After getting back from Wales I had only a day at home before heading off for Flanders and France on a Battlefield Tour with the Royal British Legion and have been frantically trying to catch up since. I now have a little time to blog about the BIBBA/SICAMM conference but am having difficulty in deciphering my scrawled notes, especially now that memory is fading, so what follows is subject to correction!
My diary tells me that I slept ok in the tent, although it was windy in the night (I assume the note is about the weather rather than my digestive tract!). I walked the mile and a half into town in time for the opening formalities and then was faced with a choice of three simultaneous lectures: Pete Sutcliffe on Colony Nutrition; Giles Budge on Understanding the genetics and provenance of the UK honey bee populations; or Robert Paxton on Hybridization – the good, the bad and the ugly.
I chose the second one but found that Giles Budge, owing to a job change, was no longer doing the lecture but that the subject would be covered by a colleague, molecular geneticist, Dr Eleanor Jones.
From her we learned that Apis mellifera has more than 24 sub-species. There have been imports to the UK since the 1640s! It has been suggested but not proved that even the Romans brought bees here. The figures from 2009 indicate about 14,000 imports of which 5,618 were from Europe; 300 from Australia, 750 from New Zealand and 4182 from Hawaii. I know these figures don’t add up so maybe there are other countries sending bees here (or else I made poor notes).
She spoke about the appearance of Small Hive Beetle in the toe of Italy where, so far, 50% of colonies have been found to be infected, so it has been there for a while. They are moving bees up to 150 km north and there are many imports to the UK from within that region.
She showed a map of the UK with blobs of various sizes and locations indicating the big picture coming from the Random Apiary Survey made a few years ago. I was pleased to note a large blob indicating the presence of a large amount of AMM genes in the population not far to the NE of my apprentice, Sarah’s, apiary. Also there was a smaller blob close to my apiary at Halstock. The Random Apiary Survey showed no link between bee races and the incidence of EFB.
The Survey showed, not unexpectedly, that the UK has a high genetic diversity among its honey bees, but that the majority of the population has Apis mellifera mellifera (native) genes, thus forming the largest proportion of the genome in England and Wales.
Dr Jones went on to tell us about a project called Smartbees, a project to improve our understanding of the bees’ resistance to pests and diseases, about which I may tell you in my next session as it’s well past bed-time now!
Chris Slade's Bee Blog 