> I also know I am in the minority in that belief.

My bias is that for cold climates, the key is whether the mated queens attract bees, tight clustering.   When I started in bees, there were commercial beekeepers in MT who'd choose queens from colonies with strong populations, large honey stores, that SURVIVED the winter.  In in early spring, they'd get those queens to breeders in CA or the South.  One would fly queens from which he wanted his packages produced.  He'd later drive down with a modified reefer truck to pick up the packages, headed by queens, from his selected queens.

Those queens tended to be mobbed in their cages by free-flying bees.   These days, queens are mostly selected in warm climates, no selection for cold tolerance/adaptation.  I've lost count of how many queens do not attract bees when remove from the shipping box, and how many bee populations don't cluster very well (easy to see with an IR camera).  I don't think this has much to do with the original stock line from Europe.  I do think we've lost something  necessary for winter survival.  It's not completely lost, but we're not choosing queens who produce tight clusters - probably a pheromone issue, as a guess.   I wonder if Saskatchewan may have a higher percentage of queens that still induce this behavior.  Just a guess.  Jerry

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