>>Minnesota/VSH breeders can be purchased from Glenn apiaries.

Right.  Those breeder queens are expensive (for a sideliner like me).  I would like to get some open mated queens.  Some people have mentioned that the VSH trait should be passed on to the next generation.

>>Yugos... Not productive at all. Have got poor brood viability but they winter good, produce some honey and were gentle the last I checked.

Are there no other Yugo lines in the US to add new genetics and improve the old beekeeper's bees?

>>The beekeeper uses deep honey supers and carries the deeps up five or so stairs into an old building to extract.

This eighty something year old must be of some hardy stock.  It's hard (dangerous) enough to carry a deep full of honey on flat ground. One day he may collapse with a deep in his hands...  Try to pursuade him to switch to shallows or at least mediums.

>>Mike Vanarsdall <...> and I will buy his honey despite the color and flavor mainly because we like to visit and listen to his lifetime of beekeeping stories.

That's mighty decent of you.  It's becoming rare for the older people to provide a transitional function with the younger generation.

Waldemar

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