Natural Beekeeping International Forum

[biobee]

It has long been my ambition to help reinstate our native honeybee to her rightful inheritance, so I am launching a Crowdfunder to help make this possible.

The intro is here - www.biobees.com/blackbees

and the Crowdfunder is here (when launched)

http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/devon-british-black-bee-project/

I would love to have support from all of you here to get this project off the ground.

[Tavascarow]

I have bookmarked & will be supporting in the near future.
I'd like to be more involved in the breeding programme to.
Have you thought about establishing in this area to bridge between the West Cornwall & Devon breeding programs as well?

_________________
Don't worry
Bee happy.
Member of Cornwall Natural Beekeepers
http://z7.invisionfree.com/Natural_Beekeeping/index.php?showforum=4
http://www.fotothing.com/Tavascarow

[Jon]

Where are you going to get the queens from?
Is Bibba or NIHBS involved?

[biobee]

[biobee]

[Jon]

You sure about the Isle of Man bees?
I may be wrong but some of the Bibba guys were over there in about 2010 and were not overly impressed as far as I remember. There was a write up in the Bibba magazine at the time.
They are varroa free but are not necessarily with pure stock.
Andrew Abraham's bees on Colonsay have been DNA tested as part of various projects and are probably as good as you can get in terms of pure Amm.
Best British Isles sources are probably parts of Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
Bear in mind that any stock from a varroa free area will be very poorly adapted to coexistence with mites.

[Tavascarow]

[AugustC]

Best of luck in your endeavours, let me know if you need any pilot apiaries in north yorkshire

[zaunreiter]

Just for your information: some Germans opened an island mating station in the North Sea just for Black bees. See a report in German:
http://www.dittmer.mobi/6/index.php/presse.html?file=files/denibbe/Bienen/Dunkle%20Biene%20Nordstrandischmoor.pdf

It is the island "Nordstrandischmoor".

https://goo.gl/maps/zw3e8

The mating station has been DNA-tested for mating safety and it proofed to be safe from intermixing with other bee races, so it is a pure black bee mating station. It is the very first official mating station for black bees. Official means, it is protected by the state law.

[biobee]

[biobee]

Bernhard - there is a lot going on for a small island! Are those oyster beds, or salt pans off the eastern side?

[prakel]

Hi, what method{s} do you plan to use to produce the queens in quantity?

[biobee]

I will be using the Nicot system, which is similar to the Jenter, but has some useful advantages, such as being able to introduce a new queen at the same time at taking some of her eggs to make new queens.

[prakel]

Mating hives: will you be using mini nucs or full comb nucs? Apologies for the questions but this is the stuff that I find interesting.

[biobee]

I will be using some mini nucs, as they are economical on bees, but as we grow, we will use more 5-bar nuc boxes for mating, as they have a much greater capacity and can be maintained over winter if required.

I will be shooting video of all processes we use, to build up a reference for people wanting to do similar things.

[Beeblebrox]

This is very exciting.

I am worried about 2 things -

1. Will these bees be wiped out by acarine mite (Isle of Wight disease)? As I understand it, this tiny mite lurks in the bees' tracheal breathing tubes. It almost wiped out all British bees in the 1920's until strains were introduced which had smaller tracheal tubes it could not physically get into. Surely reintroduced black bees will die out again for the same reason, unless these ones have immunity, but I think the black bees that survived did so because they were isolated, not immune...?

2. Ditto varroa... but as these are descended from wild stock they may have retained hygienic behaviour.

I guess the only way to find out is by trying it and seeing if they thrive. I hope they do.

I use mongrel ferals, myself. It would be nice if they had lots of the original genes in their mix, we have a very inconstant climate in the UK. I think this project could reintroduce valuable lost genes, but I don't see that you will create large areas of pure black bees.

[Jon]

Beeblebrox.
Black bees were not 'wiped out'
That is propaganda which put about by commercial beekeepers such as Manley who had a vested interest in importing and using other strains. Brother Adam also liked to spread that story but he had his own vested interests.

Better inform the Native Irish Honeybee Society that the black bees are wiped out!

http://nihbs.org/

Double apideas can overwinter fine if the weather is not too severe.
I have 12/12 still going strong.

