> If you want to perpetuate the Russian genes I suggest you replace as
> many local queens as possible with daughters of your purchased queen...

The worry in this approach is that only one queen -- or a few queens --
would be used to breed an entire neighbourhood of bees.  That is a risky
approach, especially if that one queen or group of queens has a fatal
characteristic that only shows up in the progeny later.

Any individual breeder queen may prove to be superior, but it will be one
individual, and cannot carry nearly all the characteristics of the many
lines of Russian bees in the program.  Unless it is an II queen, there is
even a chance that it will not produce pure Russian offspring.  A few queens
purchased at the same time, from the same source may actually be sisters,
mated to the same drone pool, and carry little more genetic diversity than
just one queen alone.

What is often forgotten is that the Russian bees are *not* an homogeneous
stock.  The stock consists of various lines, each with distinct qualities,
and to get a true sampling and be sure of viable populations, a number of
different release breeder queens must be obtained.

Since different combinations of interbred lines are released each year, a
variety of Russian queens should be obtained, over several years, and
introduced into your operation and the neighbourhood, as recomended by the
previous writer.

As I see it, anyhow.

allen
http://www.honeybeeworld.com/diary/

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