Who breeds Russians in Ontario?

[DMLinton]

Does anyone know who the Ontario Russian breeder is?

[DMLinton]

Did some bassackward Googling and managed to answer my own question. 

Turns out a fellow, now retired, named Francois Petit of Moose Creek (by Ottawa), Ontario imported Russians and started a breeding program. http://www.pilgrimventure.org/Pilgrim_Honey_House.htm.

Zurcher Honey Ltd. has taken over the business. http://www.zurcherhoney.com/

3710-Sixth Street
Ottawa, ON
K1T 1K4
Tel. (613) 808-2135
Fax. (613) 731-2192
E-mail: beesupplies@zurcherhoney.com

[Crofter]

I get a malware warning from my anti virus when I click on that link.

[DMLinton]

I get a malware warning from my anti virus when I click on that link.

Strange.  Your malware software may be being a little over protective.  I think there is a redirect on the pilgrimventure.org link that may be triggering it.  I tried a few different browsers, both Linux and Windows flavours, but am not getting any warnings.

[riverbee]

no problems for me either dennis, thanks for the info!

[Crofter]

I hit over ride and the site was OK. Bitdefender settings may need to be relaxed a bit!

thanks,

[riverbee]

i would just like to add some info to this thread.  many beeks have considered russian bees and have many questions about russian bees and russian queens; their traits and characteristics and introducing a russian queen to another breed of bees.  i have kept russian bees for about 10 yrs or more now, so have a fair bit of experience with them.  i was fortunate to have met a commercial operator here in wisconsin who grew weary of his losses every year; primarily mites.  he was one of many who purchased russian queen breeder stock and grafted and reared queens from those queens.  our yards in the beginning were some great experiments with these bees. what a great learning experience for me.  there is some info on the net, and there has been some written material in the bee journal publications.  i have some great articles i may scan and upload, but here are just a couple articles and a couple great links for some info regarding russian honey bees:

from the usda:
Russian Queen Project Chronology

from the russian honey bee breeders website in the USA:
Management Russian Honey Bees

from bob brachman's website, a member of the rhba, a great comparison chart of russian bees vs. italians and  carnis:
Cold Country Queens

some articles from bee culture magazine, many great articles have been written but are not in their archives, just type in 'russian' in the search box,
(you should see 5 results):
Russian Bee Article Search

these next 2 articles are pdf files i uploaded to my google drive to share.  if you would like to save them to your pc or print them off, when you open the link to the file, in the upper left hand corner you will see 'file' click on that, and down the list you will see option to download:

this one is an excellent guide to the management and characteristics of the russian honey bee:
Russian Honey Bee

this one is an excellent comparison of italian bees to russian honey bees:
A Comparison of Russian and Italian Honey Bees

[DMLinton]

Very good information!  Thank you, riverbee!

[riverbee]

you are welcome dm, if anyone has any questions or anything they would care to add to this thread or a discussion on russian honey bees please do so!

[LazyBkpr]

I have done a bit of reading about them, but the only way I could sustain them would be to outsource queens every time I needed to re queen, split, replace etc..  I have too many feral colonies nearby to have a lot of hope of keeping any strain pure when creating my own queens.  It would be wasteful, unless the Russian queen prices are down around 20 dollars a queen?  Last I checked they were pretty expensive...
   So I intend to add just a few VSH queens each year in the hopes that I mildly impact the feral population through the course of what lifetime I have left.
   If we ever become billionaires I will buy an island, plant it with flowers and develop my own strain of bees...   I would like to have Russians, or any pure strain of resistant bees, but keeping them pure isn't an option here.

[Ray]

What is the deal with "Russian Hybrids"?
I read (somewhere) that  first generation out-crosses are HOT.