Brad,
This is my 69th year of beekeeping, most of which I kept 50-135 colonies. As
a
scientist, I was interested in which was the "best" bee to make the largest
crop of honey in the state of Maryland and northern Virginia, so I had
colonies of Carniolans,
Caucasians, Italians, Buckfast, Midnites, Starlines, and Double Hybrids. In
my normal usage, after the mites arrived in 84 and 87, I started requeening
ALL colonies EVERY year as a swarm prevention. In my 69 years of experience,
I have seen no evidence among the above mentioned races and hybrids including
the local Uncle Tom's and Aunt Jenny's "League of Nations Bee" that indicates
any race awareness.
However, there must be an awareness problem with the Africanized Honey Bee,
apis
mellifera scutellata, because it is very difficult to requeen them with any
queen other than another scutellata. Maybe the bee researchers at the
Weslaco Bee Lab
which "specializes" in scutellata knowledge has an answer for this, but they
have never indicated that they had a satisfactory answer in the talks that I
have had with them. However, I rather doubt that you want to raise AHB
anyhow. Ha Ha!
I hope that I have helped.
George Imirie
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