Robert wrote:

> Have you done any morphometrics on your bees?

Oh yes!  You are clearly not a member of BIBBA.

> Are they local?

Some local, some from Galtee, some from E Midlands group and some from 
Professor Ratnieks.

> If the two of us can
> both do it in the West Mids, then it can't be that hard!

I think our problems really started when the National Bee Unit was situated 
in Stratford.  They had black bees until Vince Cook took over as Director; 
of course, he came from New Zealand and changed all the queens to NZ 
Italians.  At that time they were running around 200 colonies and moving 
them around the district - at one time they put 80 colonies on the other 
side of the hedge from our association bees!  Of course, they were not the 
only problem as some other beekeepers have imported queens from Greece and 
Hawaii to my knowledge.  Now we seem to have agreement that the grass is not 
always greener so to speak, and we are steadily eliminating those foreign 
genes.
Best wishes

Peter Edwards
beekeepers at stratford-upon-avon.freeserve.co.uk
www.stratford-upon-avon.freeserve.co.uk/

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