Good question Aaron,
I guess it depends upon how much of a guarantee on a queen that the buyer
is willing to pay for.
A queen producer generally will cull any poorly-performing queens, or those
that "don't look right" at time of caging.  But there's no way to tell
whether that queen was fully mated, whether her stored sperm will remain
viable (due to pesticide exposure to her or the drones that she mated
with), whether she suffers from thermal stress anywhere along the process,
or other unknowns.

We rear several thousand queens each season, and I talk to other queen
producers.  We all sometimes have issues with what appears to be BQCV,
perhaps chemical issues, EFB, and a number of "unknowns."  In some rounds
of queen cells, many or most do not develop--much to our frustration.  In
some, we get stunted queens.  In others, poor "mate out"--a generic term
for the percentage of inserted cells that result in a saleable queen.

Then there's the weather during the mating period--was it conducive for
full mating?

And even once we see a beautiful brood pattern, in some batches of queens a
surprising proportion "fail" within a couple of weeks after starting to
lay--leaving perfect frames of brood, but a queenless colony.  This problem
has plagued us this spring in our own operation, even after the weather
looked perfect for matings.

So whatcha gonna do?  The queen producer is doing the best they can, but
there are so many invisible environmental and biological factors involved,
that it's difficult to guarantee that every queen will be perfect.  If you
were willing to pay $100 per queen, any producer would be happy to
guarantee that queen for a year.  So you can gamble, or pay for a guarantee.
-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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