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From:
Lloyd Spear <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lloyd Spear <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 28 Mar 2005 10:35:11 -0500
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I just want to add to what Allen said about chalkbrood and Australian
queens and add a general word of caution.

I tried Australian queens just once, via Canada, and perfectly legal.
I bought 25 queens that were 4th to 5th generation open mated.  In
other words, the producer I bought them from had imported his stock
from Australia.  He is well regarded in Canada and the mothers of the
queens I bought were said to be well selected.  He is far north of the
US border and is in a borderline area for agriculture...meaning, in
this context, that he is pretty well isolated as far as drones are
concerned.

I had attended a seminar where his queens were mentioned as having
good tolerance for trachael mites, so I decided to give them a try.

Up until then, I had never had any difficulty with chalkbrood.  Sure,
I had seen mummies from time to time on the bottom board, but the
chalkbrood never appeared to do any harm to the hive as a whole and it
quickly cleared up with some hot summer weather.

Allen mentioned something like 1/3rd of the brood being affected...I
would say that 50% of these queens had up to 1/2 of the brood
affected!  I introduced these queens in late July, and the chalkbrood
hit the next spring.  It was truly terrible.  But, when I requeened
with 'standard' US stock, it quickly disappeared.  (I sell nucs in the
spring, and just one customer, the following year, complained of too
much chalkbrood.  I had no similar complaints from other customers and
did not experience that myself.)

Since, I talked to another person who also imported stock from the
same Canadian source and had the same complaint.  She reminded me that
Australia did not (does not?) have chalkbrood, so the bees may have
been especially susceptible.

So...be warned.

But why would anyone today want Australian breeding stock?  I'm not
saying there is anything wrong with it, chalkbrood susceptiblility
aside, but today we have a full range of partial resistence to adverse
diseases and mites and a full range of well developed favorable
traits.  Might there really be heritable traits in bees from Australia
that would be of benefit?

Now, with the difference in hemispheres, there are certainly
circumstances when one might like packages from Austrialia,,,but that
is a different subject.

Lloyd

--
Lloyd Spear
Owner Ross Rounds, Inc.
Manufacture of equipment for round comb honey sections,
Sundance Pollen Traps, and producer of Sundance custom labels.
Contact your dealer or www.RossRounds.com

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