So, Cam...you are happy with continued purchases. This means your apiary is growing? My apiary grew from about 20 hives to over 100 using southern queens and some Georgia packages. A few years ago with my severe back issues I cut way back and - as you can see from my last post - I suffered significant losses the last 2 years, this year were several Georgia packages, they year before it was mainly home grown hives with southern queens - Carpenter, H&R, and a few California queens. All have served me well in the past with good wintering success. I was always generally happy with my queen purchases which went the gamut from terrible to exceptional. I was very happy with my Georgia Packages [H&R] which were robust and wintered well up here. Right now I have about 25 hives, depending on the last month which has been brutal. *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html