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B-MAIL
A monthly newsletter on issues and events in the bee world, provided
by IBRA, the world information service for bee science and beekeeping.
**Jan 1995**
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NATIVE HONEY BEE RACES
For many beekeepers in Europe the bee they want to keep is the one
originally found in their area (before human-assisted movements, at
least) and there are a number of groups devoted to conservation of
Apis mellifera mellifera, the dark European bee.
Here in the UK the British Isles Bee Breeders' Association (BIBBA) is
very active in this field, producing publications and videos and running
training courses and conferences. BIBBA has been in operation for 30
years and aims to conserve, restore, study, select and improve the
'native and near native honey bees of Britain and Ireland'.
Actually they are primarily in favour of 'pure race breeding', as they
blame imports of foreign bees for the production of 'mongrel' bee
colonies with undesirable characteristics. They then go on to say that
A. m. mellifera is the bee most suited to the British climate, it still
exists in a pure state, and can be distinguished from 'mongrel' bees
and other races. Their current programme involves the formation of
local groups to find, select and breed these native bees.
Other groups working to propagate A. m. mellifera exist in Austria,
Brittany (France), Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
The Norwegian group has recently launched a publicity campaign,
complete with a very attractive poster, calling for action. "We fear
that time is running out for the black European bee. Most geographical
sub-races are already lost, and the rest are too few or might be
affected by other races. In Scandinavia we don't even know what we
have, related to silvarum, lehzeni, or if it can be described as a special
Nordic branch". They are calling for letters to be written to the
Norwegian minister of agriculture, and are holding a conference on the
Norwegian black bee area project on 8-9 September 1995.
In Germany a group was formed in November to promote conservation
of the black bee: the Gemeinschaft zum Erhalt der Dunklen Biene
(GEDB), or community for the conservation of the dark European bee,
and plans to work for its reintroduction, improvement and spread. Of
course such an idea is controversial in Germany. The well-coordinated
national bee breeding programme is based on propagation of Carniolan
bees, and even at the inaugural meeting of GEDB a representative of
the German Beekeepers' Association (DIB) spoke against the
(re)introduction of dark bees.
The Carniolan breeding programme in Germany is based on the use of
isolated mating apiaries and morphometrics to check racial 'purity',
though the problems inherent in this approach were highlighted by
Robin Moritz in his paper 'The limitations of biometric control on pure
race breeding in Apis mellifera' (Journal of Apicultural Research 30(2):
54-59 (1991), with subsequent discussion by F Ruttner and Dr Moritz
on pp113-115).
New techniques can give us new insights into the concept of honey
bee 'races'. Data on the frequencies of enzyme electromorphs and
results of mitochondrial DNA restriction mapping can be used to
confirm, or dispute, the indications from morphometric analysis. This
has been done, for instance, for the 'pure' population of Apis mellifera
ligustica in the honey bee sanctuary of Kangaroo Island in South
Australia (Oldroyd et al., Journal of Apicultural Research 31: 141-148
(1992)). The subject is discussed further in 'New approaches to honey
bee taxonomy' by Ben Oldroyd (Bee World 74(3): 105-107 (1993)).
Contacts:
Brittany: Association Abeille-Noire Bretonne, Kerchere, F-29242,
France.
Germany: Secretary, GEDB, Ostlandstrasse 1, D-24247 Mielkendorf,
Germany.
Norway: Nils j Drivdal, Prosjekleder, Reinavlsomradet for Ded Brune Bia,
Lovikgt 13, 4400 Flekkefjord, Norway.
UK: Albert Knight, BIBBA Secretary, 11 Thomson Drive, Codnor, DE4
9RU, UK.
CONSERVING EUROPE'S BEES
The programme for this important meeting is looking really good, and
we expect a good attendance from throughout Europe and further
afield. For your convenience the second announcement and booking
form is included at the end of this edition of B.mail.
COMPARATIVE FORAGING STRATEGIES IN SOLITARY AND SOCIAL
BEES
This meeting was featured in the last edition of B.mail, and full details
are now available from form Dr Robin Wootton, University of Exeter,
Hatherly Laboratories, Prince of Wales Road, Exeter EX4 4PS. Phone
(+44) 1392-263753, fax 1392-263700, e.mail
[log in to unmask]
The provisional programme includes papers on:
Influence of pollen viability on foraging behaviour in bumble bees.
