Many years ago Graham Kleinschmidt did some research here in Australia on
banking queens and found that if the queens were banked for more than 28
days and then introduced into a colony the queens were usually superceded.
How many of the cases of the supercedure cases involve banked queens?



Trevor,  here in the US we really have 2 separate business models for
commercial beekeepers.  East and west coast operations.  Both very
different.  

West coast producers bank queens as a very normal procedure. Most of them
ship huge numbers of queens at a time,  and in order to do that they catch
and bank a lot of queens.

East coast producers very seldom bank queens. General procedure is to catch
and ship them the same day.  Of course there are some variations on both
sides but that would fit better than 90% of the producers.

Whats interesting is most of the complaints I see come from the east coast
producers,  which are generally not banked.

Its also interesting to note (at least to me) two other issues.  First east
coast queens go to a lot of hobbyist, and west coast go mostly to commercial
guys.  So it also seems to me (observation only) that the most vocal
complaints come from the less experienced beekeepers.

Its also interesting to me to see how many west coast guys are members of
queen associations who spend a lot of time and money and discussion on queen
problems and ways to improve queens.  Including some research recently on
temp spikes during shipping and sperm viability.


While I won't say east coast guys do not try to improve,  they are not quite
as organized as the west coast guys.



Charles
 

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