On 12/23/2017 10:44 PM, Mike S wrote:
> Think I read somewhere that someone experimented with blocking the flight of desired drones and virgin queens until sometime after 4:00 in the afternoon and used that as a method of trying to obtain the desired mating crosses. Has anyone heard of that or has tried that?
>
Mike, you are probably thinking of Beowulf Cooper's advocacy of various
isolation measures to improve the purity of BIBBA's queen matings.
Without reading his book again I can remember he mentions at least 3
methods of isolation. They were time isolation where drones and virgins
are released at a time of day when non-native drones are unlikely to by
flying, geographical isolation where only selected drones are kept in
flying distance of queens and seasonal isolation where potential breeder
queens are reared late in the season when the weather is too demanding
for exotic drones and virgins to fly. Beowulf was promoting this stuff
in the 1960's and it's still part of BIBBA's teachings although I have
only had personal experience with geographical isolation.
Steve Rose
North Wales
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