I would also like someone to help with the reference Alan Dick refers to which showed that the rearing of the queen was more important than the genetics of the queen. The only direct reference to this subject I can recall is a 1981 article by Steve Taber in the American Bee Journal entitled Scientific Queen Rearing (January issue). In the article Steve reports on work done by C.L. Farrar in the '30's-'40's where he undertook a programme to determine which of the many advertised bee stocks offered by queen producers were best and could produce the most honey. To start everything out equal, all queens were hived with two-pound packages. Some of the package colonies could barely make winter, while others produced from 150 to 200 lbs of surplus. However, one producer consistently turned out queens that developed colonies which produced from 250 to 400 lbs of surplus. According to Steve, Farrar came to the conclusion that the stock from this particular queen rearer was not any better genetically than that available anywhere else. Farrar found that when they reared queens from the queen rearer's stock and stock obtained from the poorer performing stock, all resulting stocks performed similarly. Steve says in the article that "it wasn't the stock that so so good, it was the queen breeder himself" (ie, the way he reared his queens). The thing that stood out in his queen rearing was his care and selection of each queen and queen cell at every step of the production cycle. I don't think this is the work Alan is referring to, so I would be very interested in hearing if there has been subsequent research which supports Steve Taber's contention that the rearing is more important than the genetics.