[shaneTX]

I recently captured a small swarm of bees out of a tree near my home in West Houston.. I put them in a nuc and waited a few weeks to look for eggs and capped cells. Lots of brood but couldn't located the queen after 30 minutes .. ugh..

This weekend, I inspected them again and wow! She is a great layer! And lucky me, I found the queen in 30 seconds!.. sheez.. She isn't a golden italian queen like the rest of my queens... she also isn't very big and is stripped like her daughters.

As you can see from the picture, this is some pro level where's waldo.. She looks great in pink.

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I guess what I'm worried about is if she is an africanized queen being the source was a wild swarm. Turns out Google sucks at finding this answer. Right now, the colony isn't aggressive but the brood nest is only 3 frames wide.

 

[shaneTX]

When you catch unknown swarms you call them muts. Most of us that allow our bees to open mate should call them muts , after that observation of their habits determines their value

I guess I do the same thing.. Most of my bees are mutts from wild swarms..

Out of curiosity, what characteristics and how do you grade/observe as being desirable? I find it takes me a long time to determine if a queen is good or not and then Im over invested.

One interesting trait I've seen from a couple of the swarms, is they reduce the size of the opening with propolis to only fit 2-3 bees.. I guess that is a good anti-raiding trait.

 

[shaneTX]

The crescent shaped stripes is common in eastern European races like Anatolian, Carniolan, Caucasian and so on...


queens with south african genes incl. a.m.scutellata usually looks like this:

View attachment 54577

That looks like a lot of mine except mine have pink dots..