Self promotion........

[AdamD]

Nigel, with your expensive breeder queens, are you going to limit their egg-laying, say, by keeping them in small colonies, with the hope that they last longer?

[NigelP]

Only towards the end of their life Adam. Most (emphasis on most) don't swarm and make large very productive colonies from which I can constantly steal frames of eggs to produce future queens and harvest honey. As the queens age they usually show signs of running out of sperm rather then slowing down laying , and then I put them in nucs to milk the last supply of eggs from them.
Even with all these good breeder queens I often ponder the mystery of why I still end up with a few colonies from hell.....non of which are direct descendants from these queens.

[AdamD]

"As the queens age they usually show signs of running out of sperm rather then slowing down laying"
That's why I wondered whether you would get an extra year out of them if you kept the colony size to that of a 5 frame nuc - say only 3 frames of brood in there rather than a dozen frames or whatever they would usually produce.

(I have to say I tried it with a queen I wanted to keep a couple of years ago and left them too long in a small box and they got too congested and I lost her. I was really annoyed with myself!)

[thewoodgatherer]

I think "Nature knows best" is a big big misnomer.
Without interference from man what lives is what survives, and rarely has the necessary characteristics man wants from them . If it was true we would still be farming Aurochs for beef and milk.
Jon Gettys Amm's are being selected and bred for traits that beekeepers find desirable. And as such are as unnatural as any other species/races /hybrids of bee that have been bred for desirable characteristics.
Banning bee imports would put a lot of professional beekeepers into liquidation, they simply cannot get the yields they require using "local bees". Murray McGregor (3000+) hives has his main queen rearing station in Piedmont in Italy so as to get reliable and early mating's for his selected queens (mainly of Carniolan origins IIRC)
Interestingly enough there is a movement to bring the Aurochs back.....

While I respect your alternative view on this I think you are very wrong to belittle nature and natural selection. We already have plenty of evidence that simple cross breeding while appearing simple and obvious comes with a whole lot of unexpected consequences, the beauty of natural selection is that its based on trial and error of a many thousands of generations, over this period of time all causes and effects will have been tried and tested and the end result -AMM in north Europe is a bee adapted perfectly to its environment. Personally i'm more interested in conservation of this bee rather than producing some new super honey producer for financial gain but that me.

Regards Jonathan Getty bees, having followed him for a few years and talked with him on other groups, I understand he's a qualified geneticist and is more interested in the purity of his strain rather than beekeeper friendly AMM queens, if you have time to look him up you'll find his queens have been proved to be very high British AMM purity traceable after a number of genetic tests over the years, from the 1 doz or so queens i have had from him over the past few years I certainly wouldn't call his bees beekeeper friendly easy to handle or nice, more like very runny on the frames and quick to sting but i can't help admiring their strengths.

[JoJo36]

" I certainly wouldn't call his bees beekeeper friendly easy to handle or nice, more like very runny on the frames and quick to sting but i can't help admiring their strengths."

As a newish beekeeper I would have been put-off beekeeping if I had started with vicious bees even if they had been as strong as "Tyson Fury" but its down to preference! I had a couple lovely Italian queens from a local well admired beekeeper in my area and they were absolutely brilliant for a beginner.

Unfortunately the "Black Bees Matter" group don't want to allow choice which is very dictatorial in my view whilst we still have 'freedom of choice' (at the moment)??!!

Happy Beekeeping!!

[NigelP]

i have had from him over the past few years I certainly wouldn't call his bees beekeeper friendly easy to handle or nice, more like very runny on the frames and quick to sting but i can't help admiring their strengths.

Yes Jon's Amm's are very runny on the frames and martyrs to chalk brood. And yes I know a lot about Jon and his breeding group and where they want to go but they are trying to do so by restricting the types of bees other beekeepers can keep in that area and this is far to dictatorial for my liking.
As JoJo said earlier we can each keep whatever strain/hybrid of bee we wish to suit our individual needs. A perfect solution in my book.
I think as you wisely referred to woodgatherer , if you are after copious amounts of honey then Amm's are not the bees to go for. This makes an important point that not everyone wants honey by the ton, which is a point I fully respect and understand. But surely that respect should also be given to those that do want honey and make a living out of keeping bees and selling honey? Jon doesn't give his AMM queens away for nothing!. Most bee farmer's would be bankrupt if they were forced to use only Amm's.
There are too many amateur hobbyists who throw up their arms in horror at the idea of profit/money being involved in beekeeping.

