Jon

We called in to see my parents this afternoon.
My father is a beekeeper and most of his 13 colonies were flying strongly and bringing in pollen of various hues. I helped him do his Apiguard treatments in the Autumn and I thought a lot of his colonies were weak at that point. We checked the Varroa trays today and there was no sign of any mites. He keeps his trays in over winter and I don't but we try and not fall out over it!
He has good natured black bees and he has kept bees continuously for at least 45+ years in the garden of the house where I grew up, about 40 miles away from where I live now. At times he has been down to three or four colonies, and he lost a few to AFB several years ago, but he is proud to boast that he has never bought a queen or a colony in his life and has never been 'out of bees'
With this in mind, I reckoned I might take a couple of samples for wing Morphometry.
He has a neighbour a quarter of a mile away who has in the past brought imported queens into his apiary, so Drawing may be able to tell how much his bees have been hybridized by dodgy drones with Slovenian or Greek accents. (No offense intended to Slovenians or Greeks, it's only the drones I take issue with)
It easy enough to get a sample of 30+ bees by placing a honey jar with a smidgen of honey over the feed hole in the crown board. Once the bees move up, the jar is quickly lifted and the lid screwed on.
I took a sample from two colonies which had very dark dumpy looking bees where there was no evidence of yellow banding.
They are currently in the freezer and tomorrow after a quick thaw on the window ledge I will remove the right wing of each bee and post two samples off for analysis in Drawwing. (It is a noble cause for a bee to lay down its life for science! Those winter bees have their days numbered anyway.)
Hopefully I will have results by the end of the week. I'll post the charts when I have them.