a Trish Harness snip followed by > my comment...   

So... my question is for those who have raised queens, what's a minimum number of queen lines you have used without ending up with lots of spotty brood from inbreeding?  Any strategies for keeping a queen line going in a sustainable manner?  I'm especially interested in how many colonies were used and the likely density of beeks in your area.

>unless you raise or buy II stock it would be difficult to know (at least for most of us) how many queen lines we have in our apiary stock or how many we use for the 'queen mother' side of queen rearing.  Of course in this question you have missed the importance of 'the drone mother side' of the mating... which in my opinion (both in terms of selection and nutrition) is just as important as the queen mother side of the mating. Since multiple males are required for proper mating the drone side imho is more important to consider than the queen mother side.

>the only real 'meat' in the above is that if you raise lots of queens you will need more of both sides of the breeding equation.

>queen mother... pick one or two of your best hives with qualities that fits your area and no disease or temperament problems. culling may be just as important as selection when it comes to this decision.

>drone mother... find one or two small scale beekeepers close by (by not too close) and set up your mating yards using drones from their hives.

>from a statistic point of view (this will be little or no help to you in this question) 30 individuals typically is a good representation of the population.  

>the drone side is less a concern for me (at this point in time) since I have a major queen rearing operation close by and consequently a large supply of diverse drones and in addition we are rearing a significant group of local no treatment beekeepers (which are the kind of drones I wish for).

>As to this date I have added some diversity via purchase of goodly number (typically 50 at a time) queens from distant and well known queen supplier and frankly I have been very disappointed in the lack of vitality of these queens. It is a secondary strategy that I have now abandoned.
   
Gene in Central Texas. 

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