I have purchased pure Minnesota Hygienic queens from Georgia, Louisiana and Ohio. So, what is it that makes a Georgia queen a Georgia queen? Or a Louisiana queen a Louisiana queen? Were those MH queens from Georgia Georgia queens? Or suppose I find out I have a commercial bee keeper with one of his yards one mile from my mating yard. In a couple of generations am I just breeding whatever that commercial guy runs regardless of where my queens came from.
If you are running 1000 hives you can have a very effective breeding program. On some really easy trait like average honey production you may even make decent progress with 50 hives. If you either know a great deal about genetics or nothing at all about genetics you can do ok. If your knowledge base is intermediate you probably can not design a breeding program that will work. When I say a great deal one measure is if you can tell me what the Gibbs free energy difference between the keto and enol forms of adenine tells you about T->C errors. If you are raising a dozen or so queens in your backyard each year (like I do) you have no breeding program at all. You are simply raising queens. By the way, there is not a thing in the world wrong with just raising queens.
Dick
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