When I pick out my breeders every January on our winter Florida farm, I have basically 4 things I'm looking for. Hive defensiveness is very important to me. If we goof up and miss some testy behavior then I hear about it the whole next season from the bee boys.
Last year we went through our usually paces, and brought in hives from the field in January that looked great. Usually bring in about a bakers dozen or so. I just throw them on the truck right in the middle of the day. I'm not worried about losing some bees, as they can just find a new home with the neighbors. It's more important to seize the moment and get them to the queen yard.
Anyway, we usually cull about half of the breeders as we spend a little more time with them. But.....even though I went through my field defensive test and secondary behavior tests, we had one breeder that did have occasional bad behavior that didn't show all the time. By the time we figured out which one was the culprit, we had already grafted hundreds of larvae and placed the cells in our splits. My point is, behavior is not consistant. Who knows....weather, nectar coming in or not, the way I held my face, the moon phase?
I usually start with phase one: remove the cover slowly without smoke. Phase two: wave my hand without smoke over the top of the hive. Phase three: rap the side of the hive with my knuckles. Phase four: bump the side with my knee (kicking). All this without smoke. I do expect some feedback from the hive, but not too much.
1) Big brooders with big populations. Most important. We need bees in the hive and need bees/queens that quickly respond to our patties and syrup that starts in early December. We can fix any duds and send them to Cali, or build any singles into booming doubles for Cali. We can split the bee-jeebers out of our hives to make up any losses and/or increase.
2) NO toleration for *any* signs of virus, chalk brood, bacterial infections.
3) Make sure the hive isn't full of mites. Yes, we do treat constantly, but still don't want to see a bunch of mites in the breeder hives. I have bought VHS queens to add to my breeder line, but the dang things die off so easily, and most don't brood up for crap. Maybe one of of five is good to my eyes. I quit buying them the last couple of years.
4) I like yellowish bees. Just my preference. Over the years, most of the nastiest bees were darker. Also I have observed that bees that don't build up were mostly darker in color.
5) Temperment is very important to us, as we spend our lives with the bees and don't want to deal with ugly bees. I list it last, but it's just as important as anything else we look for. We can have our cake and eat it too.
Kirk Jones
Sleeping Bear Farms beekeepers making honey...
St. Ambrose Meadery/Winery- sister business of Sleeping Bear
Benzie Playboys cajun and zydeco band........
Beekeeping Journal Blog thoughts on beekeeping
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