> It almost sounds as if an apian ethnic cleansing is at hand.

That is a little harsh Allen.  The UK has native honeybees and more people these 
days would like to cherish, preserve and improve them.  The rush of beginners 
into the craft in the UK comes with a bias towards low chemical approaches, 
local food production and conservation so many are receptive to the view that 
native is best.  However at the same time the demand for coloniesand the 
background of a few difficult seasons means that many have turned to suppliers 
who satisfy the demand from professional breeders abroad.  The end result of all 
of this is that the refuges of pure Amm are under threat as never before, to a 
large extent from a well-meaning widely scattered army of beginners desperate 
for bees.  There is quite a lot of interest in doing something to preserve 
remaining stocks - far from ethnic cleansing and more like saving an endangered 
type of honeybee.

Why do I say endangered when Murray says that he has thousands?  Murray's bees 
are far from pure.  There may well be a progression back to darker types once 
exotic introductions have stopped for a few years, but what you get after that 
is indeed a mongrel stock of highly mixed genetics.  I'm keen to find reasonably 
pure local Amm stocks for a breeding project but I'd never have considered 
asking Murray - or am I wrong?! 


Murray wrote:

> The dark bees, after several generations, lose their vigour and revert to an 
>essentially non commercial performance. 
>

The combination of mixing up the genetics and the low levels of selection will 
make any strain decline in performance.  If the breeding effort elsewhere was 
also applied to any strain in the UK (including Amm) but in a location where 
mating could be controlled then you would get the bee you select for surely?

> The regular adding of carniolan stock help rectify this and actually is why we 
>got a heather crop last year and all our associates did not. 
>

Two different things here.  Adding a genetically *very* different strain (as are 
Amm and Amc) will give the temporary fix of hybrid vigour at the expense of 
long-term stability.  You get the same thing with plants.  In the long run the 
effect is negative in my opinion.  The other reason for the good performance of 
your imported bees last year would be their initial high health status and the 
fact that they were given fresh foundation.

I don't see this as being about loud voices and funding - last year's imports 
received a lot more funding than has gone into honeybee conservation here which 
has always been a small-scale amateur and sometimes amateurish business.

A lot of the bad press that Amm get here may be due to the fact that hybrid 
stocks look like Amm.  Selected, bred Amm can be gentle and productive - but 
their hybrid derivatives cannot easily be distinguished from the parent types.  
Italians and Buckfast come with a colour-coding system that make crosses 
obvious.

all the best

Gavin

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