> When people ask me whether my stock would be suitable for them, I tell them
that I can't say, since I select for bees that are a good fit for my
environment and specific business model, as opposed to surviving on their
own. 

Sage advice in my book.  
 

> The COLOSS Genotype-Environment Interactions Experiment gave us the opportunity to investigate the phenotypic expression of the swarming, defensive and hygienic behaviour of 16 genotypes from five different honey bee subspecies in various environmental conditions. In 2010 and 2011, a total of 621 colonies were monitored and tested according to a standard protocol for estimation of expression of these three behavioural traits.

>  Our results show that the colonies we compared showed high variability in the expression of the swarming, defensive and hygienic behaviour traits. The factor exerting the strongest influence was location, which can be seen as the sum of all abiotic and biotic components in a given environment. The length of the active season, which in our study varied from four up to 10 months, together with food availability, significantly affected development trajectories of the colonies at different locations (Hatjina et al., 2014), and this may have affected not only colony development but also performance.


> Swarming, defensive and hygienic behaviour in honey bee colonies of different genetic origin in a pan-European experiment
Aleksandar Uzunov et al. 

Bill Hesbach 
Cheshire CT

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