> >   If I hire your achitect and get him to draw up a set of house plans
> > for your area  build the house in GA.ship it back to your area the house should do very
> > well their I would think.

Here's a related story I posted to BEE-L in Dec 1996.  It isn't
*directly* related - I think the moral from the above exchange is
that genetics has a big role to play, regardless of where a queen is
reared.  But given time, bees in a location will adapt to that
location and its timing issues...:

I remember once hearing/reading about hives with 'local' (read: bees
bred in the areas) that were moved to new locations.  My memory of
it was a French location that had a boomer of a dandilion honey flow
early in the spring, but little main crop or autumn flows.  The
other site was a (Scottish?) heather site, where there was no flow of
any sort until the calluna flowered in late autumn.

The bees in their 'home' locations had population build ups to suit
- the French bees brooding up very early, the heather bees remaining
as a small colony through the spring and summer, but with main brood
rearing late in the season.

The story went that swapping the hives to the other location caused
havoc for both sets of hives.  One lot didn't build up in time to
get the dandilion flow.  The other built up in the spring when there
was nothing there for them and then collapsed before the heather
finally appeared.

The 'punchline' was that it took the colonies 3 to 5 generations
before the 'smarts' were instilled in their genes to allow them an
appropriate broodrearing strategy for the local conditions.

NOTE: This is a good story only, and I've quoted it often, but I
can't for the life of me remember where it came from, or the
credence that could be given to it!!

  (\           Nick Wallingford
 {|||8-        home [log in to unmask]
  (/           work [log in to unmask]
NZ Beekeeping  http://www.beekeeping.co.nz