Phil Moore wrote: > But where is the experimental evidence that Amm live longer? > I have found Wedmore's take on this subject (para 19, Manual of Beekeeping): ...Some Italian strains imported into Great Britain have shown an effective life as low as five weeks, whereas the British black bee had an effective life nearer eight weeks, and some modern strains show a still better figure. Cooper: “If 100 workers are marked in May, some can still be found ten weeks later, in an average summer. Strains with long-lived workers also tend to beget long-lived queens. Queens of any native strain should live for 36 months in full production, and those of better strains should live for 48-60 months when kept on a single BS broodbox… Longevity is the mechanism by which bees kept in hives with relatively small broodboxes manage to get such large honey crops in poor as well as in good seasons. It is the long-lived bee which builds up to a populous colony at the season of maximum honey flow, which shows the need for prolificacy to be false.” Tinsley: "It is interesting to go through the pages of the British Beekeepers' Journal and compare the honey yields of the beekeepers in the years before the acarine disease appeared, and the present time. In 1899 Lancelot Quayle, in the Isle of Man, produced 352 lb of honey from a single stock, and had an average of 200 lb from 12 stocks. Again, in 1901-2 his average was 187 and 122 lb respectively, but after being cleared out with the disease, his average has, with other strains of bees, never been more than 50-80 lb. Similar yields to Quayle's were freely reported in the Journal. I doubt very much whether our yields of honey compare favourably with those obtained by the older beekeepers". All this explains why my less prolific colonies compare so well with the prolific swarms I occasionally collect. Although I don't know whether the tests Wedmore and Cooper had conducted were of sufficient rigour to be considered scientific, I can't see any reason why all races have to have the same longevity and in the light of the views of these august writers and my own experience I would require scientific evidence to show that all races are the same in this respect. Steve Rose ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************