...and forum. Looks nice on first impressions. I'm as bit surprised they haven't announced it to their membership by email.
https://www.bibba.org.uk/content.php
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...and forum. Looks nice on first impressions. I'm as bit surprised they haven't announced it to their membership by email.
https://www.bibba.org.uk/content.php
Tried to register 4 times in a row without success.
Did you have any joy?
I managed fine Jon. I did use my BIBBA number although they say you don't have to. Did you know they've got a Facebook page as well now (with not much stuff on it and not too many likes)? That's where I noticed the new website was up and running
I've tried to register about 8 times now and the form does not retain info so you have to start from scratch every time.
I'll check out the Facebook page
I did have to have a couple of go's Jon but all that it deleted between attempts was the password fields and the Ts and Cs acceptance at the bottom. And the letter jumble thing that I so detest. And you do have to put something in the BIBBA number field
Facebook is here http://www.facebook.com/pages/BIBBA/515212575167652
I did use my Bibba number - all to no avail.
Sometimes it can take a couple of tries to get past the letter jumble but I am not so myopic that I could have read them wrong 8 times in a row!
I most got a message indicating that I must be a spammer.
Hmmm...maybe it's having teething troubles. It looks like the admin person is maybe working on it. And the content seems a bit sparse at the moment. Maybe try number 9 will be the charm?!
Worked first time for me though I now have to wait for someone to authorise the account before I can post anything :)
I have no idea where I'd find my membership number though.
Now I've had a bit of a potter I like the site, unlike a certain other organisation beginning with B, their site works on all my devices and is easy to find stuff on. Probably cost a few quid less too.
Uses Vbulletin for the forum same as here which is a step up from the bbka site
It looks as if it has potential. The key is whether it generates the amount of forum traffic to make it a useful resource. Still surprised there was no form of communication to say it was up and running - just a bit odd.
I hope it's a sign of a more engaged BIBBA.
Finally managed to register by omitting my membership number and typing 'no membership' instead.
Hardly intuitive.
It looks like we've "pre-registered" and that there is to be an official launch at some point. I assume with VBulletin you don't have to publish while your site is a work in progress? That might have been a better idea. And apparently Jon only BIBBA members can pre-register so not sure what the score is with you and your membership number difficulties.
Maybe the amount of traffic is high due to pent up demand.
I’m not a member of facebook so will I be missing out on info that isn't on the site? I notice the Native Irish Honeybee Society are also linked (but I’m not a member). What’s the reason, is it more up to date on facebook?
Everyone seems to be going for a Facebook presence as well as a website these days.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Native...23689337655182
http://nihbs.org/
Registered with Facebook no problems.
Site down today.
Got a mail to say that it wasn't officially live yet so I guess we're preregistering at the moment.
The BIBBA site is back up for testing over Easter. I will need your BIBBA membership number entered in your user profile if registering as a paid up member otherwise type "no membership". There is still a lot of work on the content side to complete but that's in progress. The URL is https://www.bibba.org.uk
Regards, Steven T
I've have made a few changes to the registration system and would appreciate some help testing if you haven't registered yet.
https://www.bibba.org.uk
Regards, Steven T
Worked fine
Thank you for following through the registration process.
Much appreciated.
Regards, Steven
Has BIBBA always been about breeding AMM or was it wider than that ?
In the 50 years has there been much progress?
That's not a criticism I use the work of Peter Edwards to make life easier for me
has there been any change to the beekeeping map which can be attributed to BIBBA ?
Thanks for that - glad to have made someone's life easier.
My view is that BIBBA does no really know its purpose in life.
It started, as we all know, as the Village Bee Breeders' Association - and at that time I guess that there would have been very little available other than A.m.m. - so perhaps it was not necessary to spell out 'native bees'.
This changed to the British Isles Bee Breeders' Association, which was no more than a recognition that it had grown.
The name then changed to Bee Improvement and Bee Breeders' Association - a 'politically correct' (or perhaps incorrect?)change that was seen as keeping members in Eire on board. Of course the name now suggests that the association could get involved in improving any race of bee - something that I suspect would have Beowolf Cooper turning in his grave.
