2.	Queen breeder claim:
> We've infused the "Minnesota Hygienic" and the "VSH" traits into our Italian stock, in an effort to enhance disease and mite resistance or tolerance.

Comment from Peter R. Oxley and Benjamin P. Oldroyd

The difficulty of introducing new individuals into a closed population is that
unless their performance is at least equivalent to that of the population they are
being introduced into, the end result will be an overall decrease in the performance
of the population. It is therefore desirable to introduce as few new individuals as possible.

What is needed is to minimize losses of productivity, while maximizing the
introduction of new csd  alleles. This can be done by establishing a test population,
consisting of offspring of the new queens that have been inseminated
(preferably with homogenized semen) from the existing population. This allows
not only their performance to be compared to the existing population, but rarer
csd  alleles are more likely to be selected if colonies are also chosen on brood
viability. Drones from the best performing colonies in the test population are
then added to the drones used for inseminating the breeding population, either
through insemination or by isolated mating.

The Genetic Architecture of Honeybee Breeding
Peter R. Oxley and Benjamin P. Oldroyd

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