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The West Coast guys occasionally get complaints too.  But since they ship
so many queens, they can compare the success rates of batches of queens all
shipped the same day to various beekeepers.  When only a single recipient
reports a problem, the producer has reason to suspect that the problem lay
in damage to the queens during shipping, or some problem at the recipient's
end.

Last year, I got a call from a researcher on the East Coast who had nearly
all of 200 West Coast queens fail shortly after introduction.  But of all
the orders shipped that day, that was the only batch that had a problem.

This is a constant concern for queen producers, whose reputations depend
upon the delivery of good queens.  They can't afford to replace queens lost
due to factors outside of their control.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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