Thanks Pete and all for the posts.    And thanks Charlie for pointing out
that people often skew anything that I say to fit their own prejudices and
projections.  I have the greatest respect for the many commercial
beekeepers and queen producers that I know, many of them being friends.
That said, as in any business, there are the knowledgeable and
conscientious, and the careless or unscrupulous.  And as someone who does
produce a good number of queens each season, I feel that today's queen
prices are too cheap.

As Pete points out, the intense demand of those wanting queens in April
puts intense pressure on the queen producers to fill package and queen
orders as early as possible.  And the use of mini nucs favors rapid queen
pulling.

Tip: queens typically mate at temps above 70F.  Check the weather history
for your queen producer's location.  Perhaps you might want to delay
delivery of your order if the weather conditions suggest that mating may
have been suboptimal.  Also check for temperature conditions on the
shipping route--you don't want your queens to be exposed to heat or cold.

I've spoken with several large producers to see how they handle reports of
"bad" batches of queens.  It's easy for them to compare feedback from the
many large orders that they fill on any specific day.  The reputable
producers recognize when something went wrong at their end.  And they can
tell, by comparison, whether the problem was due to something that occurred
after the queens left their hands (they can't be responsible for shipping
stress, or for queens left in hot mailboxes or cold pick up trucks).

As far as the "Taillight Guarantee,"  I can understand if selling to
newbies, due to their inexperience in handling caged queens, but would
certainly cover drone layers, or the tiny percentage of queens that simply
cease laying. I also know that buyers often inadvertently stress received
queens (several times I've seen returned queens with the candy plug
melted--indicating that the caged queen had been left in the sun).

I personally sell newbies only nucs, with a 30-day guarantee.  As far as
selling queens, I have the luxury of refusing to do mail order shipping.
For the relatively few caged queens that I sell, I cage them to order, and
encourage the buyers to carry them home inside their clothing (where the
temp remains constant), and explain in detail how to successfully introduce
them.  And yes, Charlie, I fully realized that large producers can't do
this.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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