Merioneth Beekeepers' Association
On 16th February 2011, six MBKA members met with neighbouring Lleyn and Eifionydd BKA in Penmorfa Village Hall to listen to Steve Rose , a member of BIBBA (Bee Improvement and Bee Breeders Association), explain why 'Local Bees Are Better'.
Steve explained that BIBBA is trying to find native bees (Apis mellifera mellifera) and near native honeybees around the UK and Republic of Ireland. This is 'Project Discovery' which is a survey of the location of honeybees that are close in racial characteristics to the native bee.
Apparently it's not easy to tell if our dark bees are the ones they are looking for as the colour can vary from brown to black, but physically the indigenous bees are generally large in body size with long abdominal over hairs. Their main noticeable behavioural characteristics are that they are thrifty, non-prolific and fly at low temperatures and in high winds.
Native bees wing venation is characteristic and by measuring this it is possible to identify them as well as Carniolan and other sub-species. If you believe your bees to be native or near native then contact Steve Rose via email on the BIBBA website.
Why bother? Well, he is keen that we in North Wales work together to:
- Improve the consistency of open mating
- Improve or maintain the adaptation of bees to local conditions
- Eliminate the need to import exotic bees which stir up the gene pool and can lead to bees with bad traits such as aggressiveness.
Further information is on the BIBBA website.
On 19 February 2011 our first meeting of the year was held at Llanelltyd Village Hall. Some members from Montgomery, Aberystwyth, and Lleyn and Eifionydd Beekeeping Associations joined us, making 35 people all told. It was good to see so many visitors.
The speaker was Ian Williams from Bangor University who spoke on "Broadening the Genetic Base of Bees". This is a complex subject and this report gives just a flavour of what he and his team are doing. Those wanting more detail should look at the West Wales Bee Breeding Program at Bangor University.
Ian started by explaining how varroa has infested the majority of honeybees in the world, with the exception (for the time being) of Australia. He made the point that varroa's relationship with honeybees was evolving and complex - for example, in Asian honeybees varroa only infects drone larvae where in European bees the worker larvae are infected as well.
He then went on to explain that the goal of the project is to produce a hardy, productive, strain of bees resistant to varroa and other diseases without the use of medications and at the same time keep the traits beekeepers desire: such as, quietness when handled, disinclination to swarm, etc.
To do this, Bangor University has teamed up with a large commercial beekeeper in a very rural part of Ceredigion. Experiments conducted last summer demonstrated that queens from the current stock were efficient at seizing available mating opportunities during prolonged periods of poor weather, a very useful attribute here in Wales. The drones are also managed, as far as it is possible, by using the remoteness of the location and the lack of other hives in the area.
The resulting brood can then be observed and the best used to breed from, while genetic monitoring will ensure that background genetic diversity is maintained - it's very important to maintain the health of the colonies. This process will continue over a number of years.
In order to broaden the genetic base of bees going into the program, Ian is keen to find Welsh beekeepers who have bees which appear to have some resistance to varroa, while having other desirable characteristics. Ideally, they will not have had any treatment for varroa over the last two years. See how to participate on Bangor University's website.