>I am a bit surprised,  no one has addressed my question of if the repeated "requeening" is part of our issues with queens lasting les time?   Does the constant selection of newer younger queens lead us away from a genetic goal of longer lived queens??

We only replace failing queens, or those heading undesirable colonies (temper, disease etc).

Of our three best-producing colonies that went to the heather this year, two were headed by 2015 queens and the other by a 2014 queen.  Queens produced this year did not perform as well.

The 2014 queen was also our best overall queen for total crop i.e. main and heather.

This is unsurprising to us as we consistently see that our A.m.m. queens usually perform best in their second and third years - sometimes even their fourth year.

Best wishes

Peter 
52°14'44.44"N, 1°50'35"W

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html