Finding a good colony to draw small cell

[Fusion_power]

I've been using small cell foundation for several years now. Every single colony up to now mangled the foundation severely when it was first given. I finally have one colony that is drawing small cell foundation properly. The combs are beautiful white with no flaws even where the wires pass through the comb.

So whats different about this colony? Well, I had been using bees that were descended from Buckfast queens bought from a breeder in Canada. This colony that draws the beautiful comb was a swarm I caught this past spring. The beautiful part is that they show almost no sign of varroa and they made a nice crop of light colored honey. They are among the gentlest bees I've owned.

I will raise a few queens from this colony because of the combination of good traits. This queen plus one breeding line derived from Buckfast and some queens bought from Purvis are going to be wintered and then expanded next year. I would like to get back up to about 20 colonies from the 10 I am planning to winter.

Fusion

[Michael Bush]

Sounds like you're on the right track.