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From:
"E.t. Ash" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 14 Oct 2016 18:24:48 -0400
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a Mr Borst snip..
Hmm. How is the British bee distinct from, say, the bees of France or Holland?

> My limited understanding would lead me to believe they are the same.....  ie your basic apis m.m.  My understanding is that these were imported into Great Britain from northern Europe.  But then again I can't say I am any expert on the natural history of honeybees in Europe and their movement.  

> As to hostile and or excessively defensive bees.... in my very early years of keeping bees (via my original mentor in West Virgina) these were US reared apis m.m.  A smallish black bee that came up slowly in the spring of the year.  Quite hostile to the extreme and later on I would come to conclude the hostility level of these bees was much about inbreeding.  Much later when I became interested in rearing queens and breeding bees it also came to my attention (via a lot of old editions to the ABJ and some old queen rearing books) that highly breed kinds of bees (especially were the desired product is suppose to be very gentle) that once these kinds of bee replace the 'hybrid' queen it is not that uncommon for the 'gentle' qualification to go right out the window and not so uncommonly to the extreme.  The midnights, starlines and buckfast all seem to have followed this tendency in their behavior.

>I am evidently a bit more bullet proof than some so at least to some degree defensiveness is viewed as a threshold characteristics.  I will tolerate some degree of defensive behavior for bees that survive without treatment.  At the queen rearing level I don't use these for queen mother hives.

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