Finally, because a queen's physiological quality itself can have a major effect on some aspects of colony performance, queens undergoing evaluation must be uniform in age and condition. Even if we implement all the suggestions above, and put into evaluations the care and effort required, it is all for naught if the genetic superiority we identified with our evaluations is not heritable. Unfortunately, the increased vigor provided by heterosis cannot be inherited. We have two races of honey bee in New Zealand, the Dark European honey bee and the Italian. Even though most of the bee breeding effort goes into maintaining commercial bee stocks as Italian, the reality is that most of the colonies are to varying degrees racial hybrids.
Racial hybrids can be great, and through hybrid vigor, are often productive.
However, they are of no breeding value, and provide only false leads to someone carrying out colony evaluations. So the only way to keep a test population true to race is to have absolute control over the mating using Instrumental Insemination. It may be a lot cheaper to import a silk purse, than to try and make one out of a sow's ear. Taking advantage of different races and breeding work done overseas by importing genetic material could save time and money and be a dramatic shortcut to better bees. Times have changed, importations of genetic material can be done safely, whether they be semen or breeder queens.