Greetings,


“(We have a 1" auger hole in each brood box, and a full open bottom entrance).”

“A full open bottom entrance,” and not the loss of good traits in gene
selection, was confusing and ambiguous for me. 
 
Since I run on screened bottoms, except for spring splits, I took “a full
open bottom entrance” to mean a full open entrance on a *wooden bottom
board*, right?  Neither no bottom board (a full open bottom) at all nor a
full open entrance on a screened bottom board since the arctic chill in
Canada will not allow either, right?

It has been well documented, through, for instance, domesticating foxes in
Russia, how certain genes will get turned on and off as one tries to select,
say, “gentle characteristic,” a process that might impact, however
inadvertently, on turning on and off other genes and characteristics as a
result: the coloration of the offspring or, say, bent ears.  This side
effect might change with the gnome research in the future, though.  The
majority of current “Italian strains,” however, are not Cordovan in color,
to say the obvious; rather the surviving or current strains seem to show a
tendency toward having more than three bands in abdomen and darker
coloration overall.  

Whatever the reason, they don’t always build up and retain all the “good”
traits, as if gene-shuffling is a give and take.  Good traits are a
subjective term, too, as the coloration is of little consequence to honey
production.  Hence, it is a challenge to accumulate *only* the good traits
incrementally, assuming it is possible or always desirable.  My best
performing colonies have shown tendency toward early peaking, for instance;
early peaking, combined with a rare hard-freeze in late April this year,
starved them into dinks as my practice has not been feeding bees in spring
as I fed them in fall.  Thus, “best performing” colonies depend on which
year without the desired consistency of high performance year to year. 
Hence, the challenge in the term “an ideal stock” or “best stock,” a value
judgment based on differing circumstances.

Bob might want to shed some light on spring feeding, in general, and in
particular, the timing of it, as light nectar from redbud and others start
to trickle in and as we want to stop feeding before the major flow.


Yoon

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