This is from 7th Feb this year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq27Kt9H6Ng

[Beeblebrox]

That's good to know

[Jon]

There is a Phd student at Nuig (Galway) university looking for hygienic traits in our native bee stock.
NIHBS is partly sponsoring his work.
There is another project at LIT (Limerick) which is taking samples from all over the island of Ireland as part of a genetic survey.
I gave him a dozen samples from some of my colonies last November and I am hoping to get some feedback shortly.
He is looking at mitochondrial DNA and a number of microsatellite markers associated with Amm.
One of the challenges with native bee projects is starting off with the best stock possible.
Wing morphometry is widely used but is a complete busted flush as it can only flag up difference between pure subspecies as opposed to hybridised populations.

[zaunreiter]

[greengage]

Hi,
Is this bee the same as the native Irish bee that I hear people talking about.
http://www.irishdarknativehoneybees.com/why-the-native-bee.html
As we are hoping to get some in the near future, Iam due to visit some hives with this bee tomorrow ard will know more, so ill post another question.
A second question what was the music on the video.

[Jon]

Yes. Amm had a historic range from Ireland in the west to the Urals in the East.

[BBC]

[biobee]

[LoCo]

Ok so i have a question, ive never had the chance to breed queens so how many at a low estimate would you say you will get in the first year? and if say a year or two down the line queens become available for us mere mortals would i have to buy enough queens to introduce into all my hives or just one, and if it is just one would that not run the risk of my other mongrel hives genes mixing? Or other beeks hives mixing? if i buy for all my colonies?

[zaunreiter]

Just a thought: is the island, the landscape on it, the same as it was, when the Black bee developed? The climate, the forage?

Always remember: no living thing is an island. Everything is connected to the landscape, it is living within. So you need to integrate the Black bee into a web of life. Maybe a different one than it has been before.

[biobee]

I'm not going to make any predictions about numbers at this stage - much too early! But I will keep you informed of progress.

Our tentative plan is to obtain breeding queens from several locations with proven Amm history, and to do controlled crosses with our local (East Cornwall) black drones, to see if we can produce something with all the qualities we are looking for. Tentative, because I am not totally convinced that this is the way to go, compared with (for example) just multiplying the Cornish stocks we have already, possibly using drones from other local(ish) lines.

Suggestions welcome.

[BBC]

[zaunreiter]

I know a many bee-racists here in Germany. They are pretty extreme when it comes to "pureness" of a bee bloodline, be it Carnica or Black bee.

Nature of course produces species by isolation. But nature also allows mixing of species, especially when it comes to adaption. Genetic variability is key for adaption! Adaption is key for survival in those days of climate change, fast changing landscapes,...

For this it is necessary to isolate your stock, but also to allow mixing in foreign genes. So whatever you do to the British Black bee - don't let it get inbred. Bee stock will become weaker and weaker if you are too keen on pureness.

That is my only word of caution.

Concerning your local weather and forage: bees are mostly Apis mellifera. And Apis mellifera are all able to adapt to local conditions pretty quickly. I read a good study, where they brought in foreign Apis mellifera strains and compared them to local stock. First year the local stock performed best. Next year all species were leveled. It takes about a season for foreign bees to sort out weather, forage and other local conditions. Of course they have to adapt and the do adapt. The Apis mellifera as a species is very well able to adapt to a many situations.

But not inbreeding.

Jokingly: Black bees were not wiped out by other importing other bees, but the bee racists will finish them with their ideology.

I personally find the breeding methods by Brother Adam very close to what nature does (just with tools of mankind), and see no reason why you can't breed black bees with those methods. I think that'll be most successful.

Also you first should define in great detail, how that bee should be like and how you want to keep them. Other than being of dark colour.

[andy pearce]

Bernhard raises a good point about bee racists. If you read the old black bee literature it make one cringe with embarrassment...with much culturally loaded narrative which is very unhelpful in a conservation project. This has to be utterly resisted and I am sure will be.

Isle of Wight disease....did it correlate with the adoption of large cell brood foundation....bigger bees bigger trachea...

When I have done wing morphology on my bees the results are interesting. A good result seems to be about 80% Amm. In every sample I have done there are Am ligustica wing samples. I live in a ligustica area and have not had the time to persist with re queening although two queenless colonies got AMM queens this year. Here I am fighting a loosing battle with importers.

It is a very interesting subject.
A