Hi Aaron & All,

Back from R&R and to the front line, I will probably get shot down.

Aaron wrote;
> OPEN MATED is a crap shoot.  Hopefully reputable producers are
running their operations so the mating area is sufficiently saturated with
drones that are every bit as good in lineage as are the breeder queens.  Is
your breeder?  Super beekeeper's will ask their producers.
>

Open mated is a crap shoot, I do not think so. Honey bees for eons have been
mating in the open to create the variability that gives breeders today the
material they use to manipulate the genetics for the good or bad.

Super beekeeper's will ask their producers, I think better. Super beekeepers
will learn to be real beekeepers and rear and mate their own queens. Also
associations and periodicals should, in my opinion, be encouraging and
teaching methods of rearing queens. Queens need not always come to a
beekeeper in the mail but instead from a fellow beekeeper in ones own local.
Cooperation?

> And some, perhaps many, consumers are complacent or incompetent
> or just plain too lazy to assure that what they have is what they bought.
> And this leaves out of the picture totally those beekeepers that make no
> effort whatsoever to even care about their queens.
>

See comments above. Also if beekeepers really cared about their queens they
would breed their own from their best surviving stock. A bee that will
survive your location and your management practises.
   . ..
c(((([
Keith Malone
Chugiak, Alaska USA
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http://takeoff.to/alaskahoney
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Norlandbeekeepers/

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