From: "David Eyre" <admin@beeworks.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 18:56:04 -0800
To: BiologicalBeekeeping@egroups.com
Subject: Re: Observations.



From:- "deelusbybeekeeper" <deelusbybeekeeper@excelonline.com>
Fri, 29 Dec 2000 12:17:49 -0800

I have been lurking for some weeks in the hope of finding some nuggets of
information which might prove useful. The following paragraph caught my
attention and I couldn't resist butting in.

>We believe that beekeeprs should look for and select honeybee
>breeder/drone hives based on a whole bee theory of field
>characteristics. Since we select to the black side, because we have
>found more beneficial characteristics on this cold-weather side of the
>spectrum, I will therefore list basically, what we look for to offset
>the characteristics, of the yellow hot-weather side of the spectrum:

The findings of Dee are diametrically opposite our findings here in
Canada. Colour has little bearing on winter abilty regarding survival or
general hive quality in the yards I have contact with.

We prefer a lighter golden bee, Italian in extraction, my neighbour has
a darker Carniolan and I've just recently made contact with someone who
has what we believe is descendant of the original dark European bee.

We each breed for our own characteristic and while improvement is
always possible I don't believe colour to be too high on our list of
traits. Personally I never use dark queens, in practice I have found a
number of problems with the darker queens that I have produced, from lack
of mating, to extremely poor breeding patterns.

Just an alternative view.
Regards Dave.....