My beekeeping holiday to Apicoltura Amodeo Carlo

Hi,

I don't speak german so I will react in English.
I'm Mathijs, a young Dutch beekeeper. In April 2018 I visited the Apiary of Carlo Amodeo.
I know Kai loved the Sicula so I thought to place the video's here. Turn on the subtitles and if someone wants it feel free to translate them to German, let me know, than I will sent them the english subtitles with the times.

I also keep Dunkle biene from Texel a Dutch island and Chimay, Beglium. I will write something about it when DNA research is known. DNA research is done by Dylan Elen, Kai knows him. But you can also watch my video's on YouTube, it is in Dutch, but I will translate the videos i capture this year to English.

In March I will visit Apicoltura Amodeo Carlo again.

Here are the video's from my holiday trip to Sicily.
Part 1:
tiny.cc/beessicily1
Part 2:
tiny.cc/beessicily2

With kind regards,
Mathijs Herremans.

Hi Marcus,
Nice you het some Texel Dark bees. There also great varroa resistance, 1-3 of the 16 beekeepers on Texel treat there bees against varroa and only when needed. All the other beekeepers are treatment free. Togheter they have 130-200 colonies (depends per year, they sell many colonies trough the Netherlands and even Europe) and there are 40 colonies in the wild, in trees, chimneys and churches.
Good luck with your bees. Try to measure some wings. Because there is a small amount of Ligustica 5-10% from the 1960-1970 so the wings indexes are not full Mellifera. There are colonies who has 100% mellifera, but the average is 70/30 Mellifera/Ligustica. But DNA research was really good and now I’m waiting on the DNA research from Dylan Elen. This shows how unreliable wing indexes are.

After a few months visiting Carlo again I had a great time. This year I've visited the island Vulcano, one of the 8/9 island where they keep only the pure Sicula bee. On this island, where the name vulcan comes from, they have 80 colonies of pure Sicula bees, not counted the bees who swarmed and living in the mountains. The total Sicula population is around 250 colonies, with is very less in my opninion. One of the problems is that they can't cross different (island) lines, as carlo says this result in F2 bees who are very agressive, or is I like to call it, defensive. I don't understand why he calls this F2, because there still pure and if you give it another name, say F1. But Carlo don't speak English so it's very hard to ask for something like this with Google Translate. All the pure bees on the island are not treated against varroa, the Sicula has a higher brood temperture. And as I saw the workerbees with varroa did used grooming to take mites of their own body. The colonies who are indeed almost died at varroa (which where 2 when I was there from the maybe 40+ colonies we checked, I explain later what we did) where tranported to the main island of Sicily, also colonies with chalkbrood will be transported. We also took a colonie who will produce drones on a almost pure mountain mating station. Last year we drove near it, and I think if they found a really good deep and small mountain valley, used a lot of strong drone colonies and queens without unknown drones, they can easily have pure mated queens. As I remember right, Carlo didn't believe that will work (the mountain valley idea) and he has already 8/9 island where he can rear queens. The bees are gentle, but not like we are used to, they get very fast absed, not quick with Carlo, he is a really calm man, which I wish I was. But his collegae, worked more robused in the bees, for example loosening the frames. Carlo worked half of the time without his suit, until a stung of 10 an put his mask on. I only saw one bee with what you can call a yellow ring, but it even wasn't fully a yellow ring, and i think it's the queen her reason, she was pretty yellow. The Sicula queens havevery much variations in the queens. I also understand that from the Sicula video's of Kai, but maybe that's wrong, I cant understand german, but Kai speaks it loud and clearly what makes it a bit more understanable for me as a Dutchman. Also the bees are not really black like our black bees, if they stretch ther abdomen you see some orange in it, I think it's normal and that explaines also why the queens have very much variation. I observed the bees very well, so they must be pure.

The strange thing I saw and with that I'm afraid of a not so sustainable population of the Sicula is that we made small colonies with a almost hatching queencup. They do that a lot to make young colonies. But all the colonies we made on Vulcano where reared from 1 queen, we made maybe 30-40 colonies. And 1 queen, I don't know if they use that queen the same season again, or they use another queen, but it's not very good for genetics. I have to say that all the drones will mate and they will be different, and the wild colonies. But for the future...

That was it, if you have any questions feel free to ask them.