Laurence Edwards reared eight F2 Buckfast queens and challenges the myth that they're aggressive. Temperament depends on drone genetics, not generation: isolated apiaries with pure Buckfast drones produce calm queens, while mixed environments introduce aggression. His colonies show gentle behavior and healthy brood.
So I'm at my Hyde Hives queen rearing nuc, and going back over my notes, I realized that I requeened both of the colonies that are in here with F1 Buckfast queens. I built the colonies up, and then I did a walkaway split, and I let them requeen naturally using the emergency impulse. All of the queens in here got mated, 8 out of 8. I'm so proud. And that means that every single queen that's in this colony here Each individual split is an F2 Buckfast queen, direct descendant from the F1 Buckfast queens that we sell. There is a myth, and the myth is that F2 Buckfast queens are aggressive. Now, I'm not here to try and debunk that myth and say, you know what, you're never going to get F2 Buckfast queens that are aggressive, because you definitely will. All the F1, the F2, the F3 means is that there's going to be more genetic variation in the mix that you're not able to control. So if you are controlling those drones and you're in a completely isolated Buckfast area and you've got lots of nice F1 Buckfast queens that are sitting there, the drones in those colonies are going to give you a pure line of drone in order to mate with your F2 queens. If you're in just a completely random area and you've got F1 Buckfast queens, or you've got, say, one F1 Buckfast queen and then it regresses down to F2 and mates with some horrible local drones, then you do have the capability there to get horrible aggressive F2 Buckfast queens. So as I said, I'm not here to say that you can't get aggression at F2. I'm not even here to say that it's unlikely to get aggression at F2. I'm just showing you one example of a definite F2 colony, 8 F2 colonies, F2 Buckfast queens that aren't aggressive. In fact, they're very, very nice calm queens. Let's get inside. Enough of me talking. I'll show you it and show you how nice they are. So I'm not going to go through every single one of these, but these are all exactly the same, all F2 Buckfast queens. And as you can see, none of them are flying up, especially the ones where I've taken the lid off. And if I go across with some really badly colored gloves, you can see the bees not fuss with me whatsoever. This is an F2 Buckfast queen in here. And they're definitely not as aggressive, anywhere near as aggressive as some of the other colonies that I have. Let's pull out a frame, see if we can find the queen, show you what the brood's looking like, and I'll show you just how calm these bees are. So there you go, really nice calm colony of bees. You know, I'm kind of not picking out the worst ones here. I'll touch them, you know, like tapping the frame, little shake on the frame as well. The bees do not want to fly up here. I've not shaken off any of these bees. This is just the first frame of nurse bees that I've pulled out. I'll get out, I'll pull a few more out from a few different colonies, but that is a frame of brood from an F2 Buckfast colony. Not super aggressive, definitely not like some of the other colonies I've got up here. So give you a little close-up on this frame here. So calm, really calm, docile bees. Lovely day today, nice warm day, good flow on, so you'd expect the bees to be in a good mood, and they Really are in the very best of moods. No flying up, really good brood pattern, very good, healthy, good-looking colony of F2 Buckfast bees. See if I can find that queen, that F2 beauty. So there she is, clipped her wing on the previous video that I did up here, marked her yellow. That is an F2 Buckfast queen, and she is the leader of a really fantastically calm colony of bees. I think she just ran off the frame there without me seeing. So there you go, there she is in the middle again. Really good-looking queen made from the emergency impulse, and she is leading a really good colony here. I'm very, very happy with how these have turned out. So there we go, that is an F2 Buckfast queen heading up a very calm colony of bees. Don't always believe what other people tell you. Try it for yourself, experiment, and see what actually works. If I get a Buckfast queen that goes down to F2 that is horribly aggressive, I'll do the counter-argument video to show just how bad they can go when they go down to F2. For me, doesn't matter if they're Buckfast, Carnica, AMM, Wild Mongrels. As soon as you lose that traceability and control over the lines and the genetics of the drones in the air, aggression can come in. But don't believe everything you see about Buckfast being the ones that cause the aggression.
