the sake of a new queen bought in every few years not worth throwing another variable in mix of what's gone wrong now.

[Troutnabout]

Only five apiaries near me

[Bumble]

Has anyone any knowledge of a "DCA Map" for Scotland, South Lanarkshire?

I understand that Beowulf Cooper recorded DCAs and mapped them in a book, I don't know if he covered the whole of the British Isles. I've also been trying to find DCAs in our area, but haven't been able to track down an online version of the map and don't know anybody who has the book.

[prakel]

I understand that Beowulf Cooper recorded DCAs and mapped them in a book, I don't know if he covered the whole of the British Isles. I've also been trying to find DCAs in our area, but haven't been able to track down an online version of the map and don't know anybody who has the book.

Some years ago Karl Showler was recording DCAs throughout the British Isles. Not sure what's going to happen to all of his research or even whether he's still actively studying the subject.

I'm not suggesting that he should be bombarded with questions but it might well be worth one of us contacting him and asking the question.

[The Drone Ranger]

I'm hoping to make a couple of nuc's from my last surving hive, and have been wondering about the effects of potential inbreeding if the new queens mated with drones who were her "brothers". So I have been looking into the subject of drone congregation areas and read the 2010 thread on DCA's on this forum.

Has anyone any knowledge of a "DCA Map" for Scotland, South Lanarkshire?

Is "inbreeding" likely to be a problem?

There is no chance of you having to worry about inbreeding when you split your hive

If you had 30 hives and you bred 30 queens from your best hive then re-queened them all from it
that's the sort of thing that can lead to problems.
Hence the care that good breeding projects have to take to avoid this

[mbc]

I read background to bee breeding by Atkinson and he was obsessed by sex alleles and inbreeding and so I lost sleep worrying about the problem before I realised it is fairly irrelevant to situations where queens are open mated and only really becomes an issue with a closed breeding population. Phew !