Hello all !

Seems you're right, Roger ! ... Interesting to read Brother Adam's opinion
on this question ... in his book "Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey, 4th edition
(1987) Northern Bee Books, Hebden Bridgr, West Yorkshire. page 89 we find
...

About the " Care of breeders "  ...

So far I have dealt with the theoretical and practical aspects on which our
efforts in improving the honeybee are based. I can now turn to the question
of the raising of queens and the main considerations which govern our
endeavours in this vitally important branch of bee-keeping.
A lifetime's experience has left me in no doubt that any interference and
lack of care during the period of development from the egg until the queen
is mated and attained full maturity will inevitably have an injurious
bearing on her potential performance, vitality and longevity. Any serious
injury will manifest itself in a sudden failure or premature supersedure;
less serious damage may merely impair her laying abilities. However, a
reduction in the laying powers will in reality often prove a greater
drawback from the economic point of view than a premature loss of queens.
I have found that a queen which emerges in an incubator is never as good as
one which spends her first few hours in her normal environment - tree in
the midst of a colony, even if only a small one. The difference is perhaps
not obviously apparent, but it is there. So also a queen which has been
caged for any length of time is seldom, if ever, as good as one which has
never been confined - the extent of the injury depends on the age and
condition of the queen when she is caged. Clearly any artificial devices in
queen-rearing are open to objection and should be avoided.
I have dealt at length on the care we exercise in the choice of breeder
queens. The next task is to ensure that a breeder is in the best possible
physical condition to provide at the appropriate moment the eggs required
for the raising of queens, and that these eggs are endowed with the highest
measure of vitality. To ensure this the breeder queens are kept in small
colonies, occuping no more than three or four Dadant combs. Their laying
powers are thus restricted, which ensures the eggs they produce are endowed
with the stamina needed and also prevents the premature exhaustion of the
breeders. I have now and again made use of a breeder heading a fully
established colony, but found without exception that the queens raised from
such eggs were never as good as from those whose laying had been
restricted. Apparently a queen that is producing perhaps 2,000 eggs within
twenty-four hours does not possess the vitality as one which lays only a
few hundred each day. Indeed, it could not well be otherwise. The same
applies to queens which are being superseded - a sure indication that their
life's strength is at an end. As a matter of fact, I have never come across
a supersedure queen whose performance equalled those raised from eggs
derived from a breeder in her prime and whose laying abilities have been
restricted in the way I have indicated. I am aware this sounds all very
unorthodox and contrary to the commonly held views, but our comparative
tests leave no doubt on this point. Indeed, for many years now we have
replaced any supersedure queens found in the honey-producing colonies in
the spring.
In the breeding of domestic stock and plants of economic value the utmost
care is taken to ensure that the parents are in every case in the peak of
condition. No one would consider breeding from an animal or plant suffering
from a debility or defect of one kind or another. Bee-keepers, on the other
hand, have paid hitherto little or no regard to the condition of the queens
used as breeders. Indeed, supersedure queens are almost universally
considered as superior notwithstanding the fact that they are the offspring
of a mother who has been in a failing condition. The nurture of supersedure
queens cannot admittedly be surpassed in regard to quantity and quality,
but this cannot offset the inherent deficiency in the egg, which will
inevitably come to light when such queens are put to objective comparative
tests. This holds equally goad in the case of queens during the time they
are under stress, laying to their maximum capacity, and additionally
substantiated by the fact that the progeny of the superlative prolific
queens are almost invariably short-lived."

Jean-Marie Van Dyck
Namur University, Belgium.
Homage page to Brother Adam (with a lot of original articles) :
http://www.fundp.ac.be/~jvandyck/homage.html

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