i find this thread very interesting,
i have some dark bees,
i do not call them black because i dont know if they are? , i have tried several attemps at wing morph to see, but decided that i know nothing about it and have given up on it, i am very interested in the dna testing that sounds like a very good idea. What i am doing though is i have several hives with dark bees that i was planning to breed with, i was looking for some new queens to help prevent inbreeding and concentrated line breeding. as for thier traits, they are not the best bee to keep as they can be very grumpy and hard work at the best of times. but they do excell in my style of beekeeping, which does involve me mucking about alot with them and they dont mind to much with it,
if my bees are pretty set as the norm i would normaly sugest that as a new beek they shoud try to keep an other sort of bee as they are easier to work with, as for the bbka dont get me started and to tell the truth i was hoping that they would have had a bigger and dare i say a better breading program than they do, may be a centraly set agenda to bee improvement and bee breed preservation??