Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate
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Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate
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Re: Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate
#2> People often comment how quickly escaped managed bees regress to the local wild bees (2-3 years of natural selection weeds out the foreign genes). He is seeing an interesting selection factor: in tree cavities colonised by swarms from conventional hives (yellower bees), the bees build comb differently to the real wild bees. They have been selected, by humans, to build flat sheets – which is not optimal for defence or climate control, and they die off quickly in tree cavities.
Re: Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate
#3Looked up ‘Amm’, think it refers to the European dark bee (Apis mellifera mellifera), a subspecies of the western honey bee https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_dark_bee
Re: Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate
#4The estate is enormous and beautiful and they have a lot of events for kids. Not far from Watford.
Re: Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate
#5About a decade ago, it was possible, for less than £20 per day, to go fly-fishing on the lower lakes and cascade in the Blenheim Palace grounds, including taking home a couple of rainbow trout for the pot directly below the Bladon bridge: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bladon_bridge,_Blenh.... Looking back now, that was some of the best-spent money and time in my life.
Re: Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate
#6> People often comment how quickly escaped managed bees regress to the local wild bees (2-3 years of natural selection weeds out the foreign genes). He is seeing an interesting selection factor: in tree cavities colonised by swarms from conventional hives (yellower bees), the bees build comb differently to the real wild bees. They have been selected, by humans, to build flat sheets – which is not optimal for defence…
> They have been selected, by humans, to build flat sheets
What? The flat sheets are nothing to do with selection. They are to do with leveraging 'bee space' in the design of hives. Man-made hives include sheets of scaffold at very specific distances to ensure that bees build flat comb. The reason for doing this is easy inspection and management of the hive.
They are constrained to do this by leveraging bee space, it is not an evolved feature of commercial bees.
Re: Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate
#7I think the thing I found most fascinating was the fact that the hives were small (~= 5000 bees) and had multiple queens, with one swarm having 9!
Re: Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate
#8About a decade ago, it was possible, for less than £20 per day, to go fly-fishing on the lower lakes and cascade in the Blenheim Palace grounds, including taking home a couple of rainbow trout for the pot directly below the Bladon bridge: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bladon_bridge,_Blenh... . Looking back now, that was some of the best-spent money and time in my life.
Is it no longer possible? Sounds nice
Re: Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate
#9About a decade ago, it was possible, for less than £20 per day, to go fly-fishing on the lower lakes and cascade in the Blenheim Palace grounds, including taking home a couple of rainbow trout for the pot directly below the Bladon bridge: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bladon_bridge,_Blenh... . Looking back now, that was some of the best-spent money and time in my life.
Who's the fly fisher who stocked Blenheim with rainbows? That sounds lovely. I didn't think the river Glyme had a wild population?
EDIT: Just found this: https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/sport/4317952.angling-new-trout...
Re: Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate
#10> People often comment how quickly escaped managed bees regress to the local wild bees (2-3 years of natural selection weeds out the foreign genes). He is seeing an interesting selection factor: in tree cavities colonised by swarms from conventional hives (yellower bees), the bees build comb differently to the real wild bees. They have been selected, by humans, to build flat sheets – which is not optimal for defence…
> They have been selected, by humans, to build flat sheets What? The flat sheets are nothing to do with selection. They are to do with leveraging 'bee space' in the design of hives. Man-made hives include sheets of scaffold at very specific distances to ensure that bees build flat comb. The reason for doing this is easy inspection and management of the hive. They are constrained to do this by leveraging bee space, it…
I'm not making any assertions, but don't you think there's some kind of selective process at work when you're breeding bees in an environment with fixed frames? Like, can they sustain a cluster over winter within the parameters?