Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => TOP BAR HIVES - WARRE HIVES - LONG HIVES => Topic started by: Stlnifr on September 30, 2010, 07:08:20 pm
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If my plans are to raise feral survivor bees, to maintain diversity should I also raise maybe a hive of Carnolians.
That way they may be a nice variety of drones for virgin queens.
But maybe that may not be a good idea either if my goals are to maintain ferals. I would be hybridizing what I have.
Or if I could possible get ferals from another location say 5 or ten miles apart would that be enough diversity or would they still be closely related or it wouldn't matter. These may not be feral bees there would be no way I could know for sure. They could be a swarm form a local bee keeper.
I only know of one actual bee tree that has had an active hive in it for at least 5 years. So I am calling these feral survivor bees.
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Although I use the term often, it's difficult to label any colony as "feral". I've done removals where the people swear that the bees have been there 10 years only to find (what looks like to me anyway) that the bees have absconded repeatedly only to have the comb taken over by newer swarms. There are only a few that had adequate comb and stored resources for me to consider them feral. The best I can say is just keep trying for that pot of gold.
Out of the (hopefully) many "feral" colonies you may collect you can start to select for desired traits.
Scott