Queen breeding is a microcosm of the real world, of course. There are at
least two pervasive pressures: quantity and quality. Some buyers need
queens, now, as many as they can get. Some want the best money can buy. 

Now whether these goals are mutually exclusive, I suppose they are. But
somewhere in the middle is what you choose to produce. You may go for large
quantity and low price, or high quality and high price. Then the market
sorts you in or out.

What I am saying is you can't blame the producer for aiming at a particular
goal, the one he thinks will keep him in business. If I could get a hundred
bucks a piece for open mated queens, wouldn't I be lucky. 

As far as the number of breeder queens goes, one must bear in mind that the
Africanized bees descend from a very few original queens and their vigor is
not impaired. There are other isolated populations like Cyprus, etc. that do
not seem to have failed due to inbreeding. Conversely, the USA is much
larger and has a much more diverse bee population. 

How diverse it needs to be, no one is able to say. The only thing we seem to
know for certain is that bees' natural mating habits seem to favor more
diversity, probably to avoid inbreeding but also because diversity within
the colony seems to promote vigor.

pb 

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