http://ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2016/160210.htm
http://tinyurl.com/h2syagb

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147220
http://tinyurl.com/zaf4gyl

In an attempt to politely avoid pointing the finger at any specific practice
of queen producers, the USDA ARS today pointed a brave and steady finger at
the Postal Service and UPS, making FedEx, who refuses to accept live bees
for shipment, feel pretty smug about their decision.

To review, UPS will commit to delivering on time, but not to keeping the
bees alive while doing so.
The USPS will commit to delivering live bees, but not on time.
No mention was made of the massive numbers of packages and queens that are
transported by sleep-deprived beekeepers themselves, who drive nonstop to
bring bees North each spring.

To get worst-case conditions, producers in California, Georgia, and Hawaii
shipped bees to USDA Beltsville in July and September, with temperature
data-loggers. As high as 20 percent of the shipments experienced temperature
spikes that approached extremes of 105.8° F and 46.4° F for more than 2
hours at a time. Those exposed to extreme high or low temperatures during
shipping had sperm viability reduced by 50 percent.

This is all well and good, but beekeepers have experienced no difference in
queen "longevity" between shipped packages, shipped queens in battery boxes,
shipped queens in 3-hole cages with attendants, queens transported on the
passenger seats of the air-conditioned cabs of 1982 Peterbuilt 359s, and
queens raised locally, and transported less than one mile.

Dave Tarpy (NC State) has a presentation that runs well into 2 hours,
covering the long list of items that are NOT causing these widespread
problems with queens laying well at first, and then quickly (within weeks or
months) being superseded or turning into drone layers, so if the problem
correlated to mere mode of transport, that would have stuck out like a sore
thumb long ago.

Note that Figure 4 in the paper shows that the queens received by USDA ARS
did not show the widespread problems as described by beekeepers,  only one
set of shipments from one breeder in July showed 60% "sperm viability", with
all others higher.  In September the minimum was 70%.  So shipment did not
produce the effect seen by beekeepers, where it seems that few hives can
keep a queen an entire season, and by researchers, where it seems that few
queens can keep laying long enough to complete a study.

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