Paul asked me for a progress report on the bees I inadvertently imported.
The Mellifera package was hived in a new TBH and now has 12 full combs covered
in bees. They are moderately and constantly active.
The Carniolan package now occupies two full Warre boxes. It has always been
extremely active and prone to flushes of exuberance in which a great many bees
pour out of the hive on what seems to be an orientation flight, and cover the
front of the hive; it lasts about 20 minutes and they did it today.
I also have a colony in a Warre which has survived several generations and
swarmed this year. Although that, too, covers two full boxes, the bees are
worryingly inactive. Those bees that are flying are still bringing in pollen.
In another Warre I also hived a small swarm; a few weeks later I united it with
a further swarm. They seemed to be getting along swimmingly but after three
weeks they absconded.
I have extracted honey from all three occupied hives and will be feeding them.
Andrew
From: oxnatbees-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oxnatbees-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Paul Honigmann (Redacted sender "paul.honigmann" for DMARC)
Sent: 24 May 2018 21:42
To: oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [oxnatbees] Re: Swarms wanted list
Andrew's post raises a number of interesting points. I'll go through them to
elucidate the beginners.
Firstly he notes that he was disappointed to learn the bees came from Greece.
Just to be clear to newbees, the reasons are disease transmission and, using
non-local bees means they can take a couple of years to get used to the UK
climate, so a foreign queen might for example keep laying into winter. But this
use of foreign bees by commercial suppliers seems more common than you'd think.
Take for example The Bee Man <http://www.the-beeman.co.uk/> , whose website
proudly proclaims in large print at the top that he supplies British queens. In
his adverts this is his main claim. But look further into the small print of
the website and there is doubletalk about imports. And it's not clear to me if
it's just the queens that are British in the packages he supplies, i.e. is he
importing a shedload of foreign worker bees to bulk up the numbers in his
packages. VERY DODGY AND MISLEADING ADVERTISING. I don't know how many other
breeders do this.
Some of you may be wondering, what is a package as opposed to a swarm or
nucleus colony? Well swarms and nucs comprise a queen and workers from the same
family (hive). They already smell the same and there are no problems
integrating the queen and the colony. The package technique, which is more
normally found in the American bee industry, is where you take a queen in a
cage - and a queen breeder may raise dozens at a time in a specialised hive -
and shake a bunch of unrelated bees in to her hive. Often these unrelated bees
come from several different colonies so there is no one dominant hive smell. It
takes a few days for them to come to terms with their new environment, and if
all goes well they accept the caged queen as their queen. Most UK beeks are
very dubious about this practice because it stresses the bees a lot, because
they initially reckon they've lost their original queens and are queenless.
After a few weeks of course that generation is dead and the new bees are
descendants of the now-uncaged queen. Again, even if you bred the queen in the
UK you run the risk of importing some pest on the foreign worker bees.
I will be very, very interested to hear how these bees fare in a no-treatment
environment. I started out with a couple of Buckfast colonies and when I went
no-treatment both died, with massive varroa loads. Since then I have used
random colonies, true ferals where I could get them and not lost one to varroa.
My suspicion is that bee breeders have highly inbred gene pools and have lost
or suppressed the hygienic traits. As has been pointed out by others, their
business model relies on repeat sales and it actually benefits them if the bees
die!
Finally, about the breed of bee. It is an oft repeated Fact in beekeeping that
mixing races leads to aggression. Like most Well Known Facts in beekeeping you
need to treat this with some skepticism: many beekeepers have told me my
"mongrel swarms" will be vicious and they are not: a lot of behaviour is a
result of how you treat them. But time and again I have seen reports of calm
purebred bees bought from a breeder going vicious when crossed with local bees.
(The complainers are oblivious to the fact that their drones are probably
making other local colonies berserk.) This effect takes one or two generations
(usually 1-2 years) to become apparent: it's a little complex, let me explain.
Let's say in year zero you buy a pre-mated, pure Carniolan queen from a
breeder. All is well for your first year. She's pure Carniolan, and so are her
offspring.
In year one the bees decide to supersede her. They select one of her eggs as
the new queen and once that virgin has mated with local drones they most likely
kill the old queen. Now the new queen is making half-breed babies, but
importantly she herself is pure Carniolan, remember her mum was pre-mated with
Carniolan drones selected for calm traits by the original breeder. Even if her
offspring have a nasty streak, her pheromones dominate the nest mood and the
workers are more or less well behaved. (This has been proved by people
switching "calm" and "grumpy" queens between hives and watching the hive moods
change within an hour or so!)
In year two the daughter is superseded and all hell breaks loose. Now the
offspring are mongrels and so is the new queen.
Carniolan crosses are particularly feared for viciousness.
The breeder has no incentive to "solve" this because the standard way of
keeping your bees calm is to re-queen with queens of the same race from a
breeder. Ker-ching!
Again Andrew, I would be very very interested to hear about the progress of the
Carniolan colony, its temperament, and that of its neighbours.
