Mark, Lloyd Spear's excellent answer to your post included an argument in favor of using carniolan queens.  I would like to post an opposite point of view.

In the suburb of Seattle where I live, half, more or less, of my annual crop comes from the first surplus nectar flow, that of maple and early fruit bloom.  Therefore I want the largest possible population in the earliest spring which means I want the largest population in the late fall.  That mean a queen which continues her egg laying into the late summer and fall.  I am content to supply enough overwintering honey to accommodate by feeding syrup into the fall.  If race of queen makes any difference at all, and I'm not convinced it does, then the popular wisdom specifies italian queens.

I even go farther than that.  As soon as my hive scale reveals that the second (and last) surplus nectar flow has ended, I split my hive and requeen.  Then the last week of October I combine the two and remove the older queen.  Thus the hive goes into winter with the progeny of two queens.  Both italians.   Dan



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