On 24 Mar 98 at 16:32, Ron Bogansky wrote:
 
> I agree with David and will be using his suggestion and queens to
> start nucs for next year.  But for this spring purchasing queens for
> early splits may be a problem.  I posted last fall about a study
> done by Penn State showing that a large number of commercial queens
> are to put it bluntly, "poor".
<snip>
> past but last year I noticed some did not perform well and were
> prematurely superseded.
 
 I have just attended our annual Bee Breeding Conference and the
question of 'poor' queens came under intense scrutiny and some scary
information came to light.
        It seems that in some cases drones do not make it to sexual
maturity, in some cases as much as 100% failure. This matter is the
subject of a paper, not published yet, so full details are sketchy.
But it would appear that fluvalinate is responsible.
        On the surface it might not appear to be of major conceren. If you
stop and think for a moment, no drones, no mating, no mating poor
performance.
        On final point. It seems that some breeders down South have in the
past relied on local feral drones to build up the drone pool. No
feral colonys, then a smaller drone pool than required, leading to
lack of sufficient mating quantities. Sound familiar?
 
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