Effect of bee foraging strategies on gene flow in white clover.
Foraging responses to sexual harassment in a solitary bee.
Foraging of an anthophorid in the arid Sinai mountains.
Physiological constraints on foraging in solitary and social bees.
Limitations to flight performance in bumble bees.
The use of stable isotopes to determine energetic costs of freely
foraging bees.
Bombus vs. Apis: a comparison of foraging behaviour on oilseed rape.
Comparison of honey bees and bumble bees foraging on borage.
Foraging by Apis and Bombus on raspberries.
WAXING LYRICAL ON INTERNET
As historic moments go, according to the New York Times, this one
was closer to 'Watson, come here!' than to another Saturday night at
the movies. The first movie to be transmitted on Internet was 'Wax: or
the discovery of television among the bees', an 85-minute cult piece
about a beekeeper who ends up being kept by his bees. Reviews of
this 'surreal landscape imagined by a cyberpunk novelist' range from 'A
witty, psychedelic cult favourite' through the neutral 'Like no film
you've ever seen' to the less than complimentary 'Authentically
peculiar'.
The event itself, though, was described as 'The future of SF film, if not
of cinema'. In this case output from an ordinary video player was fed
into the producer's computer, converted to digital form and pushed
straight out to Internet. No doubt it's but a foretaste of a huge number
of simultaneous video channels but remember, bees did it first.
Andrew Matheson
Director
NOW HERE IS THE SECOND ANNOUNCEMENT AND BOOKING FORM
FOR CONSERVING EUROPE'S BEES
The International Bee Research Association and Linnean Society of
London are holding this symposium on 6-7 April 1995 at the Linnean
Society rooms, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, UK.
WHY BEE CONSERVATION?
Bees have an important place in agriculture and in preserving wild
habitats.
* They often have highly specialized relationships with native floras,
so play vital roles in maintaining natural vegetation.
* Bees are particularly suitable for environmental monitoring purposes,
because of their diverse nesting strategies and specific host plant
relationships.
* Both social bees such as bumble bees and solitary bees are actual
or potential pollinators of crops.
Changes in land use in Europe have made bee conservation an
increasingly important issue as the nesting sites and food plants for
bees are destroyed by increasing monocultures: more than 400 bee
species from north of the Alps appear in Red Data lists. Although non-
Apis bees are vital in maintaining native floras, our understanding of
pollination ecology at the community level is growing faster than our
knowledge of bee taxonomy, and with the consequent backlog of data
analysis pollination botanists are ill-served by the current state of bee
systematics in the Palaearctic.
This two-day scientific meeting will concentrate on bee conservation in
Europe and the Mediterranean basin, but will also consider the
Americas and other areas with important lessons for others about bee
conservation.
The symposium builds on a rising tide of interest in scientific circles, if
not political ones, about the importance of this issue. In 1991, STOA
(Scientific and Technical Options Assessment, European Parliament)
commissioned a review on the impact of changing beekeeping practice
and land use in Europe on crop and wild flower pollination, which was
published in IBRA's technical journal Bee World.
Following this review, the EC funded a workshop in Brussels to discuss
these issues and the findings of the meeting point clearly to the need
for bee conservation:
* Agriculture in the EU needs bees to pollinate most of its crops.
* Intensive agriculture provides an inhospitable environment for bees.
* Habitat management for bee conservation is necessary.
Delegates at the workshop expressed considerable interest in setting up
a collaborative European research programme into the problems of
habitat management and the potential of set-aside for bees: this hasn't
happened but we will be using this symposium to launch a network as
part of FAO's ESCORENA programme.
Last December, IBRA held a symposium in Cambridge on bee forage
and conservation and this year published the book Forage for bees in an
agricultural landscape, which discusses the importance of forage and
nesting sites in bee conservation.
'Conserving Europe's bees' will be a meeting of major importance in
promoting scientific debate and collaboration on this important subject.
THURSDAY 6 APRIL 1995
Habitats for bees; Dr Paul Westrich, Institut f|r Wildbienenkunde,
T|bingen, Germany.
Dr Paul Westrich, T|bingen: Considering the ecological needs of our
native bees: the problems of partial habitats.
