Conversion to Russians

[nursebee]

I am a little guilty of asking this question without a full search of info but I have perused Beesource and net sites for some of the Russian suppliers.

I have about 50 hives that I would like to change to Russian queens. WHat I know about Russians is that the queens are expensive, require a little more work and attention for introduction (push in screen over emerging brood and subsequent removal of screen) and might not be readily available.

Several folks seem to sell breeder queens. THese one would use to raise your own queens to repopulate. But then the problem is having russian drones to inseminate/mate. Does one go about this by buying a bunch of expensive queens or raising my own queens piecemeal as russian drones do better?

What am I missing here? What is the way to go about this? Thank you.

[db_land]

I guess I would buy the mated (russian X russian) production queens. I think I've seen them advertised for about $17.

My plan is to go with all ferals and small cell. I do have 1 russian hive that's doing great so far (1 year) without treatments.

[JOEL D PORTER]

I have russian queens that are crossed with italian. Very docile and good honey producers and are somewhat mite resistant. I haven't treated with any chemicals in 3 years. I just use FGMO. I work my bees with just shorts and a t-shirt. russian cross are $17.00 each.

[Hillbillynursery]

I think I would go slowly to russian by buying the production queens. See how you like them before jumping all the way in. Then like other said if you are into breeding your own queens get a breeder. You then would have a good chance of them getting bred by the russian queens drones from the year before. Those that do not will be better than most with the mite resistance.

[bjerm2]

I would get a Russian queen (breeder). Have her daughters mate with your drones. The offspring will be a russian X with local. The drones from these offspring will be pure russian. From what I have read is that a drone has no father but does have a grand father since the egg he came from is unfertilized so all the genetics are from mom and grand pa. I would then next year do the exact same thing and you will have a large drone population of russians that will be mating with your russian queens.

[JBJ]

I started with the origional USDA released Russian breeder queens in 1999 and then added production hybrid russians the fowlowing year. In isolated mating yards the hybrids supply drones that are 100% related to their mother(pure Russian). The next round of queens produced from the origional breeder queen are then crossed with the production drones, and the stock is maintained. Since then I have hybridized with some excellent feral stock and SMR lines. I also select for hygenic behavior. You can find out more on our web site.
JBJ

[Hillbillynursery]

That was what I was getting at. You can buy alot of Russian production queens for the price of one breeder queen. Then the next year buy a breeder. Your queens would then be mostly if not full russians depending on how isolated your yard is and if you have other hives still in the same area.