New Bumblebee

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This is Zerok, my first male, first morph, second ball python, and by the way, I'm in love. He's so perfect to me but I'm trying to look at him objectively as a hopefully future snake breeder. Opinions? :) He's really sweet in personality though. Either way I love him. 144.5g, prolly about a foot long, haven't measured yet.

Also, sorry for crummy phone quality, only available camera! He has strong yellow towards the bottom but not as much on top. Is his pastel gene weak or is he just fading like they do when they grow up? My ultimate goal is produce a bumble-female that keeps her color- someone on here posted theirs and thought she was GORGEOUS.

Well, as I understand it, the most sure fire way to get a bumblebee that really holds their color is to start with an incredible pastel gene that doesn't brown out as significantly as many do and to then combine it with a spider you really like. You've got a decent looking bee there, but it's not going to throw higher quality animals than the parent, you have to bring that super high quality(which a non-browning bee is) to the table through the parents. This is from personal research, not experience btw.

How can you tell if you're buying a high-quality baby? Obviously you can look at an adult and see what's what, but with babies, who can brown with age, what should you do? Request pictures of the parents?

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Originally Posted by DestinyLynette

How can you tell if you're buying a high-quality baby? Obviously you can look at an adult and see what's what, but with babies, who can brown with age, what should you do? Request pictures of the parents?

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Yes, knowing the lineage of the parents and having an experienced eye.

We hatched out 5 bumble bees these last 2 months and every one of them looks different. I'd like to know how to tell high quality as well. We have this slight black back thing going on with the first 2
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You also want to look for a clean bee with as little speckling as possible. As all the speckling is very likely to brown out rather quickly. Bright clean yellow bee is what I'd look for.

Are speckling and actual spots the same thing?

No. I'll have to look around for some pics for comparison.

I just realized, you're the one with the super pretty bright female I liked. How old is she, out of curiosity?