a Janet L. Wilson snip followed by > my comment..
And most of us are either making our own wild mated queens or buying local wild mated queens. What can we do to improve those local gene pools?

> Well first off you have to deep six the idea of control and think more in terms of probabilities.... basically you can hedge you bet but you control little. You can definitely increase the probabilities of success and shorten the time required for success with either creating or buying II stock < at one time affordable but now a bit too pricy an option for myself*.  

>Secondly and more to the point of your question there are things that you can do and the degree to which these will or will not be successful is likely dependent on location. First off in some location the season for getting queens mated is short, so you have a short window of opportunity to replicate your efforts.  In other (like here) you have more time but you have to clued into the season and halt your efforts when the time isn't right to get to your goal.  In many location the degree of problem with feral is a bit over blown. You can largely overcome this sort of problem via feeding and producing queens at the proper point in time... You can also saturate the local hobby market with your own stock and if you are in a place where the migratory folks flock too you can 'eventually' saturate the are with you own stock via proper marketing (at a price everyone will buy what you sell).

*at one time I use to buy a lot of varieties of II stock, mated these with my own no treatment stock and see how they performed.  Some did very well (an option I would repeat but sadly due to how things are organized cannot) and some not so much (ie tend to fail quickly in a non treatment setting).

Gene in Central Texas 

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