Same here. He loaned me one of his suits.
I bought a NUC from Graham. They were Italians but I had asked for Caucasion. So he just pulled the queen cage and put in a new one with a black queen. After a few weeks that were all caucasion. As the older bees die and the new brood is from the new queen. The Queen was mated as she has to be when you purchase a nuc. As for what with, I believe Graham artificially inseminates, so its upto him really.
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I am just beginning to understand those things. So your bees are now Caucasian? All depends on the queen and how she was inseminated. You think Graham does it artificially?
Guess my bees are Italian then, as he told me so.
Do you think I could try some Caucasians for my next hive?
When did you start and how are you doing?
I mean, of course, getting a Caucasian queen, since the rest doesnât matter.
Also wonder if Caucasians and Italians live happily next to each other, or start robbing due to different wintering times?
Then I wonder if either are suited to our coastal subtropical climate.
There are so many questions, we could probably branch off into various topics, but for now we are still subtropical and different colored bees.
Thanks all for your input. Much appreciated, and got me talking and sharing. Subtropical sure has its own issues.
Itâs common to make nucs up from at least three different colonies. That way the bees donât fight. After one brood cycle the new bees will be the queenâs
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Hi @Dee. I mean to get a Caucasion queen next to my Italian. Do you think that could go ok? I just wanted to compare how they differ in our climate, and if there could be an issue due to their different timings.
Yes go for it. The best place to compare how your colonies do is your own apiary.
I have Buckfast, Black bees, hygienic queens from LASI ( Sussex University) at the moment and a Carniolan instrumentally inseminated queen on order for this year.
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@Dee, all close together, or would you recommend a certain distance between hives? All yours never interfere with each other?
Not from my personal experience but from observation, Graham had a lot of hives of both. Iâm guessing he had no significant problems with robbing or he would have specialised.
I am also guessing that my bees may not be pure Caucasian as I am quite sure that the the gene pool would be quite mixed. Even with artificial insemination, when you have so many hives of several species, I am sure there will be some natural cross breading,
From my investigations, the Caucasian variety seemed to be noted as hardier in hot climates.But when I mentioned this to Graham, he seemed to think it funny and said all his bees did just fine in the NT and you can;t get much hotter than that. I thought fair comment,
As for wintering, I donât think we need to worry about that. Maybe if we were more inland or to the south. Our winters are warm and short and plenty of flowering native species.
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Hi, I bought a nuc from Graham as well within the last 2 years. At the time I bought mine Graham was breeding Italian and Caucasian bees. The queens he supplied in his nucs breed naturally and will breed with the available drones. Some not even from his apiary. So if the queen is Italian there is a chance she has cross bred with some of his Caucasians as well and potentially any other breed of drone within 10km. He canât control that part. I did inquire with him about his inseminated queens to get a pure strain. He could supply and he charged at that time $600. I hope that helps.
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I think in that case we are just happy with our local strains since we deal with the same climate. @Hocking8450,
Graham knows what goes around here.
I am not sure where you are, but Grahamâs place is just across a couple of mountains from here as the bee flies, but a near 2 hour drive on roads.
Yeah Iâm not far from him. Iâm about 30-40min away. But on the Brisbane side. but I know what you mean. Graham is an interesting bloke and I was happy with his course. I keep meaning to do another course to increase the knowledge. I hope you bees are doing well. Somebody once told me that bees know what they are doing so donât fight them. Work with them. They know best. If your bees are happy healthy and have a good temperament, I wouldnât worry about the colour. I have mainly Caucasian in appearance bees but I still get odd different colour showing up. Nothing wrong with a bit of genetic diversity too. It keeps it interesting. UploadingâŚ
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Spacing between hives is not critical, even for different strains (Italian vs Caucasian, for example). They will not fight - unlike some humans, bees are not worried about different colouring in their neighbours. 
The main thing to consider when spacing hives, is how much space you have to work around each hive. Placing them close together will not make them fight. As far as robbing is concerned, I think that nectar flow and scarcity of resources have more influence than how active various strains of bees are in different seasons.
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You will get drones drifting but they have free passage wherever they go so itâs no problem. What might happen though is that a a new queen returning from a mating flight might get into the wrong hive then she is toast. I think that happens a lot when you have hives close together. I make sure that re-queening colonies are spaced away from the others, not close to each other, have entrances facing different ways and that these entrances are colour coded; any colour but red
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Let me just add to what @Dee wrote for clarification. Her point is excellent, so it is worth understanding properly. I think she is talking about a situation where you may have made a split, or have a colony with eggs and larvae, but no queen. By re-queening, I think she means that the colony is requeening itself, and will have a period where the queen is a virgin, needing to make several mating flights. She has to return to the hive successfully after each mating flight. That is where the danger lies if the hives are close together - she will be killed if she picks the wrong hive.
However, if you are requeening a hive with a commercially purchased mated queen, you donât need to worry about this. She is much less likely to leave the hive on a long flight and get lost coming home. It can happen, rarely, like anything in nature, but it is far less likely.
Just a couple of thoughts. 
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Thank you for the translation 
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