# Caspian, or something, treatment free bees from Canada



## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Juhani Lunden said:


> Anyone know anything about these? Any scientific reports of their abilities?
> 
> The breeder/ leader of the company is originally from Caspian region. They say (one friend of mine has got these queens) that his Caspian Apiaries (?, I´m not sure of the company name) has lost 900 colonies twice in their breeding process.


Discussed here:
https://www.beesource.com/forums/sh...e-to-learn-more-about-this-line-of-bees/page3

Just another commercial naming gimmick for another breeding project.
There is no proper native "Caspian" bee - I did spend some time searching and found none.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

GregV said:


> Discussed here:
> https://www.beesource.com/forums/sh...e-to-learn-more-about-this-line-of-bees/page3
> 
> Just another commercial naming gimmick for another breeding project.
> There is no proper native "Caspian" bee - I did spend some time searching and found none.


Ok, I read that.

There was a sentence: "They may or may not live better with varroa. Hossein makes no such claims." 

So the rumors here, actually spoken out by a teacher an a queen rearing course (I wrote in my blog naturebees.wordpress.com) about varroa resistance is all rubbish?


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Juhani Lunden said:


> Ok, I read that.
> 
> There was a sentence: "They may or may not live better with varroa. Hossein makes no such claims."
> 
> So the rumors here, actually spoken out by a teacher an a queen rearing course (I wrote in my blog naturebees.wordpress.com) about varroa resistance is all rubbish?


No idea, Juhani.
Don't care, either.

Here, guess what these bees are:


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

GregV said:


> Here, guess what these bees are:
> View attachment 50249


They look very much my bees, although my queens usually have stripes, but not all of them.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Juhani Lunden said:


> They look very much my bees, although my queens usually have stripes, but not all of them.


OK, whatever is on this picture was sold as "Russians" to a nuc customer, here in US.
I only asked for the fun of it.
Irrelevant to the Caucasian bees.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

GregV said:


> OK, whatever is on this picture was sold as "Russians" to a nuc customer, here in US.


Some original Russians (from prof Rinderer to Josef Koller to me) had queens just like that.

Colour of the queen tells very little, uniformity of worker/drone coloring much more.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Juhani Lunden said:


> Some original Russians (from prof Rinderer to Josef Koller to me) had queens just like that.
> 
> Colour of the queen tells very little, *uniformity of worker*/drone coloring much more.


Exactly.
Now look at the uniformity of the workers on my picture - these are just open-mated mutt workers. Not uniformed.
IF these bees are Russian, then most of my bees are Russian too (whatever my bees are - I have no idea).
I can sell my TF bees, call them Russian, and no customer will not know any difference.
So why all these useless labels?


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