"Peter L. Borst" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I bought an expensive Carniolan breeder from (name omitted) and raised
beautiful looking queens from her. But the bees that came from them were nasty; I sure wouldn't have used any of THEM as breeders! I ended up replacing all the queens with store-bought ones. (True story)



A commercial queen raiser that I knew not only selected his breeder queens from his best stock, but he controlled, as best he could, the drone population around his queen yard.  Every spring he would go around to all the beekeepers within about fifteen miles of his breeder yard and requeen, for free, all the hives with his own queens which he wanted as drone sources.  The beekeepers got the best queens every year for free and he was able to control, for the most part, the drone sources which would affect his commercial queen breeding efforts.  He selected not only his breeder queen by his own criteria, he also selected the drone source queens by his own criteria, ensuring that there would be very little inbreeding and that all the traits he was selecting for were carried by both his virgin queens and by the drone sources in the area.

Not a litte effort, time, and money were spent in ensuring that he provided the best queens that he possibly could for his customers.  Unfortunately, as time goes by we get older, and he retired.  His operation went by the wayside because the new owner was unable to provide the level of excellence that he had maintained.  As far as I know the operation went out of business in the second year.  A real shame because he did provide an excellent line of queens.

Mike in LA

       
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