Hi Allen,

> I had a strain of bees that were raised
> locally and were wonderful in every respect, except the one that counts.  We
> carried them a few years and declared them "welfare bees".
>

Did you resort to feeding these type bees or did you let them prove themselves for local conditions by allowing them to feed themselves. I feel if to develop a bee to survive local conditions and provide the beekeeper a crop a beekeeper can not enable poor genetics by feeding sugar syrup to them. Can not identify the best stock for local conditions if feeding them. Nothing wrong with feeding colonies to survive but these colonies need to be separated from selected breeding stock so genetics is not polluted. In turn the stock that needed feeding should be requeened with the selected stock.

Not knowing how you fed, treated, managed or bred these bees, I would think you could have selected for a bee that survived well and still would put honey on your table top for sales.

 . ..   Keith Malone, Chugiak, Alaska USA, http://www.cer.org/,
c(((([ , Apiarian, http://takeoff.to/alaskahoney/,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/akbeekeepers/ ,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Norlandbeekeepers/ ,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ApiarianBreedersGuild/

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