> I was not going to rush to the defence of Australian queens which often 
> seem to get a bad rap here on Bee-L.

I wonder if it is a bad rap or just what we see.  Up here in the Great White 
North, my friends and I have had many tens of thousands of packages and 
queens over the years and have some very good things to say about some 
stocks and producers and and some concerns about the material received from 
others.  The US has had less experience, and there has been speculation both 
here and in magazines from some with limited or zero experience, including 
even some who should know better.  Protectionist sentiment runs also runs 
fairly high, too, among US beekeepers, and that has tended to lump all the 
stock together in the eyes of some US beekeepers. (Cool your jets, folks, I 
am not knocking the US here, we have protectionists here in Canada who have 
managed to kept our border closed to US suppliers and beekeepers for 
decades, on bogus grounds (shame!)).

At any rate, my personal objective but less than scientific experience has 
been that I have more often than not seen far more chalkbrood in stock from 
Australia than elsewhere, including the most extreme case I have ever seen 
(and it is documented).  I have seen AFB in Australian stock, while the 
other stock in the yard was clean.  On the plus side, one year, years ago, I 
recall marking all the best performers in a yard, and more than averages 
would predict were of Australian origin.  Years later, after some tough 
winters, with fairly high losses, I saw far more of the marks than I would 
have expected, still standing.  At that time, I did not requeen and only 
took hives in for work if they died.

So, my experience was that the ones I have had, and I have had them from 
many Australian sources over many years is that they are typically 
productive and winter hardy.  On the minus side, they tend to chalk, and I 
have seen more AFB than in any other stock (since the seventies when it was 
rampant in all stock, it seemed).

Is that a bad rap? 

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