At 08:53 AM 8/17/97 -0600, you wrote:
 
>stock but do not understand why you would select for color as a good
>characteristic.  It is even listed first.  I feel that if I am >interested
in colorful bees I would be better off raising butterflies.
 
If any beekeeper can rear butterflies he should do that as the returns
can bee 5x what they are for queen bees.<G>
 
Bee breeders have used color for generations as personal identifiers, a few
old time Canadians may remember "Banta's", a Pioneer in shipping bees to
Canada. His bees, and I have done this, could easily be picked out by
walking down the rows of hundreds of hives and judging the bees at the
entrance. They were bright yellow and VERY productive. The same could be
done with the black's from Humphrey's of Georgia. These bee's also were
very productive.
 
Selecting for color also extends to the queens. Any shipper who ships
mixed colored queens and represents his bees as one race or another
usually does not last long.
 
Each bee breeder must do what he must do to and you can get away with
doing less when you are your own customer, but color will remain one
of the many things that are looked at in selecting breeder queens. I
personally like the "tiger" colors one can get from "nature" queens and
have killed so many on some days that the drones would follow me around
the queen yards.
 
The truth in all this is that NO one bee breeder has advanced his bees
to the point that he can sell them as beeing more productive that any
other's. The main quality difference is in the environment they were reared
and how they were handled in shipment, but the color of the
bees sold can be adjusted by good selection.
 
Most times mongrels or pot lickers grown under the best conditions
are as productive as the best, but the sales price is seldom worthwhile.
 
ttul, the OLd Drone
"standard disclaimer & cautions"