Midnite queens

[brooksbeefarm]

I bought my first bees in 1965 from sears & roebuck they were midnite bees.I remember a company that sold them later called York bee co. Does anyone know if they are still in buisness or if someone bought them out.Thanks in advance.Jack

[Bizzybee]

York is gone. I don't think they were bought out in the sense that their business model survived.

As far as I know, which isn't worth much, the Midnite line hasn't been maintained.

[tecumseh]

if you had purchased those packages a bit later (say perhaps 20 years later) I might have been the fellow that directly shook those bees into the package you bought. at that time (the fellow who I worked for had the contract with sears) bought the midnight queens we installed into a lot of those packages from one of the weavers (at that time there was three weaver families in navasota.... but I seem to recall that the midnights came from morris weaver).

one of the above mentioned bee keepers inlaws also ran midnights which we tended to during the spring time in east texas. at the time it provided for some nice comparison since one brother in law ran midnights and the other largely italians.

at the time I didn't particularly 'like' the midnights since spotting those black queens was a bit difficult for me and they built up extremely slowly.

if I remember correctly the midnights required a three way cross and they were considered to be a real hybrid and the name was patented so any selling of 'midnights' required a person to pay royalties to someone (I think perhaps one of the Dadant people had a lot to do with this hybrid). maintain these three seperate blood line for the cross may have been the demise of this idea although another big hurdle in the idea working was when a midnight queen was replaced due to superscedure or swarming the replacement would ALWAYS be inferior to the original (one concept in genetics...reversion to the mean would suggest that the replacement queen would almost invariable be inferior to it's predecessor).

[cedargrove]

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=209228

[comb]

im pretty sure york is now h&r in jesup ga ph 912 427 7311

[brooksbeefarm]

Comb,I called H&R and they did buy the york co.The lady said they sell only italian bees now.She was very helpful and gave me the phone# of one of yorks old employee,and said he raises caucasian bees.If anyone is interested his name is Charlie Homan phone # 662-401-3254 or 662-767-3880.Comb thanks for the info.Jack