>From:         Aaron Morris <[log in to unmask]>

>To date, my personal experiences with Russian queens has been poor
>acceptance, some have been drone layers, others have lead to supercede cells
>which were cut out in preference for introducing queens of proven (in my
>area) stock (New World Carniolan).

<snip>

>I recall an article in ABJ stating the Russians will be good for comb
>production as they make nice white cappings.  All Russians I put into comb
>production failed miserably.  I'm out the queen, I'm out a replacement queen
>and I'm out any hope of comb harvest for that hive.  Quite an expensive
>trial evaluation.

Hi Aaron -

It's truly sad to see so many people having such poor acceptance with their
Russian queens/stock. Your report fits so well with what others are
experiencing. As I was thinking through this particular problem beekeepers
are having, I couldn't help but focus on the background of the stock itself.

As some of you know, I have been posting on my site a lot of historical
background information and research done on cell size and it's relationship
to the bee, much of which was compiled by the Lusby's from their own
investigations on the same subject. This spring, I decided to take a couple
of swarms and follow their steps in regressing the bees back down in size to
their historically natural size of 4.9 cell size, as opposed to the 5.4 cell
size that all my bees are currently on.

When I first hived these swarms, I put them on frames that had a 1 inch
starter strip of 4.9mm foundation. After they had drawn out 2 deeps worth of
comb, I measured the cell size to see what they had built. It turned out
that most of the worker/pollen cells were 5.2mm and the drone/honey cells
were from 6.0 to 7.0mm. On their own, with the help of the starter strip,
they regressed 2mm. At this time, a month after hiving, I moved the hive a
few feet and in it's place put a deep chamber with frames that had full
foundation of 4.9 size and shook all the bees and queen into this new hive.
Three weeks have passed and I now have this hive in 2 deeps with fairly
uniform cells of 4.9mm. They managed to regress another 3mm. By the end of
this summer, I will have culled out any non-uniform comb and they will be
totally regressed to 4.9mm.

I say all this because I know first hand that one cannot take bees that have
been on 5.4 or bigger cells and put them in a hive with 4.9mm foundation or
comb and expect them to adjust to this size change over night. It won't
work. It takes weeks of working the stock down and getting them to adjust to
a new size. Now if we stop and think about the Russian stock, we need to
look at what size of cell they are on in there native land first, find out
what size of cell they are put on when they arrive here in the States, and
last, what size of cell you are introducing them on. It works the same in
reverse, to size up.

I have to believe that an underlying problem people are having with this bee
can be attributed to cell size. If you take a look at the thermal/cell size
zone map at:
http://www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/therm_map.htm
you will see that the native size that the Russian stock comes from is 4.9
mm - 5.1 mm cell size. As far as I know, these bees are being worked on
small cell size here in the States prior to them being sold to breeders and
to you. My guess is you are putting them in a hive that has at least a 5.4mm
cell size. Now we have a queen on comb that knows your worker cells as drone
size cells and starts laying drones or she can't make the size transition
well so she is superceded.

For this stock to live up to its known "resistance" to varroa, its native
cell size cannot be ignored? Just read what has been done to the bee size
over the years and tell me it has no bearing.

......is bigger always better? Perhaps in this case we are seeing where the
two (small bees - large comb) are not very harmonious. Food for thought.

-Barry

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Webmeister
www.BeeSource.com