From: Erik Osterlund <honeybee@elgon.se>
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 10:56:26 +0200
To: BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Strain

At 22.56 +0100 01-05-13, Lucinda Sewell wrote:
>Are the
>Monticola ok in subsequent, random, crosses Erik?

First, There is no pure Monticola left, but combinations (up here in the
north, still in Africa of course).
In Africa experiences are that crosses between Monticola and Scutallata
give better tempered bees than scutallata. Paople on slopes of the
mountains in East Africa say that the mountain bees as they call them are
much easier to handle than the lowland bees, which they call the
Scutallata. Even women groups on for example Mt Elgon in Kenya are
encouraged to keep bees and aid income. There have bees tribes there with
speciality to keep mountain bees.

Random crosses here in Sweden? It depends as always what source of drones
you have, the kind of temper and so on the genes of the drones carry.
Monticola crossed with good Italians, no problems. Monticola crossed with
good Buckfast, no problems. That was the kind of initial crosses done in
1989. Later on also tests with Carniolans have been done. It gave slightly
higher temp on temper, but not much, but rose the swarming impulse more.
Actually the swarming impulse of the Monticola is not big. It is one of the
few African races that don't abscond in the same way as for example
Scutallata and Adansonii. Capensis and Unicolor mountain type (on
Madagaskar) don't either. In fact Monticola crosses have less swarming
impuls than crosses without Monticola, IF given enough room for egglaying
and honey storage. If you by random crosses mean not controlled mating,
then you are much dependant on the quality of the drones in the area where
they mate, and the size of the drones there (smaller from smaller bees,
usually not managed or from not controlled mated hives). smaller drones hit
first. I know that the Monticola cross I call Elgon crossed with Buckfast
or Italian today give even better honey poducers than "pure" Elgon, anad
good tempered normally. in the area where I live I dominate with my bees
and I have had colonies requeened themselves for many generations, and to
the shame of us beebreeders, they are as good or better than the others.
Especially now when I have started going down in cell size I see influence
from that when colonies supersedure, naturally still smaller bees.

>"Also he bought a lot of 5.10, 5.10, 5.10 foundation (yes the commercial wax
>producer managed to do it perfectly regular) from the wax producer in
>Sweden that as the first step now is selling ONLY 5.1 foundation. My
>Norwegian friend also put on boxes with 5.1 on all kind of bees to see what
>they would do with it. ALL of them, regardeless of heritage made nice combs
>of them."
>
>Will the producer sell foundation to UK?

He has sold to Germany, Norway and Finland. To Norway that is outside EU
the guy had to have a special import permit. concerning UK I don't know.
But someone, was it you? bought wax from South Africa? So it should be
possible maybe. If you can take it into UK he certainly will sell it to
you. Here's the e'mail address:
info@biredskapsfabriken.se
He has a website too
www.biredskapsfabriken.se
Unfortunately only in Swedish. One kilogram of waxfoundation they charge
SEK 70 + shipping (including VAT [value addded tax]) Today I think one US$
is about SEK 10.50.

Regards

Erik