Which strain of Queen

[BKF Admin]

I had Elqons and they did not care much about weather.

Finman can you translate Elqons?

 

[Hivemaker.]

Maybe this,below.
http://www.elgon.se/index-eng.htm
My Carniolans are obviously from a nuc supplier in Slovenia.

 

[Finman]

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Yes that's it http://www.elgon.se/index-eng.htm

Elgon ( not q) is a mountain in Kenya.

Erik Osterlund has generated that Elgon "race". It has genes from monticola mountain bee from Kenya.

 

[Finman]

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Italians and carniolans are genetigally quite near each other.

I have had many Italian strains and they really have clear differencies, but they are revieled after that when you have kept them some years.

years are so different that you cannot say, isit bees or weather of pastures which make differencies between years.

 

[Hivemaker.]

I would say in this case its the bee's,or else they would all have done much the same.Must get some more of them.

 

[Finman]

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You have much hives and you see differencies.

When you have 5 hives in same place, how do you even know how good they are?

But I have a strong experience that if the stock is swarmy, it is enough to spoil everything. The stock may be Ok 3 years, but if weat hers are bad during swarm season, everything goes to hell. It means that swarm are in tree tops.

I have 100 miles distance to hives. Only clipping of wings saves me something.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Clipping of Queens rules the day,if you want to keep your bee's.
Did my comparison on the heather, very easy to see the difference.

 

[Finman]

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Somehow Norwegians love German Black bees and they use them on heather mountains. They have much rain too.

 

[Tom Bick]

Having started this thread and asked the question Which strain of Queen I can say that having read it over a couple of times now and will probably do so again I have now got a good understanding of the most popular strains of Queens available.

I have to thank all the people who contributed and gave up sum of their hard earned experience earned over many years learning and analyzing beekeeping it helps people like me enormously especially finman who without his vast experience and contributions to the forum as a whole.

OK my own conclusion is it may not matter so much as to the strain of bee I go with as I will probably always be a hobby beekeeper as long as I prepare for swarming, keep a close eye on temperament, perhaps raise Queens in nucleus's and test temperament or re Queen from a breeder every few years and most importantly build up my own EXPERIENCE EXPERIENCE EXPERIENCE

 

[Polyanwood]

Well I still don't really know what I'm doing, but I have replaced all the New Zealand (golden Italian) queens I bought this year. I got a lot less honey off them than off the mongrels. They were beautiful, they were super gentle, they were prolific, they foraged well in the sun and they were greedy and lazy whenever it was cloudy. They ate all their honey in July and August and left me none. I can't guarantee sun, sun, sun.

I think they thought they were pets.

 

[Norton]

Buckfast used to be sods as f2-f3 but some members are reporting good results from queens they originally purchased from Norton.

This was surprising even for me! The F1 queens I sell for honey production are open mated and usually we can see in the F2 that they have mated with cypria drones (cypria is really aggressive) but the characters of the queen line seem to hold up despite several open matings.

They were beautiful, they were super gentle, they were prolific, they foraged well in the sun and they were greedy and lazy whenever it was cloudy. They ate all their honey in July and August and left me none.

What can I say? You should expect this if you use italian based stock - especially NZ or Hawaiian - I do not know about the Australian ones. The majority of italian stock need constant feeding.

What has shocked me is that some members are on 4-5th generation of Buckfast and say that temper is no better or worse than the original import.

Obviously the bees have not read the anti-import biased BIBBA literature. We should expect some of the hybrid vigour to appear as increased aggressiveness, but this hasn't happened. Maybe they need to re-write the books!
Best regards
Norton

 

[Hivemaker.]

So what good qualitys do the Cypria bee's have,any or none,in your opinion. Despite there bad temper,are they good honey getters.

 

[Norton]

Hello,
The good points of cypria is that it is tough bee with lots of vigour and , again a surprise, it overwinters well in middle and northern Europe even though it has evolved in a sub-tropical climate. Queens are quite prolific. It is slow to cap honey.
Best regards
Norton

 

[skydragon]

Just following up on the earlier carnolian comments...My gentle Carnolians had their revenge today

I opened the hive up for the last time this year, to add some fondant. However, I'd left (without thinking) a 2" eek above the brood box from when I was dosing apiguard in September and in the last few weeks or so they'd built a large brace comb filled with stores.

Since I was laying a QE on top of BB and putting fondant on top of the QE, I needed to remove the brace comb. I used some smoke and waited, but they went absolutely ballistic when I removed the brace comb. Partially I'm guessing because I'd opened the hive in cool weather and partially because I was stealing some of their winter stores.

After going back down to the house and getting changed, I then made the big mistake of going back to the hive about 20 mins later to recover some tools I left there...dressed in jeans and a top...

I got within a few yards of the hive and they started to dive bomb me, I ran and made it about 10 yards before the stinging started they even followed me down some stairs! Ouch!!

This was my first 'bee a$$ kicking' and it felt really wierd being banished from the top level of my garden by a bunch of insects.

(I guess I'm lucky they weren't a 'properly' agressive strain!)

 

[Finman]

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I had one carniolan which turned killer hive when dark was coming. When disturbed it covered the front wall with vast cluster.
I think that was meant for bears.

 

[rich]

Buckfast used to be sods as f2-f3 but some members are reporting good results from queens they originally purchased from Norton.

I have three F2 and a F3 queens from Norton's stock; all four colonies are as calm and productive as the original queens I brought in last year.

The F3, I was a concerned about after reading all the bad press about aggressive crosses. The F2's I put down to luck and having lots of drones from the original hive, but the F3 was in an out apiary, where I knew there where quite a number of hives of varying “breeding lines” in the locality, but her offspring are a joy to work with, even in less than favorable weather.

Rich

 

[Finman]

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It depends in crossings, what kind of drones are and where from. F3 has only 13% original genes. In back crossing, who knows what they are.