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Our two nucs should supposedly arrive soon, featuring two snooty high-bred brand new hygienic Carniolan queens. Should be good stock, and we should not complain.
However, I'm of the opinion that local genes may be desirable. Our club has a program going to raise nucs locally instead of importing from down south. They had horrid luck with package bees last year.
But we oscillate between two states (kinda sounds quantum mechanical, but I mean we have a place in WV where we keep the bees). So we opted to buy nucs in WV to satisfy the import/inspection requirements. Possibly we over-reacted. But in any case we're wondering if it is worth requeening one of our hives with some tough Mountaineer queen. And if so, could a fairly young, productive high-bred Carni queen be introduced to another hive after she's started laying in the first one? The usual fate of requeening seems to be that the old queen ends up taking a fatal drink of alcohol.
In other words, do beekeepers ever do trades like this? I've tried searching the forum and have not seen this mentioned.
However, I'm of the opinion that local genes may be desirable. Our club has a program going to raise nucs locally instead of importing from down south. They had horrid luck with package bees last year.
But we oscillate between two states (kinda sounds quantum mechanical, but I mean we have a place in WV where we keep the bees). So we opted to buy nucs in WV to satisfy the import/inspection requirements. Possibly we over-reacted. But in any case we're wondering if it is worth requeening one of our hives with some tough Mountaineer queen. And if so, could a fairly young, productive high-bred Carni queen be introduced to another hive after she's started laying in the first one? The usual fate of requeening seems to be that the old queen ends up taking a fatal drink of alcohol.
In other words, do beekeepers ever do trades like this? I've tried searching the forum and have not seen this mentioned.