From: Dave Cushman <dave.cushman@lineone.net>
Date: Mon Dec 18, 2000 4:23am
Subject: Re: girls on small cells, regressing bees

To John Sewell

Selection the first season has to be mainly guesswork as you have no records
from previous seasons to refer to (see MMC method on Galtee website).

As far as drones are concerned the selection of drone mothers has to be done
one or two seasons before selection of "motherlines".

You can help this process by purchasing A "Dark Galtee Queen" from MMC which
will produce very good drones and all 1st generation queens raised from it
will be identical drone producers.

By the end of that second season you should have material of your own to
start your own male and female lines.

Before you deliberately inbreed, Read John Atkinson's "background to bee
breeding" which will enable you to calculate how to do it.

3 day inspections is too frequent go for 7 you will disturb the bees less
and the greater time allows you to see differences more easily.

----- Original Message -----
From: Lucinda Sewell lucindajohn@s...
To: Biological Beekeeping List BiologicalBeekeeping@l...;

> I need help with selecting my breeders. Any thoughts on determining which
> colonies will be the best for grafting from and which for drones? Is there
> anything other than dumb luck at work if I inbreed? I'm only
> going to select for 4.9ers to start. How do I decide the best?

Regards Dave Cushman