I've been keeping bees a few years, have only had Russians. I ordered a few packages of Russians this spring from Miller Bee to replace some of my winter losses. Went to pick up the bees yesterday and didn't find out until I was loading the bees into my car that they were Italians, because the package producer ran out of Russian queens. I could have made a fuss but I prepaid for the packages and drove 120 miles to get them, so I felt like I was stuck with them. All I got was a "Hey, maybe you'll like Italians better!" I doubt I'll do business with Miller again, but now I'm trying to figure out if I should re-queen these packages or not. I'll probably keep one or two of the Italian queens to see if there's any difference, and replace the others with queens from one of my Russian colonies.
Can anyone in a northern area speak to how well their Italians overwinter? I know they're supposed to be more gentle, they might producer more honey, but also keep a larger cluster going into winter and consume more honey. I've only ever had Russians so I don't have anything to compare them to, but they do tend to swarm fairly frequently (or maybe I just don't manage my bees very well), and I have a lot of robbing issues.
I'm also not sure how pure the genetic lines are with the package producers, and how much difference there really is between a run of the mill Russian queen vs an Italian?
Can anyone in a northern area speak to how well their Italians overwinter? I know they're supposed to be more gentle, they might producer more honey, but also keep a larger cluster going into winter and consume more honey. I've only ever had Russians so I don't have anything to compare them to, but they do tend to swarm fairly frequently (or maybe I just don't manage my bees very well), and I have a lot of robbing issues.
I'm also not sure how pure the genetic lines are with the package producers, and how much difference there really is between a run of the mill Russian queen vs an Italian?