Every time I look at the Russell Apiaries web site I want to buy a queen.  I mean every single time.  His off-the-beaten-path offerings (like the MMAs) just look so neat.  I have to completely control myself to not start adding queens to a shopping cart.  It’s just in my nature to want to experiment and tinker, and doing so with the hives just seems natural.  This year though I need to remind myself that even though I’m feeding at the end of this season, four of my seven queens are locally mated.  All of those (except the swarm queen) are only first generation, so the parents of those queens are southern bees, but the bees they are now producing hopefully have some good survivor genetics.

Maybe next year I’ll buy a queen or two in order to start a new hive or a nuc, but whenever I want to buy a queen in order to requeen what I’ve got just for the sake of having a neat new queen, I have to keep reminding myself that all my colonies are queenright with seemingly good layers, many of them mated here, and there’s no good reason for me to be screwing around with that.

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