In message <009c01c8110c$7370a120$9dbb6a58@office>, Peter Edwards 
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>(...and before someone tells me that this will not produce enough bees 
>to get a decent crop, have a look at the picture here:

Very nice indeed, though very rarely would I ever let them get so tall 
as we would remove honey regularly on management visits. (10 is not 
unknown in our operation on blossom, though not in recent years due to 
the near extinction of the raspberry industry, and would have been taken 
off in 2 or 3 lots. Then there is the heather to be migrated to after 
that.)

However, I do have pics of colonies up to 8 Langstroth deeps tall too, 
on the heather in 2006 (blossom honey previously removed).

Now, as with your pics, I could give the impression that that is how I 
fare for crop, but that would be a false impression. All the dinks and 
duds, all the middle of the roaders, and all the top dogs (which are 
usually exceptional, or you and I would not normally be photographing 
them) go together to make your true harvest level.

Bottom line is, having had a go with many types, including the so called 
low vigour long life types, I could not pay the mortgage and the staff 
working with the single BS deep type of bee. I need more oomph, I need a 
boom in population in August, I need a bee that can get me a crop in a 
week if that is the only window that opens.

Maybe in your area you are in the happy position of being able to 
accumulate a harvest over a protracted period, but sometimes, and this 
year is a good example in our area, this long yielding period is not 
available.

10 days at the end of August and start of Sept was all we got for our 
main economic harvest. The bees got nothing from mid May to late August, 
and those of our bees which are the lower vigour types just did not do 
the business. But we will still have >26 tonnes of heather 
honey......and its the higher vigour colonies that did the business.

As for bee life span? On the heather it is very short anyway, the old 
timers I met as a youngster said 'heather eats bees' and anecdotally it 
is said that the working life of a bee (regardless of racial type) once 
it emerges as a forager on heather is 'about 6 days'.  We have a 
relatively short season with a spring and July breeding peak, so do not 
have the long intense load on the queens as is the norm in places 
further south. Perhaps that is a factor, but we see little practical 
difference in the *useful* lifespan of Amm queens and hybrids (mainly 
carnica). Italians do not do well in this area due to their lack of 
liking for the cold and often wild climate.

Early and late flying is a thing I thought was an advantage in the past, 
and even have had bees that would forage in 7 and 8degC, in fact have 
some now. Bottom line is, as another poster stated, they do no better 
than those bees which wait until it is a bit warmer and there is 
actually something out there to get other than a bit of pollen before 
mounting an effort to forage. Often the later starters were more intense 
in their work in the peak of the day, and the early starters often went 
through a quiet spell.

We DO use excluders. They are an important management tool for us where 
the bees need to be intensively worked in May and June and we need to 
know where the queen is. However, to achieve the August peak of foragers 
we remove all excluders at the examination closest to 1st July and allow 
the queen unlimited brood space at that time. It works for *us*, but as 
has been so often repeated...........all beekeeping is local, so would 
not presume to know what is best for anyone else in a different 
situation.

Amm is no angelic bee. Its has strong points and bad points. It is 
looked back on with rose tinted glasses. However I could not do as I do 
in Eastern Scotland without at least SOME of its hardy traits.

As a boy in the 60's I remember going to an old beekeeping lady ( a 
distant relative actually, her name was Bessie Skene) who kept a 
significant apiary at Ballater in Scotland. She died aged 89 or 90 (?) 
when I was about 11 (1966) but sold her honey to my father every year. 
See had worked the bees with her father when she was a young girl. She 
remembered the old black bee, she remembered Isle of Wight disease, she 
remembered the bees that came along later. Her opinion of the old black 
bee was not high, stingier and swarmier than the later bees, but 
beautiful comb honey. She also related about high losses during the IOW 
years, but never told of complete wipe outs. She preferred her 1950's 
bees to those of 50 years earlier, by the 1960's she was not fit any 
more and her family did the bees for her.

FWIW, John Whent, who is probably without equal in the UK as a honey 
getter, at least in terms of effort to production, does NOT use the 
black bee. He is a carnica man, and reckons the ones he sourced in 
Germany are the best he has found for his purpose. I cannot argue with a 
man who gets 100 tonnes with only himself and two helpers. He is in 
Yorkshire, a good bit further south than us and about 4 degC warmer on 
average, plus he has Borage to go to, so has that subtle climatic and 
forage advantage that favours the bee he uses.

Been following this thread from afar, and can only say I will have to 
agree to disagree with several posters, ditto the thread that seems to 
suggest that we migratory men are evil incarnate. However, that's a post 
for another day <G>.
-- 
Murray McGregor

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