>> >choosing from the best queens from the year before with the traits you
>> >seek seems to always work.

>After being detoured for a few years, I've come back to this tried and true
>selection process, and am in complete agreement!

Count me as one who has seen this, too.  When we did that, our crop was 
the largest we ever had.  The next year, however we went off pollinating 
and had to buy stock and drop our queen rearing due to expansion and time 
constraints.

I don't ever regret the pollination business, since we made good money 
and it was an adventure, but I have never forgotten the impact of marking 
the best hives in each yard one year, (250+ hives total), selecting the best 
from the survivors of those marked hives in spring, and creating a 
queen-rearing yard with only those 45 or so hives.  Maybe it was 
80? -- can't recall, but I still can visualise the yard with the wrapped 
cell-raising colonies. (We started early and had lots of drones with those 
fantastic hives all in one spot).

We used the best 12 of that select group based on temper and other
 factors as queen mothers for grafting and the hives all  provided drones.

We raised a lot of mated queens and nucs that year and it was our best 
ever.  Maybe it was just luck, but some say that we all make our own luck.  
If so, this seems like a good way to me.

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm