I'm seeing advertisements for queens of Russian/Hybrid heritage.  I have had pure Russian queens for a couple of years in the past which subsequently evolved to Russian hybrid hives and thence to more and more diluted Russian genetics.  But, when I had my pure Russian queens, I was informed that Russian/Italian (or whatever) crosses were not as good as pure Russian bees, especially for the control of mites.  All of this was about five or ten years ago.  My note keeping at that time was not as good as now and I never followed the queens derived from my pure Russian queens.  My question now is:  What are the pros and cons of using Russian hybrid queens?  For those of you who have run Russian hybrids, what has been your experience with them, especially in contrast to the Italian race of bees?  I like what the pure Russians are purported to do but am constrained by the thought that to maintain such, I will have to buy my queens from the established
 Russian bee consortium.  Or, as much as possible, start getting everybody who keeps bees in my area to requeen with pure Russian queens and thus saturate the area with Russian drones and requeening managed hives every year with new Russian queens for four or five years straight so as to convert the indigent bee population over to as nearly Russian as possible. 

Thoughts and ideas are solicited and appreciated.

Mike in LA



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