I remember Finsky advising me to last season to requeen my Kona queens with locally bred queens to go into winter. I listened to those words, but I just simply did not get around to doing as he advised. I have gone into this winter with these Kona queens (I think, unless they have been superceded). They are not marked (which will be a different story next year), so I have no clue if they are the original queens or not.
I have still 3 Carniolan colonies (or they could be half breeds with Italians, who knows) and 6 Kona Italian colonies . The Carniolan colonies were the only ones that had any honey to take off. The others had only enough to leave with their colonies for the wintertime. That did make a statement to me.
My packages and nucs that I got this spring were all given drawn foundation when I got them. Even with that, the nectar flows were so bad that still they did not have excess honey. If they had been given only foundation, I think that I would have had to feed them even more than I did for their winter stores. It was a terrible year for honey in our locale. THis was a weird year for us all it sounds, (except Dane, hee, hee). Have a wonderful and great day, best of health. Cindi