Scottish Black(?) Bees.

Last week, I reported that one of the bee colonies was weak, but otherwise healthy; I shouldn’t have been so confident. Today it was much weaker and suffering from dysentery. It was immediately bundled into a small polystyrene hive and put in the back of the car. The remnants of the hive was sealed for removal and disinfecting at the first opportunity. Dysentery is an odd phenomenon, it doesn’t actually signify anything in particular other than that the bees are not happy. One possibility is that they are suffering from “silent” robbing; bees from other hives are quietly going in and being generally friendly so as not to cause alarm, but then stealing whatever they can find. If that is the case, or even if it isn’t, the best chance for the victims is to be in isolation and receiving plenty of TLC.
 
The main reason for the visit, was to photograph the bees for a census, the results aren’t too good from that point of view; the yellow banding on their abdomens is a bit excessive for them to pass themselves off as “black.” The plan is for everybody to submit such photographs if they have suitable candidates with the best looking colonies will be sampled for DNA testing and, if they do well at that stage, they will be incorporated into a national breeding programme for the benefit of any bee keeper who wants to improve his/her stock. We are moving into interesting times which make me wish that I was at the start of my bee keeping career rather than approaching the end.


I've just posted yesterday's, "The Railway Path."