a Mr Linder snip followed > by my comment..
Nothing fancy just bigger and pretty.   This last season they started adding  sperm viability (obviously a one shot deal)  to evaluate mating success.
>based on past research bigger may in fact infer better.  dinky queens tend to produce dinky hives and as far as the old research goes weight (amazing how that simply metric come to this forum once again) at a certain age is a pretty good predictor of laying capacity.
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?
>perhaps a tangent to your question here????  but this has been a question Dr Rangel has pursued over the past couple of season and is at least part of the reason we have Sue Cobey here every spring.  Sue does the II work and the lab has continued this project after she returns home.  tangential in the question as posed is 'does semen volume impact how long or how much a queen will produce in offspring in the short run (one season)'.  at this point (and I am a bit reserved in presenting research results prior to it being published) over the short run the quantity of semen used to II a queens seem to have little effect on her success.  I personally would expect over a bit longer time frame (let say two seasons and not one) for this difference to show itself.  it is my understanding that this research will be continued with Sue participation... which again allows me and my wife the enviable task of getting to rub elbows with Sue once again. 
>we have also had a couple of students.... first an undergraduate who was quite exceptional and is now in the program at the University of Illinois and later a phd student here that has captured drones and then used 'race horse technology' to analysis sperm viability.  beyond capturing the drones (largely from my own hives) I don't really understand the process but the output is interesting in the sperm viability come out (via some staining magic) and indicates if the sperm is viable, inviable or soon to be inviable.  casually it appears there is a seasonal and nutritional aspect to drone sperm viability. 

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?
>Not exactly sure of your question here?  Are you asking if temp impacts mating success.  As far as I can tell here (Texas) with little doubt ambient temperature will impact mating success since at a high enough temperature virgins queens either don't mate or their mating has a much higher level of unsuccessful outcomes.  at least here when day time air temperature reach 100 mating success falls to about 0.

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