I 've taken the liberty of putting Richard Sewell's excellent report here for you all to read. Apologies for any editing errors and the omission of his excellent photos but it's well worth a read, Derek

Bee Improvement & Bee Breeders Association (BIBBA) Conference 2010

Nina and I attended the annual BIBBA conference which this year was held in Cahir, Co. Tipperary from 3rd-5th September. Along with nearly 90 delegates, we had 3 days of excellent lectures, workshops, practicals and networking and included a visit to the apiary at Dun Aonghusa, home of the Galtee Bee Breeding Group (GBBG)

The conference dinner on the Friday and a ceilidh on the Saturday gave an excellent chance to network with friends and acquaintances many of whom are well known to Lancaster Beekeepers and to make some new contacts with beekeepers world wide. The audience was a self selected group of enthusiasts of the Dark European Honey Bee, Apis mellifera mellifera. Support for the native Dark Bee is very variable both in the UK and Europe. In the Republic of Ireland it is almost universally the bee of choice and the dark bee has equal status in Switzerland too. There is a solid enthusiastic breeding base in Poland,Sweden, Norway, Denmark and increasingly in Finland. We even had beekeepers from Orkney and Colonsay where the Dark Bee is probably the onlysubspecies adapted to survive.

Going Native-The Practicalities of Breeding Local Honey Bees

This was the title of this years conference and it clearly was very relevant to our aims and breeding strategy at Lancaster Beekeepers.

Terry Clare, President of BIBBA, welcomed us and opened the meeting thanking the sponsors & supporters of the event, FiBKA, GBBG, SICCAM & STBKA.

Jim Ryan then gave a history of the Dark Honey Bee in Ireland with reference to records going back to 700 AD. It was unlawful for a bee to sting you unprovoked which carried a penalty from the owner of a meal of honey to the unfortunate recipient of the sting, provided they could prove they hadn't killed the bee! Swarms were shared amongst the community and bees were important livestock in the early Irish economy. A hive of bees sold for 1 shilling.

The first evidence of importation of exotic subspecies into Ireland goes back to 1901 with influx of Italian Bees. Isle of White disease took it's toll in 1912.

Jo Widdicombe, who is the Breeding Groups Secretary, then outlined the emergence of breeding groups of which there are now over 30 on the map, including us at Lancaster.

The Local Queen Programme

By natural selection and selective breeding and culling by beekeepers and by cutting out imports of exotic bees to the area, a bee that suits local conditions can be produced. This is the basis for the setting up of bee breeding groups, the most established of which is the Galtee Bee Breeding Group (GBBG)

These groups have had vary varied success, some hardly getting off the ground. Most of those that are up and running are at the same stage as ourselves in their first year trying to build up breeding stock. Established groups have taken around 5 years to be productive.

Some have encountered a strong anti-native bee lobby amongst their local beekeepers. We had the opportunity to discuss and share at length experiences, ideas, tips and plans for bee breeding.

We were then shown a very useful tool...a computerised stud book and record keeping system for Queen rearing which was incredibly detailed. This allows selection and monitoring of various attributes of our stock, such as behaviour, prolificacy, nativeness etc in order to try and breed the best package of characteristics that we can. Many of these characteristics will be a compromise, but temperament should never be....you can breedtemper in or out of any bee,

Pam Hunter then led a debate on the characteristics of the Native Bee - Fact or Fiction, We discussed many aspects eg overwintering characteristics, early cessation of brood rearing in late summer, flight pattern in low temperatures, propolis production, disease susceptibility etc, but one of the most important is bee to brood ratio. The native bee adapts and adjusts it's breeding rate proportionate to the rate of incoming stores. In contrast ligustica and many hybrids just go on and on breeding no matter what is being foraged, resulting in large amounts of brood, towering brood chambers requiring large amounts of feeding and therefore more susceptibility to starvation. One of the myths ofbeekeeping is that more brood doesn't mean more jars of honey!

Day 2 started with a very scientific presentation from Dr Jacob Khan, looking at wing morphometry and also questioning whether artificial insemination of Queens could result in deterioration of the gene pool thus contributing to CCD. There are many publications that do not support this and instrumentally inseminated Queens are not inferior to naturally mated Queens.

