Although this discussion is a little above my pay scale…ok a lot above my pay scale, I would just like to throw in that even within a particular yard no two colonies are going to face the exact same conditions. To put it another way, each hive in a yard is going to face a somewhat, maybe only slightly, different set of conditions than its neighbors. Not all the hives are going to be exposed to the same pathogens for example. Exposure to cold winds might also vary. This would seem to make it even more difficult to determine that a given hive’s lack of winterability, in a single season anyway, is due to genetic inferiority with regard to this particular characteristic. Perhaps a dink’s ability to recover would be an even more significant indicator of good genetics. I, in my limited experience have seen this happen more than once so I have to kind of agree with Randy and Stan that placing dinks in a special yard makes sense. For me (10 colonies) getting rid of dinks, or really, even having a breeding program is not all that practical. In fact Peter Borst has given me some reason to think that breeding programs in general may not be as effective as we would like to think. But beekeepers seem to be, by and large, doers. We’ve got to be doing something, trying something, asserting our control over the situation as it were. Now Juanse here seems like a good business man. But let’s not forget, he is a beekeeper. Good luck Juanse, and thanks for starting such an interesting discussion. Steve Noble *********************************************** 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