gavin

What a marvellous bright sunny day we had here. Rolling up at the old orchard around 1 pm, the mud in the lane behind the walled garden was still sufficiently frozen solid to take my considerable weight, but the sun was on the hives and the bees were out in numbers. Three of the survivors were bringing in lots of pollen, and one - the Monkish bee colony - didn't seem to be. Might it be queenless? Too early to tell. It may also be well out of its comfort zone, climate-wise.

So, Monkish. A Buckfast line which showed really good hygienic behaviour but still could not keep on top of the Varroa mites well enough, and as a result had a near-death experience on the heather last autumn. They are lovely bees, nice and mild and make a neat brood nest. The guy I got them from no longer has them in this fairly pure state and as I'm going to focus on native stock they will be requeened this summer (and I'll be preventing them adding to the local drone population).

The Monkish bees have a terrible habit of wandering into neighbouring colonies. Two down the line, there was a lot of fighting last time so I replaced the traditional floor with a mesh one together with its wooden entrance block. This time that colony had its usual dark bees (a swarm picked up in Invergowrie), plus a few Monkish bees helping out to bring home the snowdrop and aconite pollen! Looks like they've decamped and now believe this other colony to be home. Among the photos you can see examples of dark native bees alongside Buckfast bees from this now mixed colony. Note the slender, long-legged appearance of the Monkish bees and the stocky, heavier bodied, shorter legged native bees.



One picture (c2_snowdrop and w aconite) has the yellow-orange snowdrop pollen on a Monkish bee and another bee scurrying in the entrance with yellow pollen from a patch of winter aconites in the woods nearby.



Is anyone up to assessing the wing morphometrics on those bees in close-up?