Dr Matthias Klemm, Consultant biologist, T|bingen: Cliffbanks, sand
pits and levees as substitutes for threatened or destroyed riverine
habitats.
Dr Mike Edwards, Private consultant (formerly Natural History
Museum), Midhurst, UK: Optimizing habitats for bees in the United
Kingdom.
Dr Chris Saure, Zoologische Institut, Freie Universitdt, Berlin: Urban
habitats for bees: the example of the city of Berlin.
Grappling with bee diversity; Chris O'Toole, Curatorial Officer, Hope
Entomological Collections, University of Oxford, UK.
Professor Amots Dafni, Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa,
Israel, and Professor Avi Schmida, Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
Israel: (Threats to bee diversity in Mediterranean Israel: the case of
Bombus terrestris versus the rest).
Professor Charles Michener, Snow Entomological Museum, University
of Kansas, USA: (PCAM: a case study of getting to grips with bee
diversity). Keynote speaker.
Chris O'Toole, UK: Bee systematics: the continuing crisis and some
possible cures.
Dr Theodora Petanidou, Department of Ecology, University of
Thessaloniki, Greece: Co-evolution of native bee faunas and floras in
changing Mediterranean communities.
Evening
Informal mixer.
FRIDAY 7 APRIL 1995
Do plants need bees?; Professor Ingrid Williams, Group Leader, Insect-
Plant Interactions, Entomology and Nematology Department,
Rothamsted Experimental Station, Harpenden, UK.
Dr Sarah Corbet, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK:
(Are native bees more important pollinators than honey bees?)
Dr Manja Kwak, Department of Plant Biology, University of Groningen,
Netherlands: (Importance of native pollinators to native plant
conservation).
Dr Ken Richards, Research Leader, Agriculture Canada Crop Sciences
Section, Lethbridge Research Station: (Bees compared as pollinators of
legume crops).
Professor Ingrid Williams, UK: Comparing bee-mediated gene flow in
crop plants.
Dr Pat Willmer, Department of Biology, University of St Andrew's, UK:
(Physiological constraints on bee foraging)
Competition in bee-plant and bee-bee interactions; Dr Stephen
Buchmann, Research Entomologist, USDA-ARS, Carl Hayden Bee
Research Center, Tucson, Arizona, USA.
Dr Stephen Buchmann, USA: Competition for pollen and nectar
between honey bees and native bees in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.
Dr Evan Sugden, University of Kentucky, USA: Towards an ecological
perspective of beekeeping.
Dr David Roubik, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama: On
long-term trends of bee populations and their interpretation.
Dr Robinn Thorpe, University of California, Davis, USA: Resource
overlap among native and introduced bees in California.
Poster papers and exhibits
There will be limited space for poster papers and exhibits and
demonstrations relating to the theme of the conference, but these must
be notified in advance.
Please contact Andrew Matheson, Director, International Bee Research
Association, 18 North Road, Cardiff CF1 3DY, UK. Fax (+44) 1222-
665522. E.mail: [log in to unmask]
REGISTRATION FORM
* I wish to attend Conserving Europe's bees on 6-7 April 1995.
* I wish to attend the symposium for one day only: ........... April
1995.
Name
...............................................................................
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Address
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Post/zip code .........................................
Country ..................................................
Fax .........................................................
E.mail .....................................................
Registration fee
#50/$US80 for both days
#30/$US45 for one day
Lunch
#16/$24 for both days
#8/$US12 for one day
Payments should be in:
* Sterling cheque drawn on a UK bank
* US dollar cheque drawn on a US bank
* Eurocheque
* Banker's draft or international money order in # sterling with bank
charges prepaid
* By credit card (Visa/Mastercard, number, expiry date, name of
holder, address if different)
Total (payable to the Linnean Society) #/$US
............................................
Signed...................................................... Date
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* Please send me information on hotel and hostel accommodation.
Return this completed registration form to
Conserving Europe's bees
Linnean Society of London
Burlington House
Piccadilly
London W1V 0LQ
United Kingdom
Fax (+44) 171-287-9364
Telephone(+44) 171-434-4479
E.mail: [log in to unmask]
Return address:
E.mail: [log in to unmask]
Fax: (+44) 1222-665522
Telephone: (+44) 1222-372409
Snailmail: 18 North Road, Cardiff CF1 3DY, UK
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