>1) Long long ago while working for a commercial beekeeper who had a contract to produce packages that were sold via the farm version of the Sears and Roebuck catalogue we shook bees from the owners and the owners brother in laws bees.  One was your basic commercial Italian stock and the other was almost pure midnight. This was all done in east Texas in the early spring. The package production on the Italian stock went well (although the owner made a key mistake in not having a feeding program early and in quantity) but we could never shake a single package out of the midnight... The midnights were then moved to central Nebraska where they produced a consistent honey crop but as a source of package bees they were a flop.

 My father used the Sears bees for several years for honey and alfalfa pollination. They were good bees. This was in SE Colorado

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