The trouble is that your 'improvement' is not confined to your own hives 
and
> drones from your imported stock will cross with your neighbours' queens
> resulting in some very bad tempered bees.

I think the same could be said for trying to breed a better bee. other 
beekeepers stock hinders your breeding program.

For my purposes I never cared for Amm but I think some should be kept for 
old times sake. Every hive of A.mm I ever kept had traits I did not care 
for. The first bees I owned were A.mm. Always trying to sting. 48 years ago 
when I started there were plenty of A.mm bees around. Not now. No talk of an 
A.mm import.

 In America what we call Hereford cattle is a far cry from the tiny cattle 
kept pure across the pond. We still have got a few ranchers which keep what 
the U.S. calls pure registered Herefords but with current registration 
standards they are hardly pure. The standard allows for a unregistered bull 
brought in and then the offspring bred back to registered stock until able 
to be registered pure again. its called the one eighth rule.

Still after all these years Herefords are still susceptible to "Pink Eye". 
In my opinion always will be. Herefords  & Angus used to be small cattle ( 
when I was a kid) but now are huge (thanks to the way cattle are roistered). 
Not unusual to see a 2500 lb. angus bull these days.

Breeding within a pure race of bee or cattle has its limits.

Many commercial beekeepers like a carniolan/Italian cross. I can't even say 
the number of these I have tried over the years. I stick with the Italian 
bee. Carniolans differ from year to year and queen producer to queen 
producer. Last years NWC were very poor. Reason unknown. Supercedure was the 
highest any of us had seen. The Italian bees from the same queen producer 
were great like they always are.

Having been through most colonies by now its hard to find a last years 
marked NWC queen. The marked Italian queens are about 90% still in the 
hives. Supercedure costs me money in lost production. The reason I mark 
queens and at times buy marked queens.

bob

 

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