Many thanks Paul for the wealth of bee information
Louanne
On Apr 9, 2021, at 6:03 PM, Oxnatbees <oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Many different stripe patterns in your bees means a healthy diverse stock.
Some years ago I did some analysis on what race my bees were which you can
see here
<https://oxnatbees.wordpress.com/2016/11/04/racial-mix-north-oxfordshire-bees/>
You can find various information sources on the Web like
"Bee-race-comparison" (attached) but these documents tend to be biased - this
one is from an American website and does not cover the bees we see here. You
might just see Carniolans, but they're pretty rare here. It doesn't even
mention Amm, the old British Black Bee which is making a resurgence here
(i.e. its genes are resurfacing as natural selection weeds out unfit imports
and local bees become more popular with beekeepers; but the new ones are not
pure Amm).
Of more interest is the Killowen graphic which is a colourised version of a
BIBBA survey (quite old) showing how much Amm is left as a proportion of
genetic makeup in various parts of the country. It can also be considered a
map of where people imported the most bees. Note how the less arable areas
have more black bees (don't attract bee farmers).
The John Chambers lecture notes are about how the bee races became different:
it's all to do with ice ages separating populations. Amm are actually Spanish
bees originally: when the ice ages ended they spread north to Germany,
Britain etc: then as Spain warmed up, African bees spread into Spain. Gareth
mentioned finding some very black bees in the Spanish mountains and thinking,
these look just like the British Black Bee...
Most people don't understand the massive selection pressure squeezing bee
colonies from whatever the beekeeper buys towards the local stock. It works
very quickly, 2-3 years.
Paul
On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 17:36, Gareth John <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Our bees, which we got from Marc last year (and which I believe came from
Gareth originally) were uniformly dark to begin with, but since swarming
last year they now seem to be a mixture of dark bees, blonde bees and
brunette bees. How does this happen? Has the young queen mated with several
different males, so the worker bees with different phenotypes have different
fathers? Is that how it works?
Yes, exactly.
Gareth
On 9 Apr 2021, at 17:26, Juli Cohen <juliane.cohen@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:juliane.cohen@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Hi Jeannie (and all),
I haven’t come across the term tiger bee before, and when I google it I just
get photoshopped images of bees with the head of a tiger stuck on 🙄
Where I can find more information on the different types of bee?
Our bees, which we got from Marc last year (and which I believe came from
Gareth originally) were uniformly dark to begin with, but since swarming
last year they now seem to be a mixture of dark bees, blonde bees and
brunette bees. How does this happen? Has the young queen mated with several
different males, so the worker bees with different phenotypes have different
fathers? Is that how it works?
Thanks,
Juli
PS. Jeannie, I couldn’t see the first picture you sent.
On 9 Apr 2021, at 11:48, Jeannie Donald-McKim <jeanniedonaldmckim@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:jeanniedonaldmckim@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
<image.png>
Our bees, RB1, descended from the Buckfast bees? Pete Hawkins identified
them as tiger bees, and they are quite fierce! (I named the queen of this
colony Radiant Tiger)
On Fri, Apr 9, 2021 at 11:45 AM Jeannie Donald-McKim
<jeanniedonaldmckim@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:jeanniedonaldmckim@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
<image.png>
<Bee-race-comparison.jpg><Killowen_nativeness_map.jpg><Bee_races_from_lecture_by_John_Chambers.png>
