Been shaking hives all week,  so lots of time to ponder things.  A discussion came up on queens.   There is a group in CA  who is "evaluateing queens"  the first year  it was just morphometric.  Nothing fancy just bigger and pretty.   This last season they started adding  sperm viability (obviously a one shot deal)  to evaluate mating success.
My question is do we know it matters? Does a queen with 60% viable sperm do worse than a queen with than 80%?  Or does it not matter?  Seems to unviable sperm would be   "inert"  and not part of the equation.  Doe they lay less,  or shorter,  or is it just another metric that really doesn't tell us much?

Seems the only way to determine would be to subject queens to the temp swings we knw reduce viability,  and then field test.  Is anyone aware of this being done?

Charles

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