Making Honey, Happy Bees - 2 Flow Hives occupied now - Diamond and Crystal are coming

Little amm in Wales.
Folk selling black bees like to say they are because it’s fashionable.
Heaven knows why
Amm are very defensive and largely suited to small boxes. Definitely not 14x12or Lang

Sorry Valli I’m not trying to argue with you at all.
Amm are hugely hyped by breeders who should know better

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I learned something new today (Amm). I had a beautiful quiet Caucasian queen once, the hive swarmed & the resultant new queen’s progeny was unworkable. Ever since then I only bought Italians. They have some attitude but nothing compared to that first x Caucasian.

My bees are all mongrel bred now, however I swear one of my latest queen’s a 100% Italian.

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Now that is a coincidence, @JeffH! When we kept bees in the UK, we had Caucasians to start with too. They were fine for a few years, but gradually they drifted to the vicious black rain behaviour on your veil type, leaving 50 stingers or more in our suits each time we went into the hives. They would chase us over 100 meters back to our car - not pleasant.

Eventually we re-queened with lovely gentle “New Zealand yellow” bees. I think they were probably an Italian Cordovan mix - big bees with an appetite to match, but very productive and peaceful. Unfortunately we moved to the US after only a couple of seasons with them, but they were truly delightful.

David still wants to get more like them. Having said that, we inspected our hives today, and our current Italian bees are very good-natured and gentle, so maybe he will forget about changing the queens. :wink:

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Hi Dawn, I gave up changing queens years ago. I started changing queens every 12 months for the first couple of years. Why? because people said you should change queens every 12 months. After a couple of really strong hives went backwards after re-queening, I soon put a stop to that. I just let the bees sort it out now. I bought 15 new queens about 6 years ago & only about 7 or 8 were successful.

I’ve been picking up some good breeding stock from swarms I picked up, especially a colony I got out of a house wall last year. Most of the colonies I sold this year came from her progeny. I have her occupying my observation hive now.

I would love to do that, but with a combination of varroa (VSH bees have an advantage) and africanized drones, I am nervous what will happen with locally-mated queens. We will wait and see, of course, although our urban regulations demand re-queening every 2 years.

Hi Dawn Wilma here. I just looked up about VSH bees. Amazing. We are very fortunate in Australia. We are Not looking forward to the day Varroa comes to Australia. It is very close, but not here yet. They have Varroa in the islands of Papua Neuguinea, which is only a stones throw from our top end. I am guessing in time even with our stringent boarder protection it will happen one day. We will be lucky to have all the knowledge gained from other countries dealing with it when it happens. We don’t blame you for being nervous.

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Unfortunately Emerald can be defensive especially before a weather change. Sapphire has more Italian mixed in and she is so docile. Also their colouring’s are different. Emerald is blacker and Sapphire has lots of red in her daughters.

What ever they are it is fascinating and the differing genes make for similar differences in temperament

Amm has different evolutionary roots from Italian and caniolan and don’t "mix"
Crosses can be really bad tempered.
In an urban setting open mating doesn’t really matter as most folk here in cities in the uk keep Italian, carniolan or Buckfast ( which are a hybrid derived from those)
Our local bees where I live are black but increasing numbers of city relocators are keeping Carnies which probably accounts for the nastiness of some of the swarms that turn up.

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one thing I make sure I never do it tip my frames up all ways… upside down, sideways…

all the pollen will drop out that the bees have worked so hard to bring in…

fresh honey will soon run out as well… imagine the work that goes into each cell of honey…

vallie… your bees are so well tempered… you wouldn’t work with my bees with no gloves… oh no!! :sweat_smile:

I don’t mind a bit of bastard in my bees… they’ll protect the hive well :slight_smile:

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ha ha
Yes we have competitions to see who can manage the hardest bees…Childish isn’t it :wink:

That probably makes me a coward then. I have lived with some pretty vicious bees in the UK, but the neighbours kicked up a real stink, and they were probably right. It was such a delightful contrast when we re-queened, that I think now I will always tend towards cowardice… :blush:

No…not a coward, just sensible…I did say it was childish :smile:
Nasty bees are no fun and they usually get re-queened pretty pronto.
ALL four bait hives are getting seriously investigated this afternoon so I wonder what we’ll get?

Maybe a couple of silver spoons? As in… “A swarm in May is worth a stack of hay, a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon, a swarm in July isn’t worth a fly…” Wonder how we could adapt that for our antipodean friends? :smile:

Now that I know the meaning of the word (antipodean): I guess if they’re close & handy, they’re all worth pick’n up. Even the ones that aren’t worth a fly. I’m not sure if we have any sayings like that down here. We’re due for our shortest day soon. You must be due for your longest. I know one thing, it’s due to get down to 6degC on Sunday.

6degC, luxury.

It was minus 5C here in the nations capital last week.

But you had better sort out the Queensland weather Jeff. I’m heading up to Brissie next week for a holiday and I’d like warm sunny days thanks. :grin:

Gonna be 2 here on Saturday Matt… bring a cardy.

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No worries Matt, I’ve got it all sorted out for ya:) I think the rain’s all gone, cheers

When’s the honey flow over in there Valli?

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@Anon
we are in June gap presently - well suburbia is, if the weather for the rest of the summer is good End of August - if it is like last year - that is your lot for the year

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For us in New Jersey (USA) it is late March until July 1st for the fast and furious flow and then up and down until mid-October.

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