Hi Clay

You asked: What type of bees are used in cold regions for honey
production?  Monticola? Couldn't a hybrid stock be formed?

In certain parts of Africa scutellata are displaced by other races. For
example, in the Western Cape, around Cape Town, you find AM
capensis, which is specialised in surviving foul winters. In the high
East African mountains, you find AM monticola, and so on.

The South African government has refused us permission to import
any queens, bees, eggs or bee semen from anywhere in the world.
Reasons have been furnished, but not articulated. One day, science
will overcome politics. We remain on the case, and are particularly
interested in monticola. We had arranged to import instrumentally
inseminated monticola queens from ICIPE (www.icipe.org) in Nairobi.
ICIPE, an internationally recognised entity with 300 professional staff,
offered to issue the queens with international health certificates.

Capensis is a no-no; the unique ability of the worker bees to clone
themselves is fatal to scutellata colonies (this has been much
discussed on BEE-L). Anyhow, just as wild scuts don't like the cold,
capensis is a poor performer outside its preferred climatic
environment.

In the meantime, we have upsized two of our five main lines of
scutellata, specifically to enhance over-wintering abilities. Where wild
scutellata typically construct worker cells at some 4.9mm, the upsized
pedigree lines are now at 5.2 to 5.3mm. One of these upsized lines
(the Yellow Line) happens to rate tops in honey production, of all the
lines, at an average of 33% more than wild scuts, regardless of the
season. But by no means have we stopped developing the
normal-sized pedigree scuts.

We are well aware of the gigantic debate raging over cell size of
Eurobees, and the school of thought that believes 4.9mm is optimal.
However, our upsized scuts are not promoted to breeder status
unless they are superior in every respect to all their predecessors. We
do not treat them with any drugs, chemicals or mechanical devices
(such as screened bottoms) whatsoever. These bees totally
marginalise pests and diseases, and live with EB, chalkbrood, varroa
destructor, small hive beetles, other beetles, pseudoscorpions, and
braula. They easily deal with ants, flies, and so on.

Barry