Tom:
I strongly believe in buying queens from the selected stock on highly skilled
queen
breeders!
I am very opposed to allowing my bees to produce queens which will breed with
every Tom, Dick, And Harry that comes down to road; and hence, hybridizing my
bees.

I am much aware that the races of bees have been intermingled now for many
generations, but there are those highly skilled, specialist queen breeders
that have
selected their stock over the years including artificial insemination to
return a race back close to its original concepts.

In the states, Sue Cobey is a classic case of restoring Carniolans to what
they once were by select breeding by artificial insemination, and then
creating the NEW WORLD CARNIOLAN.

This is my 66th year in beekeeping, and over 50 years ago, I used to raise my
own queens.  However, when a quality queen can be bought for $10 and mailed
to you in 24 hours and it has all the qualities you are looking for, why
bother to raise your own.  It may be of interest to you that I work my apiary
quite often in shorts and tee-shirt and sometimes with no veil.  Each August,
I put on a demonstration 4 times a day for 9 days at the county fair of
opening colonies, finding the queen, and show her to the onlookers and I have
never worn a veil and wear only slacks and short sleeve shirt.  I have only
been stung 3-4 times in the last 10 years.  I much
prefer to do this with my own Carniolans, but I have done the same, but not
as easy, with Italians.  Sorry to bother you with my exploits.