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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