Yes,in answer to Debbie  from Canada and Joel Govostes, black bees are still
around in UK, I have been keeping them for nearly 20 years now. While  I  do
not claim is that they are the "original British black bees", their genes
are probably   predominantly  of that race. Black bees are still common in
the north of England (where I live) and Scotland with some beekeepers
managing to keep strains going further south.
 
The old race evolved to succede with the climate and flora of  this
country. They are still succesful bees here now even though modern
agriculture means a very different flora. The bees, assisted sometimes by
beekeepers, have changed to take take advantage of the changing flora and
local conditions. For example in a moorland area, the main flow is heather
starting as late as mid August so a late developing strain would have been
advantageous before  migratory beekeeping. Beekeeping methods can also
promote evolution, eg skep beekeeping  would have encouraged swarmy bees. So
while the books might give general charachteristics of the the race, there
is quite a lot of variation which a breeder can use to advantage.
 
The biggest difficulty in maintaining the charachter of the old strain is
that for over 100 years, some beekeepers have thought that foreign races
should be better performers (the grass is always greener on the other side
of the fence!). So there have been imports from all over the world - and
still are - resulting in uncontrolled crossbreeding.
 
 A thoroughbred strain of black bees are enjoyable to keep perform well,
some  imports likewise BUT the crossbreeds can be the very devil. A spate of
imports of New Zealand bred Italians into this area by one ot two beekeepers
caused many others  to complain bitterly of bad tempered bees for the first
time. When the imports stopped, the black strain reasserted itself, probably
because it is better adapted to the weather patterns. However to keep good
tempered, low swarming, productive black bees  demands breeding effort by
the beekeeper because there are just too many mongrels around. Time pressure
has meant I have neglected this recently and I  can see the changes in
behaviour as well as in the appearance of a small percentage of bees with
yellow bands in some colonies.
 
So if there has been all this crossbreeding over the last century, how do we
know present black bees are native or near native?  The best evidence for
this is wing vein measurements - measuring the relative  lengths of certain
wing veins and angles between them. In a good pure bred stock these
measurements are surprisingly consistent but are quite different in the
different races of bees. But still we need to proove that the measurements
of our black bees are the same as bees before imports started. Recent
evidence means we can do this.
 
An archeaological excavation of a Viking settlement in York unearthed a skep
dating from the 10th (from memory) Century. In it were quite a number of
bees and bee fragments which had been preserved. Local beekeepers who heard
of this arranged for wing vein measurements to be taken which gives the base
line aganst which to compare our colonies.
 
There are plenty of  black bees around in this area with very similar wing
vein measurements. I believe they are worth maintaining both because they
are sucessful in their own right and because it is sensible to maintain the
gene pool for future generations of beekeepers and bee breeders.
 
Regards
Keith Hall