A hybrid species?

[squarepeg]

(My first year beekeeping - hope there's patience here for inexperience.) I'm going to have 2 hives - I'm thinking 1 Italian and 1 Carniolan. I'm interested to see what differences I can detect over the year between the breeds. If later I introduced a virgin queen of the breed I prefered, would it then mate with drones from both hives and become a balanced mix, or hybrid, or....what?

welcome to beesource joel.

your idea has some merit, but there are so many variables with bees that you might come to a false conclusion about why one colony did better than the other. it might or might not have something to do with the strain of bee.

i agree that mutts are a good way to go. especially if they have been proven in your area. maybe you can find someone selling bees that are bred near you. even then, and with all bees regardless of strain, each individual queen has to prove herself by producing a healthy and robust colony.

[Joel_T]

your idea has some merit, but there are so many variables with bees that you might come to a false conclusion about why one colony did better than the other. it might or might not have something to do with the strain of bee.

I’ve heard different tendencies described for Carniolans and Italians and no doubt my inexperience and how I handle hives would/could skew my conclusions about these 2 breeds. Curiosity’s got the best of me though. Depending on how I handle them they’d turn into “mutts” eventually anyway wouldn’t they? That wouldn't be a bad thing.

This is interesting stuff - can't wait for the hands on part. I thought I’d be at some sort of data overload point already but the more I read the more I’m interested in learning even more. The wife’s happy – I don’t watch so much news

[psfred]

Bees with Carniolan (or the older term "German Black) heritage do very well here. We usually have a drought in August, and it may last through mid Septembesr, so bees that react quickly to changes in forage by slowing down or speeding up brood production are really necessary. "Southern bree bees", as my friend down the road who has been a beekeeper for almost 40 years calls them, tend to keep laying even in a dearth. I discovered that last year, when my first hive went through a deep and a shallow of stores by mid September by raising a full deep of brood constantly. Not good, they died out in the spring from lack of stores and my failure to feed them back up.

Carnies (and the old German bees) tend to collect huge amounts of propolis, though. Seals the hive up for winter very nicely, but getting frames out can be a challange in the fall!

Peter

[Michael Bush]

The "German Black" bees were Apis mellifera mellifera, not Apis mellifera canica. Most of tended to not be very gentle, some were vicious. Canies tend to be very nice.