The Amm colony may, or may not, be compatible with local bees. According to
BIBBA, you should be able to crossbreed Amm colonies from anywhere within the
UK without temperament problems. But as pure Amm are rare I don't know what
will happen there. I hear some Amm users claim their bees have no varroa
problems as they have hygienic traits.
Paul
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On 24 May 2018 7:28 PM, Andrew Bax <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I confess I have cheated.
I have three Warres and a recently-acquired HTB, but I went into the winter
with only one live colony (which survived well and has since swarmed). So I
ordered two packages of bees which I collected yesterday.
I have seen packages before but these were different. The workers (and a lot of
them) were in a mesh box with a feeder and some queen pheromone to stop them
raising queen cells. I was then offered a choice of three strains of queen:
Buckfast, Mellifera and Carniolan; I chose the last two. To my dismay, I then
discovered that they had come from Greece. Not what I had in mind at all, but I
had paid upfront and needed bees.
Installation was easy and despite travel and rough treatment, the bees were
very docile.
I’ve also collected a swarm locally so I now have four occupied hives.
Andrew
From: oxnatbees-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oxnatbees-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Paul Honigmann (Redacted sender "paul.honigmann" for DMARC)
Sent: 24 May 2018 14:24
To: oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [oxnatbees] Swarms wanted list
Blimey - it is late May and still almost no swarms. And most of the 6 or so
collected so far absconded. The total wanted is over 40!
The bees may be adopting a different strategy this year due to the very late
Spring. I have read that in Scotland, where there is less forage and the
growing season is shorter, native bees have evolved to only swarm every 2 or 3
years, because it takes a lot of resources to launch a swarm. Instead, they
send out drones most years, which propagate the colony's genes by mating with
whatever queens are around. Well, it's a theory.
Here's the current list of who-wants-what.
Paul
OxNatBees Swarms still wanted 2018 (organised by region)
Name
Location
Postcode
Contact info
Swarms wanted
North Oxfordshire
Paul Honigmann
Steeple Aston
OX25 4SR
01869 340665
1
Margaret Vile
Fringford
OX27 8DX
01869 278134 / 07866 635823
3
Mariella
Charlbury
OX7 3PX
07709 970376
1
Mick and Kathryn
Leamington Spa
1
Santa Eglite
Banbury
OX15 6EH
07792 722230
1
East Oxfordshire
Gemma
Tetsworth, nr Thame
OX9 7AL
07711 825237
1
Karl Pattison
Bicester
OX26 6BN
07779 850850
1
Happy to assist catching swarms
Central Oxfordshire
Jon Woods
Boars Hill
OX1 5HP
07770 415638 , text preferred
1
Ann Poulter
Central Oxford
OX1 4PA
07773 671034
2
Will Hanrott
Headington
OX3
07770 932669
3 assuming latest stays
Got one 5th May from ferals in Barton but absconded poss due to old comb
Jane and Phil
Wolvercote
OX2 8PP
Phil 07974821864 / 01865 429388
Jane 01865 559556
3
Jack Pritchard
East Oxford
07943 587062
0
Happy to assist catching swarms
Brian and Faith
Summertown
OX2 7QD
01865 512614
1
Gilliane Sills
Boars Hill
OX2 9AU
07854 761302
1
First swarm absconded
Richard Anstis
North Oxford
07908 673367
5 to 12 (!)
West Oxfordshire
Simon Morton
Chipping Norton
OX7 5NS
07508 760751
2
Mark Sheikh
between Witney / Bampton
OX18 2BA
07921 491605
1
Zuzana Meryova
between Woodstock/ Eynsham
OX29 8LW
07733 305440
3
Novice, may need help
Sarah Pulvertaft
Taston, nr Charlbury
OX7 3JL
07914 582688, 01608 810757
1
Gary Peacock
Eynsham
07740 373128 (work) 07799 606041 (personal)
2
Angus MacCurrach
Bournton on the Water
GL54
07974 694010
3
South Oxfordshire
Stefanie Taeumer
OX49 5DN
07818 858942, 01491 612643
1
Liz Robinson
Whitchurch on Thames
RG8 7HP
01189 844142 (preferred) / 07462 532716
2
Has car Mon,Fri,Sat,Sun otherwise needs swarm delivered
Total still wanted
40 to 47
If you are also a member of a BKA and have not yet done so, remember to contact
their Swarms Officer too. For OBKA, contact Mo Leen (mo.leen@xxxxxxxxxxxx or
tel: 01865 773626) to be included on his OBKA swarms alert list. For West
Oxfordshire it is David Johnson, 01865 301189. Remember to sign off lists once
hives are full
Swarm collection charges:
A swarm we tell you of, but you go collect it yourself:
No charge
A swarm someone else catches for you, you then pick it up from them:
You pay them £15
A swarm someone else catches for you, and they deliver it to you:
You pay them £30
This charge covers the collector's time & expense. No guarantees offered with
swarms.
