well thats interesting as i do have russian bees!! i only have one hive, i did have 2 but one died out last season from shb! in exmouth wa, there is a commercial bee keeper who runs 350+ hives all russian! member of my family! ill post photos for you to have a look if you wish, if u want to know what they are like ill explain, they are not friendly regaurdless of how much smoke u use, altho, it varies with the weather, in major brood rearing times they are impossible to work with! and they use propolis like there is not tomorow, i personally have never seen anything like it, when i first got the hive i let them go crazy for 2 months before i even opened the lid, they are very slow at producing wax, and the wax they cover their brood with is almost black as oppsed to brown! after 2 months i couldnt even open the lid with my hive tool! they make a beautiful honey and even now when my italians are slowing down the russians are still producing full boxes of honey! they are not as clean ass italians when it comes to hive maintaince!! but with shb the seem to keep the beetles trapped better then the italians, to give you and idea, i put 4 frames of foundation in a super with 6 of their original frames of honey, i extracted the 6 frames and then let them go, came back a month later, all 6 orig frames where full and capped and they hadnt even looked at the foundation, and this took 4 mnths before they started building wax on the foundation frames!! and even to this day, they are only just starting to use those frames, i just get the idea that these bees dont like change all that much!! but yer, i love the little fellas and they are extremly good at making honey, a nice honey :P
Topic: Russian Bees? (Read 6769 times)