Hi All,

>And if I
>lived
>in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, southern California, or southern Nevada, I
>would
>worry about my virgin queens mating with "killer bee" drones.  The point to
>my
>reply is MARK YOUR QUEENS if you want to be a responsible beeKEEPER rather
>than just another beeHAVER.
>
this is pure dogma and not everybody agrees with it. A person could also say
someone that is always replacing queens with someone else's queens from
breeders is a beehaver too because he is only having someone else's bees for
a while until it is replaced. Having those bees only for a while. You could
say that those who raise and breed their own bees are keeping bees.

>I laugh when I hear all those stories about "my bees are pure Italians"
>which
>are
>the "best".  When I ask "are your queens MARKED?" and the beekeeper says
>"no",
>then I ask about his virgin queens mating with those nasty old German bees
>in
>the woods just a mile away, or my Carniolans just 2 miles away.
>

If they perform correctly who cares if they are mongrels. Most breeders call
yellow bees Italians and black bees carniolans even though Italians can be
any color from black to yellow. you could have a carniolan that is really an
Italian.
. . ..   Keith Malone, Chugiak, Alaska USA, http://www.cer.org/,
c(((([ Caucasian Bee Keeper, http://takeoff.to/alaskahoney/,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ApiarianBreedersGuild/

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