Barry asked:
Bob, if I recall at all correctly, you acquired some SMR queens over a year
ago. Can you give us your opinion of them please.

To bring everyone up to speed my partner  and I recieved  two SMR breeder
queens from Glenn Apiaries the first week of July 2001.

The instrumentally inseminated ( II ) queens were of the red & yellow SMR
lines.

the queens I raised (red line) were open mated to my best survivor queen
(Carniolan).

My partners (yellow line)were open mated to a Marla Spivak hygienic queens
( Italian II queen)drones.

I tested my SMR bees for varroa quite a bit. My partner did only fall &
spring testing.

Of all bees tested for varroa the SMR headed hives had the lowest varroa
counts. All had a varroa count in fall.

My open mated SMR  queens tend to lay a spotty brood pattern and are average
to below average honey producers. None of the SMR were aggressive.

The yellow line II queen started laying a spotty brood pattern after a few
months . Her daughters also laid the spotty brood pattern so she was dropped
from the program and my (red line) queen was used in her place.

We were sent a letter by Dr. Harbo saying  spotty brood patterns were being
observed in II SMR queens and he was researching looking for possible
reasons. The yellow line queen fit the description.

My (red line) queen only laid what I would call a not perfect brood pattern
and continued in use until the spring of 2003 when she became a drone layer.
Her daughters did not lay the less than desirable brood pattern.

I have got the greatest respect for the efforts of the Baton Rouge Bee lab
and Glenn Apiaries. I would say the SMR queens produced as expected and may
again try SMR breeder queens but am now playing around with Russians.

Early report as promised:

My Russian queens (April 2003)  are in production hives and have got the
honey supers on so early on in the Russian experiment. I spent quite a bit
of time getting the queens introduced with problems but got 96 out of the
100 to take.

One of the problems was that the bees in the hive would not feed the Russian
queens in the cages (I do not introduce with attendants as I get my queens
in a battery pack ).

When released the Russian queens would go immediately to a cell of honey and
drink honey.

Some introductions took over a week due to the bees trying to ball the
queen.  These were the hardest queens I have ever tried to introduce and can
see why hobby beekeepers might have trouble.

 Many beekeepers in the Midwestern Beekeepers say they gave up after the
third Russian queen was balled or killed in the cage by the bees. These
Russian queens were from different queen breeders so the problem is
universal.

My partner thought I was making a big deal out of nothing taking so much
time introducing the Russian queens but I am glad I did.

I gave my partner a couple Russian queens to try. My partner is a excellent
beekeeper and did use push in cages . He reported the same type of problems
as the bees tried to ball one of the queens when released but the hatching
brood did feed the Russian queens  which was an improvement over my
observations of non feeding while in the  queen cage.

I also observed non feeding in the battery pack which involved quite a bit
of extra work to keep those unused queens alive.
Sincerely,
Bob Harrison
Odessa, Missouri

Ps. I do apologize to those on the list which emailed me wanting SMR queens
from us. We simply used every one we raised.

We did supply many hobby beekeepers in the Midwestern Beekeeper Assn. of
which we are both officers with a few queens to try but queen rearing is
only a hobby at best for myself and my partner although one year my partner
did raise over a thousand queens in spring in south Texas .

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