I have a single colony of italians in the backyard and would like to set up at least two more hives this spring. The current queen is going into her second year and late last year the workers were more hostile than normal. I was thinking of replacing the queen in the existing hive. I have always had Italian honey bees. Since I am considering re-queening the existing hive and getting a couple new hives as well I was contemplating getting a different type of bee. Looking at the catalogs I note that there are several types available. Caucasian Midnight Starline Double Hybrids ARS-Y-C-1 Carniolan Being an Italian focused beekeeper for many years I was wondering if it might be a good time to try a different strain. Would you be able to give me a quick run down about the different types of honey bees that are commercially available; their temperaments, honey production, resistance to disease, etc. - compared with Italian's? If you send answers to my personal; address ([log in to unmask]) I will collect all the responses and send a single DIGEST message to the list of the results. Thanks!!! jeff