"beekeepers are in general agreement that swarm queens are are among the best queens. "

I do not care what hobby you talk about there is a fair pile of old timer wisdom that is pure fiction based on zero facts.  In fact if you provide facts those that believe such old wives tales will generally refuse to even consider they may be wrong and something else is going on.  I will give you a pigeon example.  If you talk to a bunch of old timers who have kept pigeons since they were kids you will find from 10% to 20% who will tell you in each clutch of pigeons (pigeons lay two eggs per clutch) there will be one cock bird and one hen nearly every time.  Actual data shows 25% of clutches are two hens, 25% are two cocks and 50% are one hen and one cock just as you would expect.

I have seen my share of swarm queens.  I used to let them live.  I do not recall a single one of them that I would rate as outstanding.  In general they were simply ok queens.  Now, maybe what I consider ok is what someone else considers outstanding?  I have no way to know.  But, what I do know is I have purchased commercial queens occasionally that were better than the best swarm queen I have ever had.  And, I raise queens I have grafted myself occasionally that are better than the best swarm queen I have ever had.

If morphology tells you how good a queen is why is not everyone running Joe Latshaw stock?  Here is a link to an article Joe wrote about queen rearing:
https://www.beeculture.com/net-gain-cell-building-system/
In this article Joe lists the morphological measures on his queens.   His queens blow the top off the curve compared to others who have had the same measurements done.  Now, do not take this as some kind of knock against Joe's queens.  He produces an outstanding product in my opinion.  The best producing queen I have ever heard of in my local area was a Latshaw queen.  She produced a honey crop of almost 400 pounds in one year.  I would bet anyone that Joe's grafted queens will have better morphology measures than their own swarm queen.  Joe has twenty or thirty years of selection behind his queens and big is one thing he has selected for.  But, I still do not see one bit of science that tells me big is actually better.  Without hard data it is simply another old wive's tale.

Dick

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