Ole Hertz from Denmark then presented a report on the Forest Bee Project on the Island of Bornholm, Denmark. He outlined the attempts to maintain the Dark bee population in Denmark. He has even set up bee research stations producing Dark Bees in the arctic circle in Finland and South Greenland where there are no honey bees but some indigenous species of bumble bees. Some very impressive digging hives out of deep snow drifts in the spring had to be done! He also gave a report on his ongoing work with honey bees in Laoso.

We then had presentations, discussions and demonstrations and debates on various methods of Queen rearing. Many established beekeepers have a psychological barrier to grafting and fewer than 5% of beekeepers do it. New beekeepers are starting to learn the technique as they don't know how difficult it's supposed to be!

The afternoon trip to the apiary at Dun Aonghusa, home of the Galtee Bee was superb. This apiary was set up in 1991 by Micheal Mac Giolla Coda for the purpose of study, conservation and improvement of local and native strains of bees. We had a traditional Irish welcome complete with bagpipes following which Micheal introduced us to the superb apiary

We had various practical workshop stations. Apidea management and grafting techniques Artificial Insemination

The day was well organised and we learnt a lot. The Galtee dark bees were a delight to handle. We required no protection whatsoever,

many not even wearing a veil and they didn't even leave the comb, dispelling the myth that dark bees are aggressive. Some colonies have produced up to 190lbs of honey this year, dispelling another myth that dark bees are unproductive.

Day 3. Following previously highly scientific lecturers, the opening lecture on Day 3 was by Roger Patterson outlining his refreshingly "Simple Approach to Bee Improvement" He emphasised his background as an "ordinary" beekeeper and as ever, his comments were highly applicable to us grass roots beekeepers. We have had many reports of increasingly aggressive bees in the Lancaster area this year, and we are not alone. Roger refers to these as "British Standard Mongrels" With each subsequent generation of exotic "fashionable" bees, the trait is becoming more marked.. His solution is to breed towardsthe dark native bee, cull the worse 50% and selectively raise Queens throughout the season from the best 50%. He emphasised the need to be ruthless.

Dorian Pritchard then gave a very erudite lecture on. "Inbreeding, it's Consequences and Management" and outlined the minimal number of colonies to prevent it happening.

Dr. Mary Coffey talked about CCD

Dr Mervyn Eddie excellently outlined how the Ulster Bee Improvement Group raise Queens to supply their beginners with native stock. In their area they too have experienced a deterioration in bee characteristics with the parachuting in of imported Queens and nucs. By the time they have reached "F99" hybrids, vigorous defensiveness had become the norm in their local bee population.

Their group does have a lot of similarities to us, but rather than trying to breed a local bee, they are fortunate in having access to good pure high quality stock, so they buy one Galtee Queen every year, and use her as a breeding Queen for that season. There are no known previous attempts to raise Amm in Northern Ireland. So, by choice, they are not a breeding group in the true sense, but more a bee multiplication group. This approach has been suggested locally as a possible model for us at Lancaster Beekeepers, buying in artificially inseminated Queens. This however would deviate from our stated aims of tryingto produce a local "Lancaster Bee" with each subsequent generation having started from near native stock.

Peoples experiences of highly prolific imported bees were that they can produce loads of honey, but get a few days of bad weather and the whole lot has gone! A large boot is needed to supply enough sugar syrup to feed them enough for the winter and come the spring half the colonies are dead. Does that description ring any bells?!

Other talks included how to overwinter Queens in Apideas which Andrew Abrahams does on the island of Colonsay with considerable success.

Beekeeping in Orkney highlighted the problems of slow spring build up in Northern latitudes.

Dave Cushman lectured about Queen Mating Quality. He highlighted how Apis mellifera mellifera does not just mate in recognised drone congregation areas, but exhibits other mating behaviour, such as bubble assembly mating (Beowulf Cooper) which has implications for our own breeding at the club apiary at Yealand.

Kate Thompson then presented her latest research data on unmanaged feral colonies, an update from the talk she gave to us at Hala Carr last year.

The final talk by Balser Fried explored the progress of the Swiss dark bee and interestingly their use of small cell foundation to control varroa.

The Irish hospitality was predictably second to none, and the Irish beekeepers were great fun. Slightly too much of the black stuff was drunk! This was the most enjoyable beekeeping conference we have been to and we learned a lot about bee breeding which hopefully will be useful for our own group.

Richard & Nina Sewell