Laurence Edwards compares native AMM bees and Buckfast hybrids overwintering side by side in late January. Buckfast colonies grow faster and produce more honey but need 10-12 lb of sugar to survive winter, while AMM bees are frugal and hardy. He'll track both strains through the season to help you choose.
So it's the end of January at the moment and I'm sitting next to, I was going to say a fairly gentle AMM colony and then it stung me in the lip. What I'm going to do in this video is give you a snapshot in terms of my overwintering pure AMM colonies, or as close to pure as you're likely to get through an open mating in Northern Ireland, and then some of my Buckfast colonies that are exactly the same stage throughout their overwintering process. I'm really impressed with these AMMs. I genuinely thought I was going to come here today and it was going to be like chalk and cheese, a really small tight cluster, no activity, And I was going to struggle to find them, and I was going to compare them to the Buckfast and say, wow, look how big the Buckfast are. And I was going to talk to you about the fact that, okay, the AMM, they're more frugal and they're going to probably accelerate at a different point in the season and try and catch up with the Buckfast. But take a look at them, like the AMM, they don't need any catching up. They're not that far off. Now when you compare this to the Buckfast colonies, and I'll show you a couple of Buckfast colonies now, you're not getting like the boiling over effect. So with my Buckfast colonies, and I do like this as a trait, you get this boiling over which shows that they are so incredibly prolific, they're almost running out of space kind of end of January, early February, which for me gives me monster colonies in terms of size, and I do find that that's what gives me the superior yield. But it's not all about honey. Not everyone wants to keep bees just to get the maximum amount of honey they possibly can. Some people want to keep local bees and do their bit for the environment. I understand their arguments. I don't necessarily agree with everyone's arguments for these. Very, very nearly got stung in the eye there, but I'll let them off for that one. But as I've said in previous videos, I hate it when people have a strong opinion on something but no experience at all. And when people ask me questions and say, what's the best breed of bee? Or why do you prefer Buckfast over AMM? I say, well, I try the bees. Ah! So that's one of the reasons that I like Buckfast over AMM. You definitely get less stings at the first generation. But what I don't like is when people have that strong opinion without trying it. So what I'm trying to do is try different genetics of bees. I'm going to try these AMMs here, I'm going to see how they get through the winter, I'm going to see how they build up for spring, I'm going to see how they cope with brood disorders, I'm going to see what their propensity to swarming is like, I'm going to see how frugal they are, how much sugar they take, and I'll do these regular comparisons. There are disadvantages with Buckfast bees. Not everyone wants a huge colony of bees, not everyone wants to carry around lots and lots of honey, not everyone wants to have to feed their colonies to get them through the winter. With my Buckfast colonies, if I just left them to backfill the box and didn't feed them after taking off my honey, I don't think they'd get through the winter. But for me, adding in 10 or 12 pounds worth of sugar gets them through the winter, and then I find that's good value in terms of the honey yield that I'm going to get compared to maybe an AMM that you wouldn't need to feed. It's all about weighing it up, weighing up the pros and cons, seeing what works for you and doing what you think is best. So at this point of the year, the Buckfast do seem a little bit ahead, They're both in poly boxes, but I'm really impressed with the AMM so far. I'm going to be interested to see how they've dealt with that chalkbrood. I don't want to see the chalkbrood coming back in the same kind of numbers that it appeared at the back end of last year, but these bees look really, really healthy. I've only taken a couple of stings. My Buckfast bees did exactly the same. They had a go at me when I opened it up in January, but you can see they've really calmed down now, not going for me at all. I'm doing a classic Erica Thompson No bee suit whatsoever. Who needs a bee suit when you've got a face for the bees to sting? And that's it. We'll keep you posted throughout the rest of the year comparing these 2 different breeds of bee, one that's a pure breed, one that's a hybrid. See which one you think is best.
