I heard the other day from a US queen breeder that Bernard Apiaries is no
longer distributing the USDA Russian breeder stock, and then I noticed, in
his BEE-L post, that Charlie's sig line now contains the URL
'russianbreeder.com'.  So, I visited < www.russianbreeder.com >  and,
according to the counter I was visitor number 10.  (Going back just now, I
was number 38).

Curious, I wrote the lab < http://msa.ars.usda.gov/la/btn/hbb/projects.htm
> -- actually I could have written Charlie -- and asked what's up.

Tom replied and indicated that raising breeders is difficult, time
consuming, and not particularly profitable, and that Bernard Apiaries has
decided to focus on honey production and sales, and that, yes, Charlie has
taken over the job.

To quote Tom's email:

>"This last spring Charlie
> became the CRADA holder for the production of breeder queens.   This
> year for the first time, breeder queens for next spring have already
> been produced and are being overwintered in colonies they themselves
> have produced.

Charlie has been one of the three key beekeeper co-operators in the Russian
project since inception, and since he has exclusively Russian test stock in
his outfit and knows it well, he seems to me to be a very logical choice to
raise, select and distribute queens.

Let's hope we can get buy them freely up here in Canada next spring.  Last I
heard, everything is lined up to once again allow large scale queen imports
from the mainland USA to Canada next spring, under permit.

allen
www.honeybeeworld.com/diary/

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and  other info ---
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::