I'm interested to see you ask this!
Well in my short beekeeping experience, I have only had local mongrels so far, mostly in top bars, with queens from black to nut coloured, but have also had one line of more blonde queens. Prolific and very laid back. Well last summer I couldn't believe that a young queen could come into lay and produce so many eggs in a few days! It seemed to me that her workers could scarcely produce comb fast enough for her to lay in. I thought she might do better in a National on double brood (or still in the TBH but with foundation perhaps?*) Also their relatives the previous year, who were also going great guns, suddenly succumbed to chronic paralysis virus (the perfect-looking but trembly sort) which I gather bees are more susceptible to if they are overcrowded. So on thinking about doing a split of a colony this year which is in a top bar at the moment, where the current (2016) queen is very pale and prolific, I'm wondering whether it would be better to move the queen into a National, and whether top bars are perhaps not the best homes for this sort of bee.
Would really like to know if others have any experience with this sort of thing.
*The bees who died were in a top bar which was about 3'9''. They filled the hive pretty quickly; so really I'd say I think it wasn't big enough for them.
