This month marks my third year of beekeeping - I am a hobbyist with two hives in my backyard in a suburban area in central Georgia. I have lurked on this list for most of that time, learning much from the discussions here - I am deeply indebted to the combined wisdom of the members of this list that you so willingly share. I began three years ago with nucs from an established beekeeper, queened with Italians. Last year, I decided to experiment by requeening with Starline queens. I was quite satisfied with the performance of those queens. But I do have a concern with them. During extraction time last year - my first honey crop due to my inexperience and trial and error learning of how to manage these amazing little creatures - I experienced my first potential problems with neighbors. In the process of removing supers, etc. I was a bit too sloppy and my bees got more aggressive than I've ever seen them before. My six year old received his first bee sting playing across the yard, and a neighbor was stung while out with his one year old daughter (lots of apologies and free honey for that). If I want to continue this hobby, I need to minimize the risk of the neighbors getting chased by angry bees. In this specific situation, I hope I learned enough to avoid the same mistakes next time. Now to the concern...given that I want to keep my bees gentle, I want to pick queens that will raise gentle bees. The Starlines are gentle enough. I read in the archives, though, that with them being hybrids if they are superceded, swarm, etc. subsequent generations may not exhibit the same behaviors (and indeed, it seems that more often than not they become extremely aggressive). I don't want to take that chance. I like to experiment, and have read with interest the conversations about different races of bees and the possible advantages (I know, buyer beware..) of the Russians or NWC queens. I would be interested in giving them a shot and seeing how they do before settling on what kinds of bees I continue to keep long term. The real question I have, is since these bees descended from bees in a much cooler climate that what I experience in Georgia, how well they'd perform here. Heck, I don't perform too well here - it's the most miserably hot place I've ever lived. Anyone have experience with Russian and/or NWC in an environment like central/south Georgia or Florida? How do they do, as compared with the Italians? John Scott Macon, GA