Far more variables are added to the equation AFTER the queens leave the hands of the breeders.


To expound on that is the key,  many of us here deal with a lot of other beekeepers. Listen closely.  How many of the packages you sell,  do you hear they waited 4 days before they had time to install?  Or put them in the back of a truck on a cool day?  Let alone many packages are shipped in cold trucks across the country,  how chilled does the queen get when the cluster drops 35 times on the trip??

Post office for those of us who buy queens,  we find that package on the dash of the car,  on the ground next to the mailbox?  Banging around in the back of a dust filled UPS truck??  And keep in mind we only see the very end of that transit.  We don't see them on sorting carts on the tarmac,  setting it the dashboard of the delivery car etc.

When we get them,  how many are ready to be installed,  how many days do we take?  We never want to pull the old queen till the new one is here.  So there is a few hours on your desk,  or stuck in a bank,  how well do we know they are fed??  And we are the skilled ones.   Listen to the stories of those talking about poor queens constantly,  see if you think they really understood the nutrient the hive was getting,  or if they provided enough space,  or if they actually understand supercedure,  or the difference between swarm cells and supercedure.   

I know darn good and well I am guilty of a lot of those violations.  

Whats interesting to me is the commercial guys.   Cooler in the truck to keep the queens at the right temps,  Cages put in the pocket until needed (warm but not to warm)  bottom line they queens are treated correctly.  And hence the take rates are good.


And in this as I mentioned one group studied temp spikes during shipping and found if I recall correctly that about 1/3 the shipments were subject to severe temp spikes that effected sperm viability.

Lots of variable in this system  that we tend to gloss over. This season I had a about 100 queens that got "left" an extra day in the motel room with the AC on full blast,  then trucked for 2 more days and left on a desk for a day before they got banked.  Most were banked for over a month.  Still ended up with 60% or better making great nucs.....  No complaints from me,  they got abused badly!  These were from a CA breeder.

Charles

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