I received email from Mr. Charles Harper, Harpers Honey Farm,
[log in to unmask], yesterday after inquiring as to price and
availability of his Russian Breeder Queens; breeder queens are still
$500.00.

I have been and still am quite interested in these two lines of bees. The
Russian Queens have been through a lot since their first introduction to
their island of isolation in the Gulf of Mexico. Several years ago the
word was out that Russians were the way to go, but acceptability problems
of the new Russian queens quickly dampened any enthuiasiam; and then the
bee world slowed down and quietly waited to see what the ARS Folks down in
Louisiana were going to do with this promising lineage of bees. During
this same time-frame varroa resistance to Apistan and Checkmite became
proven and new miticides developed, some slowly and some faster than
others gaining FDA approval.

But, IMHO the best miticide for both the Varroa and the trachael mite is
the natural inherent genetic lines of resistance in the honeybees with a
proven genetic resistance over a sustained period of time; this has been
IMO done and will hopefully continue.

Now my first question is what do we as beekeepers do to assure that once a
Russian Queen is successfully introduced to a beekeepers yard that the
traits so painfully developed  by the ARS folks will not be diminished by
local breeding once the new queens or a daughter's queens are introduced
to the beeyards of America and the World. What will happen when her
Russian daughters openly mate with the resident Italian, Carnolian and
other local drones with no genetic SMR resistance?

Most of us can only afford to purchase a breeder queen's daughter, most of
us have no formal training in honey bee genetics. Should one first develop
a yard with genetics from a SMR or NWC or Minn.Hyg. line that would be
strong enough so that the drones in that yard would have a very high
probability of mating with the virgin Russian Queens?

What should one do to maximize developed genetic resistance once the
Russians or for that matter once the SMR's or Minn. HYG  have arrived?

Chuck Norton
Norton's Nut & Honey Farm
Reidsville, NC

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