So where are we now? Is BIBBA an association devoted to native bees, or just bee improvement. If the former, then perhaps the name should be changed again to reflect that; if not, then I am not sure where its future lies.
What is very clear is that the Galtee group, NIBHS, and perhaps the mooted Scottish group have a much more clearly defined purpose.
Thanks Peter I didn't know how the organisation came about
Maybe if the internet had been around for 50 years things might have moved more quickly
Is the difficulty that stipulating bees are local and AMM might be mutually exclusive in most places
Some in Bibba get hung up on 'local' but as far as I am concerned the British isles is our neck of the woods.
I seems like a difficult to resolve issue
The main problem is that these issues lead to a complete lack of progress.
From outside of Bibba it looks bizarre.
Rather than hand-wringing about 'local' what is needed is people rearing queens and multiplying good stock sourced as locally as is feasible.
if there is nothing decent in your area, get some decent stock to graft from from as locally as possible.
Rubbish in rubbish out applies to grafting and queen rearing. You need to start with a few good queens.
Whether local is 10 miles, 50 miles or 250 miles - why get hung up about it? Just start.
One argument against "parachuting" bees to anywhere is that they might be incompatible with the bees that already dominate the area. If that happens, and particularly if the bees are in the hands of someone inexperienced, then the results of future open matings could be less than desirable. This is the difficulty associated with reintroduction.
Anyone lucky enough to live in an area where there is a high proportion of native genetics has no such problem. They can breed from their purest, provided the selected bees exhibit other desirable traits, in order to eliminate the worst of their bees and can afford to bring in purer stock to sweeten the blood.
Some areas can manage to keep 2 separate isolated strains on AMM and cross breed the 2 to get within-race hybrids. These, in theory, will offer outbred vigour without the usual unsustainable problems associated with hybridisation. I haven't tried this yet but I am working towards reaching the point where we can do it here.
BIBBA don't dictate to people how they should proceed but do try to encourage them to think about what they are doing and not just buy the first thing they stumble across or fall prey to suppliers who do not consider future generations. They also encourage cooperation between the beekeepers in any particular area so that they don't find themselves pulling in different directions. The local group approach has been a consistent policy of BIBBA from the start. However individuals choose to proceed I would expect BIBBA members to have the long-term interests of AMMs at heart.
It's a fact that BIBBA members disagree about how to proceed but I can live with that as it demonstrates tolerance and thoughtfulness.
Steve
Even if you parachute in "pure" amm then open mating will degrade the line. Unless you live in an isolated area, most beeks do not.
I think Jon has got it right.
BTW, how reliable are the measurements for purity when set against DNA testing? Do discoidal shift, morphometry, white cappings, etc. really prove a bee is amm?
Is that the thinking behind the AMM survey BIBBA are they attempting to find suitable stock?
Has there been any progress with that
I see your point about breeding Steve, it might be counter productive (in certain circumstances)
Are the majority of beekeepers in Britain effectively excluded from this program to re -introduce AMM ?
Could this mean it can never succeed ?
Hi Black Comb I think the wing selection can end up just that so the Carniolan breeders have found the bees can have the right wings but not be particularily pure.
It's the only tool most people have though so they would need to use it
DrawWing and Morphplot make that so simple (largely due to the instructions which Peter Edwards provides)
Steve, I agree with what you are saying about the risk of undesirable crosses producing aggressive bees but as you pointed out in the second part of your post, crossing ecotypes between different lines of a subspecies does not run that risk. You have some good stock to work with, so do I, but most people don't. You can do what Roger Patterson does, ie improving the background bee population starting from mongrels. That is a valid approach for bee improvement but has very little to do with AMM, even if you do happen to be selecting for characteristics associated with AMM as Roger does. The fallacy here is that some people think they can backbreed to recreate AMM from the background genetic soup. I have read that a couple of times in the Bibba magazine so this fallacy is obviously well engrained in some sectors.
The other approach is to get a group of like minded people together to form a group and start propagating queens from good quality stock sourced from as locally as possible. This source could be the Galtee valley, North Wales, Colonsay and a couple of other places. Work in a little local genetics if you like if you are confident in being able to pick out predominantly AMM colonies from your background population. This approach will produce results far more quickly. If you believe that AMM as a sub species is threatened and is in danger of being eliminated through hybridisation, it is the only way to go if you want to get AMM established again in what would have been its historic range.
