Murray:
> I understand from Robin Ratcliffe that this is already the case and has 
> been for a long time.

Last I heard was that Harry Owens (SBI) was working to establish that he 
could find no varroa.  Provided that he could state that with reasonable 
certainty then the government were minded to ban imports.   Harry, and 
others, saw this as a great opportunity to make the island an A.m.m. 
reserve.

> On other matter you brought me in on, I do have close on 1500 colonies of 
> A.m.m or, more accurately, near to A.m.m. No idea if anyone has any more.

Glad to hear it!  What about Willie Robson - his look pretty native - and 
are certainly survivors!

> Have had the bees from Ireland. Had a set of mated laying queens (quite a 
> few) from Micheal and found them to be a mixed bag.

The ones that I had from him had huge problems with chalk - and I saw this 
in his bees on the Apimondia visit in 2005.  However, I had another good 
look at his bees last September when we had the BIBBA conference in 
Tipperary, and there was not a speck of chalk to be seen - the colonies 
looked in great shape.  The Ulster beekeepers have had stock from him in 
recent years and they seem to be doing very well.  They are also interesting 
for their morphometric measurements as we have found colonies with Discoidal 
Shift Angles off the scale - below minus 10.  I was sceptical until I tested 
some myself - and then had to re-write software to cope with figures below 
minus 13.

> Sorry to hear your name on the list of apologies at Symonds Yat on Sunday.

Sorry to miss you - I was lecturing at the Ulster BKA conference.  On Sunday 
we managed a trip to the Giant's Causeway before flying back.  The weather 
was absolutely vile with gales, rain and snow; we got soaked to the skin.

Very different today here at home: we have just had a tour around 6 apiaries 
and found bees flying very strongly (max 10ºC) and bringing in plenty of 
pollen from the Pussy Willow and a little from the Blackthorn which is just 
coming out.  Our winter flowering heathers are being worked well by many 
queen bumblebees - it's like Heathrow out there!  I note also that there are 
buds on the rape, although it is still very close to the ground; we could 
have an early start to the season despite the very hard winter.  Losses so 
far are running at 3% - but it is far too early to count any chickens yet!

Best wishes

Peter 

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