The view that "they do not make queens like they used to" seems to be quite
prevalent, at least in the U.S and Canada. It may be true, but there is room
for some skepticism. Some questions and observations surrounding the topic:  

  

1) What is the baseline against which to compare the apparent current crisis?
The days of mostly stationary beekeeping when the old texts were written? The
days pre-varroa and miticides? Recent migratory operations that seem to keep
queens longer than average? Does anyone really have good numbers, not just
impressions of supersedure rates, longevity of original queens?  

  

2) With migration for honey and pollination isn't the forcing of colonies to
stay strong and growing year round simply taxing the queen laying ability to
the max and pretty much exhausting their sperm storage? Or maybe just the
number of truck rides plays a role. Richard Adee has said that in every move
about 10% of queens are lost.  

  

3) Through the 80s, for research comparing Africanized vs. European colonies,
queens from the US were maintained in colonies, side by side, year round, in
several countries, and yes, marked. While longevity was not a main focus of
our studies, we obviously had to confirm presence of the original queen for
whatever formal experiment happened. The situations were stationary, and
seasonality (rainy season vs. dry season) determined the cycles of growth and
decline. In one area El Ninho produced protracted rainy seasons which
curtailed resources and forced colonies to stay quite small, even with some
sugar supplementation. In that place particularly, imported European queens
lasted multiple years.  

  

4) In the current extreme beekeeping situation here (high desert in the
Rockies) where seasonality is obvious and the active bee season pretty much
half of the year, queens, even IId, and yes, marked, "appear" to last much
longer compared to places with hardly any brood rearing shut down.  


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