Best cordovan queens

[johns bees]

My question is besides Dr. Russell who do you think has the best cordovan Italians queens as far as build up, egg laying rate and over wintering ability, gentleness and honey haul.

[Skinner Apiaries]

lol shopping? If you want Cordovans glenns sells breeders. Ive used their queens several times. Usually mated back into theirselves, so the II queens are kinda soso, but the daughters are just WOW. 2 generations out, crossed with other gen 2 breeder select stock, and it gets better and better. But thats what breeding programs are for. Keeping the true color of cordovans makes breeding for good bees and keeping the color kind of a pain. Then again the best queens I have are striped. I loathe striped queens, hard to find. Well, thats my 2 cents. lol

[gone2seed]

I tried some Cordovans from Mike's Bees last year and was very satisfied with their performance.I now have some daughter queens from these and am very happy with these as well.
I think Mike is in Ohio if memory serves...and it usually doesn't.I will probably order some more this summer.

[jim lyon]

Then again the best queens I have are striped. I loathe striped queens, hard to find. Well, thats my 2 cents. lol

Agreed, just as some mutts make the best dogs, i'll take a cross that throws an assortment of colors every time. I never select for color and yes it can be a PITA when it comes time to find them.....oh well so it goes with good bees.

[Mbeck]

I have some packages that the queens may have been made from Glenn breeder queens.
Italians and cordavon coloring...performing very well but throwing open mated coloring.

I to am interested in getting some Italian Cordavon queens, I've heard good things about Miska ( on the Internet) but he wasn't taking orders when I called. I may try again later.

[Skinner Apiaries]

Jim, the color is only indicative of what strain you started with. I will be having more later this fall if I can get breeding stock out of sheer interest. But that said, I dont want to breed just for color, if they arent good queens they get a trip to the freezer for my employee's resin queen bee jewelry. That said, I mention the stripes being better, I think its the result of hybridized F3 generation the bands are reflective of the darker VSH background of the F1 Mothers.

[NeilV]

I have had excellent results with Pendell's Apiary Queens. They are very productive and gentle. What you are getting is open mated, so not every bee is Cordovan. But they basically act like very Italian bees. They are also breeding in a VSH trait, but not sure how they are doing that.

One big thing about them is they let their queens lay for awhile before they ship them out, so they are proven and have their pheremones up and running strong before they arrive. They have told me that they don't bank their queens. They also stop selling in July or August depending on the weather.