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I have experienced (and others too) that colonies with heavy mite infestation or with lack of food will turn aggressive, once those issues are dealt with the colony is a bless again.

Well said and good to have you back B+.

Newly hatched might be wrong to say... but what I meant was newly emerging bees are young bees and it is the feeding and nursing of these that shortens the lifespan of bees not feeding and caring for larvae. This is also why the swarm leafs after they have produced the brood and before most of...

Live longer - not from rearing brood but from not feeding young newly hatched bees.

Keld's (buckfast.dk) queens are good, also Ivan Nielsen's; https://danishbuckfast.com/ German Buckfast are in my experience a little more prolific. The danish winter in smaller cluster and are very calm. German I recommend, very good queens and adapted to colder climate...

B+. Is there no one selling tested 2 year old AMC queens, surely they Would cost more? You gave the price of pedigree queens but not tested breeder. Buckfast queens with pedigree control-mated is usually between 60-130€. Two year old tested breeder queens go from 200 to 700€.

They also do more time consuming swarm prevention, they also have more desease nosema, chalkbrood and AFB. They also have problem with starvation in spring. This also costa alot of work hours and money. They too would benefit from breeding but, rather choose to only evolve hive components...

We do not have constant -20c, atleast not here in southern Finland. It can go from +2 c to -10c just over night. The air is very moist until january, then when it. Has been a weak -10 the air gets dry.

Here in Finland I am wintering with a thin plastic sheet over the frames and styrofoam on that, open mesh floors. Outside -26 celsius. Cold does not kill, moisture does. I have tried the warre and it is not good in northern europe. Does not work well when temps go up and down.

That is the issue, you should be asking why is that colony weak and is there something I can do in the future to avoid a similar situation. Breeding with goals is one thing you can do. As for queens in spring, no need to buy or import. You can overwinter two queens easily in one hive body. I...

oh dear...From where do these unsmart ideas come from... From Santa Claus? B+. Is not the only one with smart ideas. Same ideas have been used for improving all livestock.

This may only prove that the queen in the small colony can lay a good amount of eggs once she got the work force, but it does not prove that the queen have any other good traits. It's the donor colonies workers who are doing the job and it is of her you may breed!

I'm just wondering why all your neighbouring countries are exporting queens while UK is importing... I think this thread may answer that...

Buckfast drones are always dark brown and/or with a golden ring. workers are uniform colored with 1 or 1 and half typical orange/leather colored ring. No serious Buckfast breeder sells any F0 queen from a line that is not breeding stable sistergroups.

He has some years documented on that page. You will get pedigrees from him by asking.

The pedigrees of the most of the current Buckfast-lines in Europe go back to Brother Adam's, you can find in the link below. Their are of course also new combinations. http://perso.fundp.ac.be/~jvandyck/homage/elver/

and only on paternal side. Not much to talk about when only on drones. Sounds more like a marketing trick, of course it does little harm if one wants to improve less hygienic stock. In Denmark they been selecting for hygienic behaviour for years and all their breeder queens are performing at...

Of course they are; if you buy a F1 Buckfast for 30€ from eastern Europe or any other F1 open mated Buckfast - can be super or can be miserable. As Thomas Rueppel has stated to find a truly good queen you need to control mate 100 virgins of selected stock and then if you find one good out of...

I have seen it too. Back when I had swarmy carniolans from Slovenia. A swarm had gone a few days earlier. I had put a ripe queen cell in after this and after destroying swarmcells. As I came to the hive an umbrella sized swarm flew over the field at the height of 3-5meters. Lots of drones in...

Everyone interested in 2 queens colonies, if you have two weak colonies, should read this thread on Beesource.com: http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?306234-Running-two-queen-colonies