Hello Mike & All,

>  Bob said:
>I have had  SMR drops of 0 in Sept. with a few colonies but I did not care
>for the SMR/SMR colonies I have had for a number of reasons.

Mike asked:
I was wondering, Bob...what was it you didn't like about these bees?

Your SMR mated to your best line might be OK. Ours was not! Consider your
SMR breeder queen as simply a queen bringing a trait. She was selected for
the SMR trait and nothing else.

We had two such SMR II breeder queens and open mated the daughter queens we
grafted to a couple of our best lines. I would guess about 25% of our bees
were headed by these  queens for a year . I did leave some in hives two
years but had all replaced by the third year which was what we were told to
do to introduce the trait into our bees.

The bees were poor honey producers and the daughter   queens had  poor brood
patterns unlike the line they were crossed with.

We tried a few SMR /SMR hives and the results were worse and the bees
superceded most. A percentage became drone layers.

One of the SMR breeder queens became a drone layer within 6 months after
laying a spotty pattern all the while.

The other lasted a year with a better pattern then became a drone layer.

Bob

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