# your favorites



## james dilley (Mar 21, 2004)

What would be your favorite breeds (I. E. strain ) of bees to work with /breed. crosses included.


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## Mike in Ohio (Oct 29, 2002)

Hands down, Carnolians. Easy to work and good hygenic behavior. Good producers.

We also have Russians and Italians. The italians are much crankier than the others. And it isn't the particular queens.

As usual, just my 2 cents.

Mike


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## james dilley (Mar 21, 2004)

well Mike thats what i wanting to hear anybody else.


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## Billy Bob131 (May 11, 2004)

Well if you ask 10 different beekeepers you'll get 10 different answers. 

I like the little black german bees. aka. black woods bees, mountain bees, black devils. They are very productive and over winter better than most. Their bigest down fall. They are mean as they come. I only have two colonies that are close to what I would call black bees, and they are not even close to being pure. Most beekeepers gave them up when the Itailians came along. This is another reason I like them. Nobody wants them and what few are left have some type of resistance to mites. Of corse I think most of the bees that have shown hygenic traits are dark in color. 

BB


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## SilverFox (May 11, 2004)

:haha: Any breed except French if things don't go right they'll desert you.:haha:  Just kidding. I've 5 hives of Russian and 5 Feral, am hoping to get a All-Star queen before the end of the season.  Hoping to have at least 12 hives before winter.


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## brosil (Dec 15, 2003)

My personal favorite is Buckfast but we've been running Italians for the last few years with good results. Kudos to the keeper running Germans just for surviving.


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## rainesridgefarm (Dec 1, 2002)

NWC are great bees. They build up very well in the spring and have nice small clusters in the winter. I am in N.IL and all of mine overwintered in single deeps with plenty of stores. I only had to feed 10 out of 30 this spring to build up. I still put a bucket on each one to stimulate the queen to start laying, but some pollen does that even bettter.


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