>Mr Bush, is this a good idea? My concern is if semen of one type bee is allowed, is their a possibility that semen of an (undesirable) strain may also find its way here as well?
Certainly genetics is a crap shoot. Look at the scutellata x ligustica which turned into the AHB. No one expected that to turn out the way it did. But Carniolans are already here as are the Caucasians which she also is importing semen for. It's just that our gene pool has gotten very inbred because of commercial queen breeders making thousands upon thousands of queens from the same queen mother. That was the main reason for bringing in new genetics from existing strains.
I got started doing cutouts back in the 70s and I sometimes got some really hot AMM. But sometimes AMM were ok. I agree that the AHB are no hotter than the AMM I would find sometimes. Certainly SOME AHB are nicer than SOME AMM... I don't see them much anymore. Last time I had some that had AMM traits was back around 2003 or so. Those traits gradually disappeared even in my bees. Mostly they are not considered a plus, though I like some of them. They propolized a lot. They were very runny. And sometimes they were hyper aggressive...
