I Justin
For small scale beekeeping a technique is rather successfull to get progressively a better apiary at the image of each beekeeper's practices.
You simply replace year after year the colonies that have some defect for you (e.g. too agressive, swarming too much, unwanted color, ) by the daughters of your best(s) colonie(s), Each beekeeper may have his own conception of what is good or bad.
As a small beekeeper does not usually practices grafting, you can use for instance a division like technique. At the end of the flow after collecting honey(if not too late in the season to avoid lack of drones), You divide your best colonie, and come back the following week to collect the frames with queen cells in the orphan part. Then you introduce one frames in each colonie to renew (after killing the queen).
So for a 10 hives apiary from 1 "good" colony you can get for instance 4 new "good" queens, what is a good replacement rate. On such a small apiary, the risk of consanguinity  is small.
Do not focuse on your choice in complex criteria, just think on "this one in ok for me, this one is not ok for me".
I see good results among small beekeepers that I am following with this method.

Michel BOCQUET

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