> Queens seem to differ in their ability to hold workers: some years ago a friend acquired a number of packages of bees imported from New Zealand and hived a number, in a row, on the same day. Returning to the apiary several days later, one hive had garnered most of the bees from colonies on either side...we could only speculate that these package bees had not only loose affiliation with the queen they were shipped with, but that the "garnering queen" had some special something they all were drawn to...pheromone profile??

Having installed thousands of packages over many decades, I disagree that queen attractiveness causes the phenomenon of uneven distribution of bees following package installation. The bees fly out, fail to remember the hive they came from, and tend to pick one with bees, which causes that have to snowball and all the rest to bleed. I always recommend installing packages as late in the day as possible unless it's cold or rainy. Anything to keep them inside to settle down instead of rushing out, and getting lost or un-oriented. That is, anything but trapping them in, because that can cause them to panic and/or suffocate.

Anyway, it would be good to get back onto the topic of dispersal. I have been looking back over the previous posts. I posted about "varroa dispersal" last May but the crowd wandered off. Juanse pointed out that no apiary is an island, but it's quite clear that attempts to "regulate" beekeeping would generally either have no effect on bee health or make matters worse. Why? Because few will follow directives (many already don't), more beekeepers will go underground (many already are), and the general public will become more confused than they are now.

What we need to be talking about is epidemiology. 

PLB

DeGrandi-Hoffman, G., Ahumada, F., & Graham, H. (2017). Are Dispersal Mechanisms Changing the Host–Parasite Relationship and Increasing the Virulence of Varroa destructor (Mesostigmata: Varroidae) in Managed Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Colonies?. Environmental Entomology, nvx077.

Messan, K., DeGrandi-Hoffman, G., Castillo-Chavez, C., & Kang, Y. (2017). Migration effects on population dynamics of the honeybee-mite interactions. Mathematical Modelling of Natural Phenomena, 12(2), 84-115.

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