>That's what I always figured. I thought that a queen raised by a colony on its own was probably the best you could get. I think the main problem with supersedure >is that they wait too long, the queen is already starting to let the colony down. That, and the percentage of queens that fail to return from mating flight. 

Add to that the 21 day MIN downtime


>I would like to see a cost benefit analysis which compares the money spent on requeening and the actual return, versus -- say -- the same money invested in queens >used to make increase in the number of colonies. I suspect many or most queens purchased in the spring go down this second path.


For me its simple math,  first the 21 day loss of production of new bees (yes I know they can bank more honey if the timing is right)  then add in the failure rate of supercedure  which is pretty close to the same for replacement queens if not a bit higher.

Add back the time to recheck hives to see if they are queenright.

In the end,  with a very short window for honey production, I am not willing to give up a month of it to save a few bucks.

With just a few colonies making a queen on the side is easy,  and the cost of shipping just a couple queens high.  That changes somewhere along the line.


Charles

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