As you all are aware, I have been given a couple of hives, and am new to all
of this.  One of the hives is very unusual, at least I think it is.

Let me give some background on it and then Id appreciate comments.

Several years ago (4-5), the former owner of this hive was told about a
couple of hives that this little old lady had that she wanted removed from
her property. Seems her husband had kept bees but had died several years
before and she wanted them now removed for what ever reason. My friend went
over to her place and checked them out. Now all of the hives were defunct
except for one. In fact the rest were inhabited by various things including
yellow jackets, mice, snakes and in the case of one a bunch of ants.  At any
rate this one hive seemed in good shape--had a good number of bees and brood,
so he brought it back and used the newspaper method to incorporate it with a
hive that was weak and in fact had a failing queen. He figured that maybe
there was some genetics here that should be propagated as it managed to stay
alive with no help for the years after the man died. The end result was a
mixed hive-I say mixed because the found hive was Carniolians and the weak
hive was Italians. Now the weird thing is thus-for what ever reason the hive
decided it needed a new queen, before the Carniolian queen had completely
taken over the hive.--For what happened is a queen that appears to lay
both!!.  This is a hive that has only been allowed to requeen itself, and yet
this hive still has the mix of Italians and Carniolians after 4 or 5 years.
He is sure its a newer queen at this point, as he marked the older queen and
then this newer queen.  I am wondering if anyone has heard of such-and to be
honest-what the results might be.

TIM MORRIS