Michael Bush's Black Bees

[Moonshae]

Michael, I've read much of your website. What I haven't read, it's because I get distracted by other topics pointing elsewhere, but I'm constantly exploring. My question is regarding the black queens you sell. Are there any actual advantages to these fully black ones over the tiger striped or others? Personally, I think that picture of the frame of black bees looks really cool, but I don't want to select my bees by how they look, but by how they survive and thrive. If they do well with both of those, their production should presumably be sufficient as well, and their appearance is purely cosmetic, and in high demand as a novelty. IMHO, novelty of appearance isn't the best trait to look for in bees, but I don't know so much, so Im hoping for a little more clarity.

Thanks!

[Michael Bush]

The ones I find surviving tend to be the black ones.  The ones I rear from those black ones tend to be tiger striped, black and yellow.  I like the tiger striped ones for production, as they seem to be a good mixture of Italian brood rearing and Carniolan frugality.

The black ones have different traits.  They are more frugal, winter on a smaller cluster, shut down brood rearing in a dearth, fly when it's colder, fly later at night, fly in strong winds, and have less mites.  Probably part of the mite issue is that they shut down brood rearing when there is nothing to be gained by it therefore having less brood cycles for the mites.  I like to breed my queens from these as I get both black ones, which I like, and tiger striped ones, which make good producers.

The Yellow ones act like Italians.  Which is sometimes good and sometimes not.  :)  Brood rearing fools can come in handy at times.

[bluegrass]

I have two black queens from feral stock and all their offspring are striped.

[Moonshae]

Thanks, good traits and good looks!

[budhanes]

I had a ferel swarm move into a swarm trap (Strong wood box) out back. They are very black bees. I'm going to leave them alone to see how they overwinter. It got 98 degrees and real humid here yesterday, and they started festooning and/or bearding. I was amazed at how black they were. Possible German decent??? I am unsure. I heard that somewhere.

[Kirk-o]

I have a feral hive I cut out of a bird house four years ago the queen is Black as the Ace of Spades the Bees are black striped.They are like Michael said about his up early work late,I have a hive from Dee Lusby the queen is redish brown the bees look like Italians My other Feral bees look like Italian but they are feral bees and small bees.When I captured my swarms they were small put them all on small cell.
kirko
I'm hopeing to get two queens from Michael Bush this August

[Ross]

I think a range of colors is normal in most hives.  Mine have been getting blacker for the last 4 years since starting with Italians.
http://www.myoldtools.com/Bees/blackbees.jpg