[Alfred]

Plus there's the vast spectrum of middle ground- those who want honey when they choose and none when they don't -such as myself who values useful equipment but really can't justify the cost unless it pays for itself (and so keeping the equipment suppliers in business whilst buying it which benefits us all)
There's also folk who appreciate just a few jars for their effort to offer as gift/gratuity/coercion/neighborly apology or whatever.
All about choice.

[Polymorph]

The live and let live approach unfortunately results in the mixed views of beekeepers simply thwarting each other. Whether it's AMM, local, italian, buckfast or carniolan - the on-going additions of positive and negative traits from these do not result in the splendid addition of only positive attributes but a lottery. Our domestic breeds didn't arrive through free range matings, which is what is happening with bees. I would like to see greater restriction on imports and more self reliance, specifically due to the importation risk of disease. Varroa should have been a wake up call, with small hive beetle and tropielalaps being other potential disasters. We have the ability to develop better local stock through selection - establishing your own starting point is up to you.
Last year I started queen rearing and found I had to knock off half of what I raised due to behaviour (temper and swarmyness). Very disappointing, but I hope it will improve. Next step is to talk to the other local beekeepers to see if we can establish common ground.
With regards Roger P, the chap puts significant effort into helping others through webinars and books. The rich resource he provides and his live @the hive should be applauded. We can all pick holes, but it's a different matter to get out in front of an audience - let's be positively constructive.

[Patrick]

I agree with much that you say Polymorph. The issue of swarminess and "bad temper" is a real problem - you found it an issue of queen rearing, but in reality it might not have been not much dissimilar had you used swarm cells like most other beeks. The difference is you used discrimination once the results became obvious and acted on it.

Like many others I think there are many benefits to queen polyandry mating but folk need to practice the same focus as you on not tolerating vicious genetics, both for their own benefit and their neighbours. There is a marked reluctance to cull and replace bad queens, Maybe its simply those with only a very few colonies consider they don't have the range of alternative genetic materials on hand to choose from and those with many colonies don't have the time or simply accept a range of performance. Whatever it is, local drone temperament is one of the major challenges of queen rearing. If there is one beekeeping New Year's resolution worth making, I would suggest it is planning to positively sort out the worst behaved colony in your apiary next year .

[NigelP]

The live and let live approach unfortunately results in the mixed views of beekeepers simply thwarting each other. Whether it's AMM, local, italian, buckfast or carniolan - the on-going additions of positive and negative traits from these do not result in the splendid addition of only positive attributes but a lottery.

Spot on, although worth asking which race is bringing in the negative qualities . Without isolated mating stations or using II then any mating in UK is doomed to this lottery. Restricting the lottery to "local" only still means a lottery. Most other European countries have specific isolated sites to control and improve the genetics of what gets mated. In fact for around 15 Euros you can send your queens to some of these sites to get mated there. Germany has a mobile II unit that tours the regions to II queens for beekeepers and control the good genetics. Denmark has specific island allocated for different races only, including Amm's. The UK is a small densely populated country where the only isolated mating station we have was used by the late Pete Little . BIBBA, for all their talk, have made no serious inroads into doing what they preach which has to be II in this country.
Alas it's II or lottery for us. And given he parochial backwards teaching of beekeeping in the UK it's no wonder we are laughed at by most European beekeepers, particularly for many's obsession with Amm's.

Disease imports are just another misnomer promoted by those who don't understand the issues. We got varroa because we exported our bees.....anyone should be able to work the rationale behind that.

SHB beetle was first discovered in USA, Australia and Italy near major ports where the blighters stow away on fruits and such. Asian hornet arrived in a consignment of pottery from China (I think).

What I do know is the difference between a good hive of bees and an excellent one is totally amazing and eye opening. Brother Adam started something very special.