Bob wrote:
> the Russian bee is the poster bee for those traits.>
> Most shut down brood rearing at the slightest change in the weather, many
> are not prolific and many are hard to "trick into brood building"

I'm sure noticing this very thing with my open-mated Russian x SMR queens
this year.  Huge difference between those started early in the season, and
fed supplement in late summer, and those started later, and going into
winter with smaller clusters and less stores.  All from same mother.  The
early ones are 12+ frames going into almonds.  The small later ones were
sweet little clusters, but most were a waste of my time trying to get them
to build up.  There were a few exceptions, though.  It appeared that there
was a critical size for them to got into winter, and if below that size,
there was no way to "trick" them into building up.

> My first experiments with daughters from my two SMR II breeder queens was
> pitiful. Production was out of the question with those bees.

Ditto.  My operation lost money for two years. Production is #1 requirement
for commercial breeding programs, mite tolerance #2.

Randy Oliver

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