David Eyre wrote:
>
> > agriculture.  Yet the majority of contributors to this list (who may not be a
> > representative sample of US beekeepers)  seem to buy queens annually from
> > Florida where conditions may be ideal for queen rearing but are as different
> > from typical foraging conditions elsewhere in the US as it is possible to get.
> <snip>
> > that buying queens is recommended as good practice.  I wonder if it is the
> > producers of the queens who do the recommending.
 
 
> >From across the pond comes some common sense. As a queen
> breeder/rearer I have been qestioning the sense of using Southern
> queens in Northern areas. In fact it was the basis of a talk I gave at
> EAS this summer.
>                 It hardly makes any sense to use semi-tropical bees in our
> harsh winters. As a gardener I know that I can't grow oranges up
> here, so what makes me think 'orange grown' bees will do well up
> here?
 
 
Hello David and all,
 
        The traits that a queen passes along to her workers are determined by
the genes she possesses. It does not matter where she is raised. It does
not even matter where the selection work is performed as long as tests
for the desired trait can be accomplished. It is not the raising of
queens in Florida that impairs the performance of many southern queens
in the north. Its the fact that selection for the traits necessary for
wintering performance is seldom done there. In other words just being in
Florida does not soften a queen or even a line of bees. If the queen has
the right stuff and you control mating, the results will be the same no
matter where they are raised.
        This is similar to what some beekeepers think about the use of anti
biotic and bees susceptibility to disease. These are not necessarily
connected. One may just as easily select for resistance to a disease,
AFB or tracheal mites for instance, from bees that are being treated for
the disease as from bees that are not. Treating with anti biotic or
miticide does not change their genetic makeup or somehow weaken them.
And not treating does not toughen them. They either have the genes
necessrary to resist a disease or they do not.
        I know someone is going to say something like... if you are treating
how can you know if they could resist the disease. In a nutshell the
lack of symptoms of a disease are not an indication of resistance or
suseptability.
                                                Vince