To make an analogy, The RSPB ran a campaign to protect the white headed duck which was being eliminated all over Europe by hybridisation with the Ruddy Duck, a North American species.
Starting up a group is not difficult. Most beekeepers are fence sitters with regard to bee race. If you start up a group based on AMM and the participants get better queens out of it they will be very happy. When people see how the bees are to work with it soon dispels all the propaganda against the native bee re aggression and other traits. The bees sell themselves as they are miles better than what people have at home.
You can get around that to a large extent.
If you graft from a pure race queen and requeen other colonies with her daughters, as many as possible, these colonies will produce pure race drones irrespective of what the daughters have mated with. Concentrate these in one place and you have the basis of a mating station.
Noone knows until a comparative study is done.Quote:
how reliable are the measurements for purity when set against DNA testing? Do discoidal shift, morphometry, white cappings, etc. really prove a bee is amm?
To say that a wing morphometry study such as the coop funded uk survey 'proves' that bees are AMM is nonsense yet that is the line put out by Bibba and the Coop. I think that will prove to be a huge mistake in the long run.
I don't follow that Black Comb. It sounds to me like you think Jon has got it wrong. If you live in, say, a buckfast dominated area life isn't a simple as just parachuting in the bee of your choice.
As for assessment of race that's another minefield. Selection for wings alone is obviously not a good idea and, as far as I know, is not practised anywhere. DNA analysis is probably more reliable but it all depends on where you found your standard material, the skill of the scientists who decided which markers to use and how many samples you had. People I know make judgements on as many traits as possible and are always on the lookout for improving the confidence of their methods. Top of my list, for example, are gentleness and frugality. I find wing analysis very efficient for checking for bad matings but do not rely on it too much for selection. I am sure we would make much more use of DNA analysis if it were available to us at an economic price.
Steve
I am with you there Jon. The Coop funded research was a DNA-based one but some early wing morphometry results were released because the DNA work had been so severely hampered by the academic process. I fear such ill-conceived actions are the inevitable result of economic interests of sponsorship but, in the real world we have to live with it. I am surprised though that people would take early results so seriously when a large company is involved. I am still waiting for the real results but when they come out I will still be sceptical because I know that a lot of people with good stock failed to send samples.
I look forward to the day when BIBBA or some similar organisation can arrange to provide an economic DNA service to ordinary beekeepers. In the meanwhile we should all be tying to do our best with the methods to hand and, in particular, stop introducing exotic new stock.
Steve
Hi Jon
only one thing really when you say about bad temper being tagged to AMM unfairly
Mostly I find its the AMM fans that level that claim against hybrid bees
Lots of bees of all types can have bad temper and although that can be fixed quickly it could take a long time to eliminate entirely
That is more a function of a closed breeding system than any breed or cross
Professional bee breeders can supply bees of any race including Buckfast that are both productive and gentle.
I think :)
All the well known bee pure race sub species are gentle. Buckfast as well.
Aggressive hybrids is not an invention of mine.
It stems from a genetic effect called heterosis, commonly known as hybrid vigour.
It has been documented and measured under experimental conditions by people like Ruttner.
Hi Jon
I'm not saying you invented it or that it's right or wrong
I know you have gentle stock but I am also certain that native stock need not be gentle and that past beekeepers didn't invent that either
What I am trying to say is that there is no open mating system where any one bee is better than another as a starting point
Old Brother Adam went to great lengths to investigate this as well and identified crosses he felt were worse than others
That looks fine till you think "well what strain of Caucasian was he using" etc
Just the same as you could convert a whole apiary to any breed in two generations you could eliminate bad temper but unselected stock will always be undoing your efforts
That unselected element could be of any type
In any area where you had control of mating you could get to good behaviour without any recourse to AMM or Carniolan or any other pure breed
It seems logical to me that a hybrid bee with its genetic diversity would adapt to almost any beekeeping environment
I like the enthusiasm and drive of the AMM purists more power to your elbow as they say
I just don't see what problem they are solving
Bibba from what I Am reading might have the same dillema