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| Mount
Kenya was the second mountain we visited. Its peak is 5,200 m
above sea level (17,000 feet). But that high we didn't go. Up
there it was snow. On Mt. Kenya there had been big forest fires
burning down a lot of the mountain rain forest. The climate here
was different from that on Mt. Elgon. Here they didn't experience
as much of the daily rains. |
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| At
2,500 m (8,200 feet) on Mt. Kenya, we visited an apiary with
a number of Kenya top Bar Hives. The bees were smaller than high
up on Mt. Elgon. The color of the bees were not uniform, but
some colonies were uniformly black. The temper varied. One colony
was very bad tempered, but others were very calm and could be
handled almost without smoke. We saw a swarm flying in the distance. |
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| This
hive was very easily managed and was uniformly black colored.
The bees had a very peculiar trait. They very easily sensed the
smell of their queen and followed her, even when we moved the
Apidea far away, and the bees from the hive were coming to take
spot of their new home as they seemed to think, as their queen
was there. The strong pheromones from the queen and trait of
finding and following the new place for their hive, when it was
moved, also within the same apiary, I found to exist also in
the new combinations made in Sweden later on. But this queen
in this particular Apidea never came to give any heritage to
these combinations. |
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| Our contact knew
where to find a cliff colony well above the tree level, up on
about 4,000 m (13,000 feet). Of course we wanted to find out
if this colony should be very close in appearance to those on
top of Mt. Elgon. (Photo Erik Bjorklund.) |
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| Here I am investigating
the colony. I managed to take samples of the wax and the bees,
but they were surprisingly small and bad tempered and not uniformly
black. Later I measured the cell size to be 4.8 mm. Mt. Kenya
is almost on the Equator. |
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| Back in Sweden
a Beekeeper friend had prepared a colony in early March in 1989
for queen breeding. Very, very unusual. It was warmer than normal,
about +2°C ( +36°F). I realized that another colony had
a drone layer and took away the queen there. This later colony
gave me one small queencell and a resulting queen. The first
hive, from which the queen and all brood had been taken away,
took all the nine larvae it got on a grafting list, and built
nine nice cells. But before capping, the bees took away eight
and left one capped, even though the colony was fed. Later I
understood that I was happy that I had been able to get any queens
at all, due to apparently different chemistry, pheromones, or
something like that. Later when grafting pure Monticola, very
many larvae, cells, virgins and mated queens were lost, before
finally getting some accepted laying new Monticola queens. Maybe
they had too strong of pheromones, so the bees didn't know how
to react, like the Scutallata react on Capensis workers and queens
in South Africa. Anyhow, the resulting first two queens (M13
and M14), were inseminated in my kitchen by Bert Thrybom. First
he added a solution with glucos to the semen to give the spermes
their mobility back after this long storage. Later on these queens
were used for grafting and we were getting new pure Monticola
queens already that first season of 1989. The M13 and M14 never
left their Apideas, for different reasons. Their daughters were
first kept in hives with queen excluders on the bottom boards,
while checking the behaviour of the new combinations. |
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| Two pure Monticola
bees, the black ones, can be seen in this photo. One surprisingly
big, and one smaller than the Buckfast worker bees in the same
Apidea. One can see the slim appearance though,of the abdomen
and the short hairs. Later I have understood that the bigger
size of the pure Monticola workers here, most probably is due
to the bigger cell sizes (Grout, 1937) used in Sweden, 5.4 mm,
instead of the about 5.0 mm (4.8 5.1) size given by Crane
(1990) for Monticola. |
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| A very black,
slim and long, M14 daughter and her small first cross worker. |
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| A very dark, but
not totally black M13 daughter and her uniformly brownish first
cross workers. |
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| A pure, quite
enormous Monticola drone. The size I have understood, is due
to it being born in a very big drone cell (Baudoux, 1934), from
drone foundation I had bought instead of the smaller drone cells
the bees build themselves. The color of the hair and the short
hair give the drone a very black appearance. The abdomen of the
first cross drone is not that very black due to longer hair and
cross combination effects. Further generations of course split
the appearance of the drones in different kinds. The short black
hair on thorax, which give the thorax a very black appearance
can be seen here and there many generations later, maybe because
it is so easily spotted. |
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| A colony with
first cross workers, daughters to a M14 daughter. Very nice brood
pattern. |
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| The Buckfast
group in our county, where I am chairman, now began working with
this new combination between the Buckfast bee and the Monticola.
Also Sahariensis crosses were used, a North African race, also
with shorter development time for the brood, and smaller size
of the workers. This was a good help in avoiding inbreeeding
due to the narrow base for breeding, as we wanted to preserve
as high degree of heritage of the Monticola as possible, till
we knew the real value of this new bee. Here three of the group
is present, Bjorn Lagerman, Leif Stromberg and Sven Kivling.
Not present is Gunnar Krantz, Stigake Gerdvall and Alrik Wahltersson. |
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| A German visitor
inspecting a combination with both Sahariensis and Monticola
heritage, in this case with Sahariensis as motherline (This colony
was named 450 by me). |
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| Poul Erik Karlsen
on the island Bornholm in the Baltic, is another Elgon beekeeper,
successfully keeping bees without any kind of chemical or treatment
method at all against the varroa mite since 1995, for the bees
he keeps today. Some odd colonies can't handle the mite. If the
queens are shifted early enough in such colonies, either by Karlsen
or even sometimes by the bees themselves the colony recovers
till autumn. But in some few instances of this later type, they
don't. He today runs about 100 hives. Climatic and management
differences is seen to have importance in the final performance
of the bees in connection with the varroa mite. For those interested,
the cell size at the moment in Karlsen's colonies is 5.3 mm.
This photo is taken in October 2000 of a colony that was seriously
affected by the mites in the middle of the summer 2000. He left
the hive to follow what would happen. As the queen was old, the
bees shifted her themselves. When we looked into this colony,
Karlsen wasn't sure what he'd find. We found a full box of bees,
a new queen and no "wingless" bees. Is the explanation
new fresh pheromones from a new queen which also was mated to
drones with good heritage? An observation of these Elgon bees
is that the size of the workers is smaller than in ordinary Buckfast
colonies, even if they are born in the same size of cells. |
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| This queen is
not a direct result from our expedition to Kenya. But descendants
from her, are used in test combinations with the Elgon bee of
today. The queen is a first cross Lamarckii (Egyptian) x Buckfast
and the workers here, a second cross to Buckfast. The Elgon bee
is so called due to its origin in great depth from Kenya, in
combination with among other bees, the Buckfast bee. Even if
the Elgon bee is bred according to Buckfast principles, I can't
call it Buckfast as its heritage differs substantially enough
and it's not bred there. But I'm very grateful for what I've
learned from Brother Adam and Peter Donovan at Buckfast Abbey. |
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