The culture on much of the UK and certainly here in North Wales is not
to requeen regularly with bought-in stock but to maintain our existing
stocks through artificial swarming, supersedure and open mating. It
only works well when enough of the beekeepers in a particular area keep
compatible bees and ideally bees of the same race. In our experience
mixed crossings give rise to terrible aggression and poor performance in
our marginal environment so we have formed breeding groups around the
region to share genetic material and colony assessments. The bees that
do best are the ones that exhibit the most AMM characteristics so we
weight our selection procedures to favour them in particular.
Bangor University is just starting a study of the genetic make-up of the
district's bees so we hope to obtain data on the general bee population
which will include those that do not belong to the breeding groups.
Many of these beekeepers have, however, obtained their stock from
breeding group members in any case.
Steve Rose
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