Gus Rouse used to say on his web site that his Carniolans are NWC crossed
with Italian drones. Perhaps he still does...I have not checked lately.
 My understanding is that Gus's NWC's are produced by instrumentally
inseminating selected dark queens with semen imported directly from Sue
Cobey. In some years, Sue has gone to Hawaii to do the inseminating. Some of
those progeny become breeder queens. Their progeny is open mated for sale.
 Again, AFAIK, Gus selects for Carniolan vrs Italian by color. The
overwhelming majority of drones available for open mating are Italians. This
is also true of NWC queens sold from California. Look at a map of
North/Central Calif. where the queens are produced and you will see that all
the producers are in the general area. The overwhelming majority of the
drones in these areas are Italian, and open bred queens selected as
Carniolan or Italian are based on color.
 I have bought many hundred "NWC" queens from both Kona (Gus Rouse) and from
producers in Calif. For the past several years Kona's queens have easily
been the best available.
 Back in the days when there used to be reasonably controlled honey
production tests of queens in Western Canada, Carniolans used to win annual
awards with production exceeding 400 lbs a hive. But that was more than 20
years ago. I am not aware of any controlled honey production tests today,
but my quess is that well-produced NWC's would at least equal "most"
Italians...for whatever that means.
 Lloyd

--
Lloyd Spear
Owner Ross Rounds, Inc.
Manufacture of equipment for round comb honey sections,
Sundance Pollen Traps, and producer of Sundance custom labels.
Contact your dealer or www.RossRounds.com <http://www.RossRounds.com>

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