Italian to Russian requeening

[TwT]

  The varroa resistance is appealing, but folks around here also talk of their tendency to swarm a lot.

when they first started raising Russians they did swarm a lot, but the last few years they have cut the swarming way down with selective breeding, the Russians I work with now are real gentle and hardly ever swarm, it's a big difference from a year's ago Russians, they are some real nice bee's, I have been working with a member ( Dwight Porter) of the Russian Queen Breeders Association for about 4 years now, I have one of those Russian breeder queen mothers in my back yard now that I am going to raise from crossed with my feral's to see how they do... there are only 17 members in the Russian breeder program so dont think there are a lot of people, most big time queen breeders get there breeder queens from these members, most are crossed with other lines when you get them from the big breeders, if you get your queens from the members of the Russian breeder program you will get the good Russian queens, they have strict breeding guide lines to keep the Russian lines as pure as possible... 

[qa33010]

    I am enjoying my Russians also.  They are great and mellow and have made extra honey when others have not in the area.  I do watch them a little more but not for getting defensive.  They seem no different than the mutts when it comes to size of hive, the more they have the more defensive they get.  But they are very stable.  Neighbor has Italian and one hive stays hot even with requeen, while the other is touchy.  I'll stick with russians and mutts.

     I am in the middle of town, so for me a hot hive is not an option.  I had a hot swarm (Italian, watched them leave and caught them and was told to keep 'em if I wanted them) hive last year and killed it off.  The large hives concentrate on me, when I get deep into them, and are back in the hive before I have finished cleaning up after myself.  This time of year I will not bother them except a quick peek at the supers, waiting for the goldenrod and aster.

[troutstalker2]

  I have just the opposite to be true. I'm going from Russians to Italians. I thought Russians were hot. The calmest seem to be a mutt swarm I got this spring, but they look as if they are Italians. They are at least one generation Farrel as I got them from a house they were living in and it was at least the second swarm from that hive this year. I guess it just the luck of the draw, but for now I'm going with Italians.

David