In message <[log in to unmask]>, Robert Brenchley 
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>    Where do you advertise your queens? How many do you  sell indvidually,
>and how many end up heading nucs which you sell? If you  compare the number of
>ads for queens in the US beekeeping press with the number  in the UK press,
>you'll see what I mean!

It's OK. From the LOL I put you would note that I was amused rather than 
offended in any way.

Of course it utterly tiny compared to the US/Aus/NZ/Argentina etc etc 
scale.

I don't advertise and I make no claims for either the queens or the 
nucleii in terms of any racial purity or any fancy pedigree. They are 
just our tough local bees, the ones we use ourselves in our production 
hives. I can easily sell all I have to spare and have several takers for 
every nucleus I can offer. All done privately and by word of mouth, and 
I dont sell nucs in units of less than 10 at a time plus the buyer has 
to collect. This is for no other reason than I don't have time to deal 
with a nuc or two at a time, plus dish out the free advice that of 
necessity goes with it for half an hour to every caller.

> There's nobody visible enough to really  be considered
>'large-scale'. 2000+ may be a lot,

Don't confuse visibility with scale or quality. Ask Bob. Even in the US 
some of the breeders are virtually invisible if all you do is a web 
search or a read of the US bee press.

> but I don't have the impression  that this is
>the mainstay of your business! I may, of course, be wrong.

No, of course you are not wrong. Queens and nucs are a by product of 
having surplus bees and queens and bring me some extra personal cash. 
The main function of the breeding of the queens is for our own needs. 
The nucs area  different matter and I currently have 140 overwintering 
and I get a pollination fee on those in March/April for fruit tunnels 
then the good ones are sold or used in any dead outs we may have, and 
the dinks given the chop ready for filling with fresh nucs in May. We 
get 2 crops of nucs a season out of those boxes.

FWIW I don't charge fancy UK prices either, which is in part because I 
like the buyer to have a chance that buying my bees/queens will be a 
viable exercise and thus likely to return for more in future, and partly 
to ensure the orders are mainly from professionals or amateur groupings 
who will take enough of them to make it worth my time. 2008 nucs were 
GBP 60, queens GBP 16. 2009 nucs are GBP 70 and I already have offers to 
buy more than I can produce, and queens are GBP 18 and already 100 
queens are booked to the English Midlands, just a few miles east of you.
>
>    I need to do some morphometrics on my bees to see  how close they really
>are to the near-Amm I started with, but black bees are  definitely the
>exception round here, so if there was a significant amount of 
>outcrossing, I'd
>expect it to show over a few years.

You are ahead of me on that one. I have never done any morphometry and 
probably never will. Its fine detail that does not really concern me as 
all I want are robust vigorous and hard working bees. In our climate 
this invariably means dark but does not HAVE to mean Amm. We do see 
characteristics in colonies that show race specific traits (ie the 
melanistic drones from a previous post) that tell us certain bees have a 
good bit of race x or y in them, but the actual mix is unimportant so 
long as the results are good. I have never noticed any of the reputed 
problems attributed to crosses, in fact crosses are often great. Dark 
phase NWC virgins (see earlier posts about open mating and Italian 
drones. Only choose the dark ones as they have an NWC dad as well) 
crossed on local dark bees ( which are predominantly Amm) is a truly 
excellent cross, and its vigour takes two or three generations to revert 
back to the local mean.

> It's been very noticeable  that my queen
>raising efforts only succeed when I have plenty of drones  available in my own
>apiary, which again suggests that outcrossing isn't  that big a factor. 
>We have, of
>course, had a couple of vile summers, which won't  have encouraged queens to
>fly far.

It has indeed been awful. Almost zilch mated in June both years, and 
those that were were prone to failure, either by supercedure at just 
weeks old, or by turning drone layer in the first winter.

>But you're quite right, I need to look  closely, and I've been
>putting it off since I had a couple of colonies I bought  in (not a 
>good decision!)
>and the presence of these bees would have skewed the  results. It'll have to
>wait till spring, by which time the last of thise bees  will thankfully 
>be long
>gone.

I would say just persist with the bees you like, no matter what the 
morphometry says. Its all a bit nazi to me, perfectly good bees rejected 
because their wing venation is not as desired. I am a perfectly happy 
local strain/mongrels owner.
-- 
Murray McGregor

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