Italian Bee - Selective Breeding

Selective Breeding

Breeders of Italian bees, as well as other honey bee races, look for certain beneficial characteristics. Depending on the breeding goal, one or more of the following characteristics may be emphasized:

  1. Gentleness or excitability
  2. Resistance to various diseases including tracheal mite and Varroa mite
  3. Early spring buildup in population
  4. Wintering ability
  5. Tendency to limited swarming
  6. Ability to ripen honey rapidly
  7. Honeycomb cappings are white
  8. Minimal use of propolis
  9. Availability and queen cost
  10. Color

Source: George Imrie's pink pages

Read more about this topic:  Italian Bee

Famous quotes containing the words selective and/or breeding:

    “The selective memory isn’t selective enough.”
    —Blake Morrison (b. 1950)

    “The Fashionable World is grown free and easie; our Manners sit more loose upon us: Nothing is so modish as an agreeable Negligence. In a word, Good Breeding shows it self most, where to an ordinary Eye it appears the least.”
    —Joseph Addison (1672–1719)