This is my 3rd year with half my operation now Russian.  I have never seen a frame of 
full blown AFB I had to toss with these bees. I am lucky to have been able to get my 
queens mated in yards of other beekeepers who have established Russian apiaries so my 
genetic purity for such a short time of involvement should be high.  

My only complaint on the Russian is they like to swarm. If you put an expanded nuc into a 
deep with frames of foundation in June you're asking for trouble. During buildup 
sometimes they draw queen cells as soon as the queen runs out of space. I still have not 
perfected my management scheme for working with these bees and minimizing the 
turnover of queens. But in addition to making a good honey crop, they don't need much 
feed and no treatments means I save money on labor and fuel. BAsed on past winters 
experience I plan to not wrap any of them anymore either starting this season except the 
nucs. This makes my fall season easier to manage, you can take the honey off late, feed 
once and push them together. No repeated trips for treatments, feeding and wrapping. 

THe other half of my operation is after this season half VSH. My goal is no treatments. I 
don't treat any of these two lines of bees for anything, not even nosema. I will give 
updates in the years ahead of my success or failure but even this past winter my losses 
were not unusual. 

In 2008 I got my VSH from Glenn and she was light in color and acts Italian with lots of 
brood always. I like the way the 2008 daughters lay brood wall to wall and move honey 
into the top boxes, leaving the brood boxes packed with brood. They are gentle, and very 
good honey producers.  I don't have much winter experience yet so I wonder about that 
but so far they have exceeded my expectations as a productive bee. 

I am keeping the two lines of bees because its fun to have more then one line to compare 
and also my home base is surrounded by other bees and would be hard to keep the 
Russians pure. I keep the Russians at my most remote locations that are more then 2 
hours drive and have no other bees near them. 

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