# Any visual / color patterns in TF bees ?



## DaisyNJ (Aug 3, 2015)

Wondering if there are any visual indicators or color pattern that are generally dominant across Treatment Free / Feral bee colonies ? 

Randy oliver talks about mitotype spread in feral vs managed colonies. But does that translate into any visual / color dominance TF folks here observed in their colonies ?


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## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

From my environment, the bees range in color from leather golden, to brownish to almost black. True mutts. Varying widths of striping, coloration. If I catch a swarm of uniform coloration, it makes me nervous as I have seen such colonies struggle here. I have one such colony housed now, and while they've done well this year, I expect to see problems the next. When this has happened, I requeen with bees of proven stock. A telltale sign of s colony that will fail here seems to be related to constant brooding behavior. I've only seen this a couple of times, and have never sorted out where they came from. The one neighboring beek that I was aware of has either lost all of his hives, or moved on.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Nordak hit it, they can be any bee color under the sun, and it usually a mixture.... it's the pure bred single color ones that I'm concerned with a well, but.....Just because they are one color doesn't mean they can't survive, and a mixed color colony doesn't mean you will see good results with them either, so basically, color tells you nothing for the most part.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

Most of mine are darker than italians, many have different colors inter mixes, a little bit of everything. Some are all same darkness. There might be a few that do look Italian, but not many. 

Most of the drones are very dark, some are mixed. 

If you are catching or trapping; feral bees are noticeably smaller, they make small/natural size cells. Most beekeepers use 5.4 foundation those bees look larger and make larger cells on foundationless frames until they regress.

Many can be mean too, not all. Some are nice until they grow to two plus deeps, a rare few are nice.


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## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

Yeah, count the uniform coloration thing as once bitten twice shy for me. Doesn't mean anything for certain.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Well, years ago, when Trachael mites were wiping out bee colonies, it was pretty obvious. The yellow bees were dead and the dark bees were alive. Now, with varroa, I haven't seen any pattern.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

I don't see a discernible pattern based on color though on average my bees tend more toward 1 or 2 yellow bands. I would guess that mite resistant bees can be stabilized in lighter or darker colors if anyone wanted to do so. Boosting their honey producing potential is a more worthwhile breeding goal IMO.


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## hubba bubba (Sep 13, 2016)

i have 4 dif colors in one of my hives. yellow/ with wide band and small bands. black with red or amber and some look brown. they make small cell comb and are nice bees. ohter hive is all yellowwith wide and narrow bands, they a little frisky.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Colour is not in combination with varroa resistance genes, but because yellow (ORANGE) is dominant, some of that colour will propably be around in good resistant stock. My bees have gone darker during this period of diminishing treatments (2001-2008) and being wihout them (200. There are typically some carnica looking greyish bees around in all hives, most of them look like good buckfast bees, which typically have darker orange than italians.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

I will select hives with uniformity as breeders, only to evaluate daughter queens as they will look similar and I'm hoping in general they're other traits are fixed as well but it's most likely wishful thinking. Of course they still have to be productive hives in general, but the rationale is, I can probably screen their daughters more effectively when I'm trying to introgress resistance etc.. if the population of daughters is more similar to each other. Hives with variation are good as well, but you will possibly have to mine out good queens to possibly make a correlation as they're drone/queen backgrounds are more likely to be different from each other. Next year I'm going to have some fun and mine out cordovan daughter queens from all my queens who appear to throw cordovan workers to some extent.


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## DaisyNJ (Aug 3, 2015)

Lot of interesting information and perspectives. Thank you.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

From working the Cordovan breeder queens to produce the local Italians looking mutt daughters mated
with the local carnis drones in the last 3 years, I've found out that after the 4th generation all the recessive
genes of the Cordovan color had gone away. So the yellow/reddish Cordovan bee carry the recessive genes and
the black/gray local carnis carry the dominant genes. Yellow = recessive and Gray = dominant suggested on the Glenn
website. This I confirmed last year.
So this year I started the project and little bee experiment again. Ordered 4 Cordovan queens but 2 had died already.
Only save the Cordovan color queen to mutt things up a little for next year. The Italians looking daughters produced will carry the mite resistant traits too. Of course, the Cordovan breeder queens have the vsh in them already. Out of 6 daughters produced this season, 4 showing good sign of the mite fighting ability. Those I will not treat this winter to see what the mite level will be comes next Spring time. Ohh, I sourced the Cordovan mother queens X xxvsh drones, somewhere. The local carnis drones I don't know much about them here. Suspected they're from the local bee association. Fun, fun, fun!


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## sakhoney (Apr 3, 2016)

Not in my yards as well. As all have pointed out - range from solid black to yellow, to orange/red. And 60% of mine are mutts. I just keep splitting them in the spring and roll there own queens. I will cut some cells if I need to.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

beepro said:


> From working the Cordovan breeder queens to produce the local Italians looking mutt daughters mated
> with the local carnis drones in the last 3 years, I've found out that after the 4th generation all the recessive
> genes of the Cordovan color had gone away. So the yellow/reddish Cordovan bee carry the recessive genes and
> the black/gray local carnis carry the dominant genes. Yellow = recessive and Gray = dominant suggested on the Glenn
> ...


Don´t mix Cordovan colour with yellow what we are now talking. Cordovan gene, which makes a leather coloured bee, is a resessive trait used to test mating stations.

Seems that I was wrong too:
From Hive and the Honeybee:
"Roberts and Mackensen studied colouring and found that there are at least seven gene logi affecting yellow colouring. 
Inbred yellow queen was inseminated with a black drone. The result was a hive with progeny like neither parent but are banded intermediates in colour. An F1 hybrid queen intermediate in colour was mated to a yellow drone. The result was progeny that range in colour from intermediate to parental yellow."








So seems that black gene is not dominant, neither yellow. Hive and the Honeybee, page 35: "7 pairs of genes can produce 2181 different genotypes. Workers of a mixed population if arraged according to colour from lightest to the darkest abdomen will represent a continous series."


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Well, I use the Cordovan color to produce the Italians daughters mated with the local
carnis drones. I want to see how many generation it takes before the entire hive will turn
into the carnis bees. A recessive gene like that will speed up my learning quite a bit.


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