Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate | Hacker News Reader

Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate

oxnatbees.wordpress.com

141 pointsdrwoland23 comments

About a decade ago, it was possible, for less than £20 per day, to go fly-fishing on the lower lakes and cascade in the Blenheim Palace grounds, including taking home a couple of rainbow trout for the pot directly below the Bladon bridge: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bladon_bridge,_Blenh.... Looking back now, that was some of the best-spent money and time in my life.

Is it no longer possible? Sounds nice

Unfortunately it shut down after a year or two. Never really saw anyone else there. On one occasion I spent too long on the water and to get back to my car in Woodstock I took a short cross directly across the now-closed Palace gardens. Firstly I was accosted by a retired Gurkha security guard, and then I met the Duke himself near the gate - fortunately he was merely bemused rather than angry.

Who's the fly fisher who stocked Blenheim with rainbows? That sounds lovely. I didn't think the river Glyme had a wild population?

EDIT: Just found this: https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/sport/4317952.angling-new-trout...

Yes, that is it. Unfortunately I think it wasn't very commercially successful and the fishery manager moved on. It was actually more expensive than I remember, but still worth every penny.

If you like fishing near stately homes, there is always Syon Park https://alburyestatefisheries.co.uk/syon-park-fishery/

Looked up ‘Amm’, think it refers to the European dark bee (Apis mellifera mellifera), a subspecies of the western honey bee https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_dark_bee

> People often comment how quickly escaped managed bees regress to the local wild bees (2-3 years of natural selection weeds out the foreign genes). He is seeing an interesting selection factor: in tree cavities colonised by swarms from conventional hives (yellower bees), the bees build comb differently to the real wild bees. They have been selected, by humans, to build flat sheets – which is not optimal for defence or climate control, and they die off quickly in tree cavities.

> They have been selected, by humans, to build flat sheets

What? The flat sheets are nothing to do with selection. They are to do with leveraging 'bee space' in the design of hives. Man-made hives include sheets of scaffold at very specific distances to ensure that bees build flat comb. The reason for doing this is easy inspection and management of the hive.

They are constrained to do this by leveraging bee space, it is not an evolved feature of commercial bees.

http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/bsp.html

I'm not making any assertions, but don't you think there's some kind of selective process at work when you're breeding bees in an environment with fixed frames? Like, can they sustain a cluster over winter within the parameters?

Can't you both be right?

They're trained into making flat sheets and then lose the ability or instinct to make non flat sheets?

Surely that would produce selection pressure for favoring bees that naturally follow those constraints over those that ignore them though?

Also, assuming his observations are valid, how else would you explain the differences between wild and commercial bees?

A beekeeper here.

1. Bees have only been kept in flat frames for less than 200 years which would not be enough time to select for such a specific trait.

2. Domestic bees that swarm and find homes in hollow trees or gaps in houses form blobby swirls of what beekeepers call 'crazy comb'. The liberated bees create topological forms which are probably much more efficient than flat frames. Flat frames benefit the beekeeper, not so much the bees, and bees will make comb when and where they like.

I believe this to be an incorrect statement.

Evolution in insects is working on a much tighter time-frame, for example: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-evidence-peppe...

Also there are plenty of "beekeepers" who believe in shorter time frame adaptions, and are providing evolutionary cradles for such, e.g. https://www.apisarborea.org/

And of course many stories with anecdotal evidence from communities of bees in protected watersheds evolving (or perhaps activating prior) varroa mite resistant traits.

200 years is more than enough to select for something, even with natural selection, and especially so for artificial selection. Dog breeders can and did select for many specific traits in the course of single lifetime, for example.

I wonder how those bees deal with varroa mites. Many beekeepers believe that "wild hives do not exist" because untreated colonies usually die within a year or two.

The Guardian article does mention that they are Varroa mite resistant, though not how.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/07/no-one-k...

Not correct to my understanding, and somewhat out of date information.

I do suggest looking at the natural beekeeping literature, for example :

https://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/natural-bee-husbandry

this source frequently documents populations of wild/feral, multi-year, mite resistant, hives.

And also - there are plenty of beekeepers around, including myself, with multi-year treatment free hives of bees.

However, mite resistant bees in commercial style un-insulated frame based langstroth hives - not so much.

The estate is enormous and beautiful and they have a lot of events for kids. Not far from Watford.

I think you mean not far from Oxford.

I’m in Australia, so comparatively it’s also not far from Watford.

I think the thing I found most fascinating was the fact that the hives were small (~= 5000 bees) and had multiple queens, with one swarm having 9!

This is interesting. I recently had a hive with 2 queens that stayed that way for a few months. It’s very uncommon as usually the mother flies off with a swarm or the daughter kills her mother. It was late winter/early spring and persisted for about 3 months.

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