Hello All,
I received my share of the Russian/Russian queens last Sunday.

 Due to my rotator cuff surgery I installed 62 hives on four way pallets and
put three into nucs.  I sold 34 to my partner and gave three to a beekeeper
friend which has been coming out to help me when I have got a job which
requires a beekeeper and not hired help. He is a certified master beekeeper.
All were installed in nucs/ hives within 36 hours.

I could easily have used all 102 queens but when I saw I could not get
installed within our time frame (due to my hurt wing) I elected to find a
good  home for the rest of the ladies. My friends were thrilled to get the
Russian/Russians to try .

I released mine after  five days caged due to the introduction problems I
had last year. I did not have any introduction problems this year and and
found only one queen dead in a cage when I went to release the queens. I
have got 64 installed and hopefully laying.

These Russian queens were grafted from a Russian II breeder queen from Glenn
Apiaires and open mated to another Russian/Russian line on a 2500 acre ranch
in California. One can never say for sure about open matings but we went to
a huge amount of effort to control the open mating by setting up many drone
colonies on the ranch.

When these queens arrived they were four days late and at the Kansas City
airport. I was shocked to see  all the queens were light colored! Last years
were black to dark brown. Because these queens are an important part of my
testing of the Russian bee to see if the Russian bee might work in our area
and need less treatment for varroa & tracheal mites than the bees we have
been using I needed to make sure I got the bees I ordered and  a mistake had
not happened (mistakes happen) and I was shipped regular production queens.

Even though was Sunday night I called the queen breeder in California and
talked to the breeder. She said she thought the bees were Russian/ Russian
but the person which filled the order  would be in tommorrow and she would
check and call me back. She did the next morning and the bees were
yellow/orange Russian/Russian from the ranch project.

I had not talked to Charlie Harper (BEE-L)  in awhile and I was so puzzeled
by the light color of the  queens I called Charlie in Lousiana. Charlie said
color was not a marker for the Russian bee this year  as he had sent a light
colored queen when he sent Glenn Apiaries this years breeder  queens.

I can't help but think the workers will be dark as the drone source I would
think  would be dark bees. Charlie said the workers would most likely be
from gray to black in color. I guess I will find out in a couple weeks.

When time came to release the queens the only person around to help was my
wife. She hardly ever helps with actual working of the hives  but offered to
release the queens while I looked on to recage a queen if the queen  was
being balled. I think she really enjoyed the project of watching the queens
climb out of the cage. Last year I recaged about half after five days
because they were trying to ball the queen. None this year which I have no
explanation for.

 I did see something I never saw before. One queen kept trying to sting the
workers.I checked the nuc for another queen but not so. I had cut  a couple
queen cells from the nuc. I picked her up and held her for a minute (kind of
like time out) but when I put her back on the frame she started trying to
sting workers again. They were not fighting back so I recaged her and
returned about two hours later. Was getting dark so I sprayed her and the
workers with a sugar /solution and released her figuring she would get over
her rage at  her new subjects by the time they had all cleaned up the syrup.
Have any beekeepers on the list seen a queen trying to sting workers  when
released before?
Sincerely,
Bob Harrison

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