why one hive is superior

[heaflaw]

For the past 4 years one of my hives out of about 15 has much surpassed the others.  I got 6 small/medium supers off of it in middle of June and another is ready now.  Why?  Is it better genetics or could they be robbing from the others?  All my hives are Italians with a little Black-German mixed in.  I manage them all the same way. 

[deejaycee]

Any number of things are possible.  Genetics is an obvious one.

Drifting could be a big influence if one hive is performing so consistently better for so long... perhaps somehow where it is situated it is picking up returning foragers from the other hives - not enough to cause an obvious problem to the other hives, but enough from each to give a noticeable boost to this one.

Perhaps it also gets the sun a little earlier than the others, or loses it a little later than the others.

[hankdog1]

age of the queen may have something to do with it also that she may have been mated with better drones then your other queens.  of course genetics can play a big role in it like why some people work thier butt off and others won't get off thier butt.  hard to pinpoint what it is going on there without eliminateing all the variables but just be thankfull you have a superior hive.  just remember to take care of it cause you don't want it to become one of the dumb ones one day lol

[Moonshae]

Have you considered raising some queens from the super producer and using them to requeen the rest of your hives? Or at least some of them, which would test the genetics hypothesis. If the daughters' hives start doing a bang up job of gathering, you'd know.

[heaflaw]

Thanks for your ideas.  I split the hive last spring, but the split swarmed so much this spring and kept decreasing the amount of the workforce that I don't know how well they will do yet.  I plan to split to get several queens early next spring and requeen several of my hives then.  So, next year will be the test.  For me, all the drones are gone by early July which is when my flow ends.  So, I can't requeen after then.