Choosing a Breeder Queen

[Barbarian]

One day in the next few weeks, I will go through my minimal hive notes to decide which queen(s) I will use to provide the eggs for the 2014 queens.

Rather than choosing a queen for the good qualities, I like to reject the queens with what I regard as bad traits then choose from the remainder.

Some of the traits that are on my rejection list are ------- aggression, following, running on comb, poor wintering and a collected swarm taken into the apiary.

Perhaps other members would like to add to the lists for rejection or keeping   ?.?.?.

[LazyBkpr]

Aggression and wintering are my top priorities.
   I'll not deal with HOT hives. I know some that dont mind them, but I do. Wintering is important. Splitting a dead hive only makes two dead hives.  Beyond those two are production and resistance. If a hive makes 20 lbs of honey when my other hives make 40 I weed them out. Bees that I have to struggle with for diseases, Nosema, Chalk Brood and mites all get re queened too.  I'll even deal with ten lbs less honey from them if they show good resistance to mites.

[tecumseh]

you are essentially using a CULLING regime and not a process of selection < imho nothing really wrong in taking this alternative approach.   I have suggest before that viewing these sorts of things without really thinking about culling as a process means you are only looking at half the real picture.

for myself..... true culling in the selection process is high varroa numbers or low tolerance to that little nasty bug < this generally means these sorts of hives get their drone population raked and the hive components totally knocked down in the form of spring time nucs.  my selection criterion primarily has to do with age (I do love those little painted dots on the queens back for any number of reasons) but certainly all the things you list are included as undesirable characteristics in the selection process.