Aggresivness a dominate trait?

[Keith13]

I have heard that over time an aggressive queen's genes will be passed along, so that every successive generation will be more aggressive. My question is can it work the other way as well? Could an aggressive hive become more gentle if left alone? Reason why I ask is I have two very good queens head of two very strong hives, but man can they be tempermental sometimes. I hate to do away with them because  apart from their distemper they are great queens/producers. Any thoughts on this?

Keith

[jdpro5010]

I believe it is possible to get gentle queens from a hive that has been on the aggressive side.  I have taken queens from aggressive hives and allowed them to rear queens from her eggs and had the hives turn out fine.  So it is possible but I do believe the odds may be more in favor of the new hive being at least a little aggressive.  Hope that makes sense! :-D

[Brian D. Bray]

A lot of the turn out is based on the drone mix the queens mate with.  Mating with drones from their own hive can make the brood from a queen proddy, while cross mating with drones from other hives will have the opposite affect.  That's why queen raisers don't rear drone stock from the same stock as their queen stock.   Inbreeding = hot, crossbreeding = calmer.