?
> Bob, would you mind clarifying what you mean by F1 as applied to a colony 
> of bees?  The way I see it is if you start with a pure queen and 
> inseminate it with pure drones of a different race than you will get F1 
> workers but you still have a pure queen.

The above is my understanding.

We  kept marked or numbered queens of the lines. When we saw aggressive bees 
with the Midnights or a reduction in production with the Starlines when we 
checked and  most times find a young unmarked queen.

When doing spring checks we usually requeened unmarked queens with new 
Starlines or Midnights. I tried to keep yards of the lines seperate. I moved 
the unmarked queens to nucs and then other yards. I used the original marked 
Starline or Midnight queens back then until the queen was superceded , 
swarmed or brood pattern changed. A few I used for 3-4 years.

I found it interesting  in the video of Randy Quinn he said he can't get 
over six months from a queen in Florida. I do not believe is true for most 
commercial Florida operations. Kirk Jones? David Adams?

 In queen breeding the drones are the hard to control factor. Drones drift 
between colonies and when you go to a drone source colony to get semen for 
instrumental insemination there is NO WAY to be sure the drone you collect 
at the entrance is indeed from that colony. Dr. Larry Conner Is always 
talking about the importance of the drone source in  matings.

The areas used for queen rearing in the U.S. are not secluded enough for 
good drone controlled open matings. In some queen operations its said if the 
queen is dark she goes in a carniolan cage and if yellow in a Italian queen 
cage.

bob 

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm