Hello Dennis and All,
Dennis wrote
 How are your smr lines doing
as far as brood  and honey surplus this year?

Not as good as the Italians but thats nothing new. Sorry Sue Colby and
George I. Carniolans just do not produce for me in Missouri like the
Italians do.

> My smr line  barely got strong enough to make enough honey for themselves.
spotting brood  and lazy.

My partner has reported the same thing in a small percentage of smr daughter
hives. My opinion is the quality of the drones they mate with maters a
bunch. My partner (I call him partner because we partner in queen rearing
and other things) is in Hawaii this week visiting with Gus R. of kona queen
to  see if we can hone our queen rearing. He  will return around the 27th of
July. I expect a postcard any time saying "having a great time wish you were
here!" I could not have went anyway because of projects i am working on but
am a bit jealous.

I expect we will start a few hundred smr queens from my *red* line breeder
queen when Glenn returns. He will be all wound up about queen rearing when
he returns. His honey crop will be waiting for him so he can dream about
raising queens while hefting supers and extracting honey.  Email me around
then Dennis if you want  some to try. We use most of the queens we raise but
have sold small numbers to our club members to get their opinions on our smr
queens. Most of the problems we have had with spotty brood pattern has come
from the yellow line breeder queen.

 Glenn and I are content with the low varroa levels in our smr hives.

Now we need to try and get brood production and honey production up through
our breeding program.

Bob