Fair enough. The truth is, a lot of the time, I can see both sides (all sides) of the question and wouldn't necessarily side with any of them. 


on most issues I can see that very clearly,  but when it comes to commercial breeders or packages I see a huge bias against them for some reason.  It shows clearly in your writing and selection of points, over and over again.



This is an interesting point. When I worked in Northern California, with a well known queen breeding family, we (the crew) went through and requeened every colony with a fresh queen, which came right off the line, so was representative of what was being sold. 
I was wondering about this,  and am glad you commented.  One of the things I have also noted is that "crew " mentality.  I make it a point every year to work some queen yards  there is often a huge difference between what the "crew" selects vs what the owners would like.   We see this in every business.   most Mcdonalds workers never serve a burger like Ray Croc would.     Crew training and reliability is a huge issue for all of us.with the foolishly rude demand from retail customers for earlier and earlier packages and nucs,  there is definatly a push for queens in the spring that pushes some crews to be less choosy.  BUT  to that end  we need to acknowledge a detail I never see mentioned.
That is the shipping issue or cage issue.  nit the temps,  but the simple detail of takeing out a laying queen,  stuffing her in a cage and holding her for some time.   Any good queen breeder will tell you doing that with a mature queen is bad for her,  most have tested it and are  convinced that the best balance is a queen thats been laying for just a few days.  long enough to know shes mated.  given the choice the best time is before she ever starts laying.  it seems to be less stress on them.  Stopping them abruptly  is seemeinly not the best policy.  this concept seems to never bee mentioned by those who want to bash the catching and caging policy.
Its great in your own yard to wait tilla  quens has some great pattern and your tickled shes perfect then gently moving her to a new box,   no where near the same as whats done with shipped queens.  So when we as retail people complain that we saw a queen selected that only had a tiny pattern,  IMO our complete ignorance is showing.  We have no real information on how laying pattern or time before cageing plays into the future,  only wild speculation that always seems to lean as you did,  in that its horrible.  Having caged my own queens in commercial yards many times,  and marked them as I did,  I have never been able to correlate anything from a fresh mated queen to  success in a hive.

Personaly  I enjoy the discussion,  even if at times it gets  odd.   Very little discussion takes place in bee meetings and writings,  but a lot of myths get moved forward.  Its nice at times to be able to argue what we know and what we think we know,  But it would be nice to see a point conseeded once in a while.
Charles
   

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