AdamD wrote: ↑12 Mar 2020, 12:20
One of the plus points that BIBBA say about the bee they consider native, is that it flies in colder weather and it tends to have large pollen stores. So could well be better in poor or windy spring conditions.
I suspect Nigel, that you locals would not be considered by BIBBA as anything resembling
their kind of bee!
Take anything they say with a very large pinch of salt. /wry grin/
When I ran locals and exotics side by side they all would fly or non.....many exoytics flying today despite it being about 8C and blowing a gale....again....
If you look at the literature Honey collection is inversely proportional to pollen collection. So basically if you have a bee strain that collects large pollen stores your honey yields are compromised.....something I noticed when I ran Amm's vs ANother. Despite colony sizes being about equal the "native" bees collected about 2/3 less honey. I'm not impressed with them...
But, even though I get prodigious amounts of honey from my preferred bees I still have to dispose of pollen clogged frames every year.....so god knows what they are doing.....
If there was a solution to pollen clogged frames I'd be delighted to hear it.