Tom Barrett writes:

> ... I immediately ordered a queen (all he could give me due to the demand)...
>
> But in due course, this queen will generate daughter queens which will then
> mate with every Tom Dick and Harry in my area including drones from my
> present aggressive colonies, and from the colonies of other beekeepers over
> which I have no control at all.
>
> Do I then just get a reprieve from the aggression and then the situation
> slowly reverts to the way it started?. Or must I keep on buying in these
> good queens to guarantee my freedom from aggression?.
>
The quick answer is you just don't know.  Most likely your prediction
will come true (a reprieve with a slow reversion to aggression)
unless some outside force (beekeeper) exerts an influence on the
natural scheme of things.  Without any intervention your gentle
queens will eventually be supesedede by naturally mated queens, and
your best efforts at controlling the gene pool will not guarantee
what semen is passed on.  My favorite queen supplier here in the
states has recently stopped selling open mated queens because the
Africanized bee has infiltrated their area and they cannot guarantee
their open mated queens.  They now sell ONLY instrumentally
inseminated queens.  Why is it that AHB infiltration only stops the
good breeders while the breeders from whom I would not buy queens
before AHB infiltration continue to sell queens after AHB
infiltration with hype about saturation the breeding area with their
gentle drones.  Truth is, you CANNOT control what drones mate with
virgin queens in an open mating.  Natural selection comes with NO
GUARANTEES, period.

Now, this is not to say that you can't tip the scales in an open
mating area.  Saturating a mating area with drones DOES increase the
chance of mating with a saturated drone.  I know of a breeder in the
Catskills Mountains (mid-central New York) who gives away his year
old queens to members of his association, thereby saturating his
breeding areas with his VIGORous breed, but even this does not
GUARANTEE that his matings are true, it just stacks the deck in his
favor.

Note that this reply contains terms such as "prediction" and "chances
are" and "stack the deck".  Common terms for games of chance.  Open
mating is a crap shoot!  You can intervene to improve your odds, but
in open mating there are no guarantees.  Closed mating areas offer
better odds, but I am often skeptical of claimes of closed mating
areas.  How can one be sure that a mating area is closed?  Brother
Adam referred to closed mating areas as defined by geographical
features (mountain ranges, seas, oceans, ...).  A breeder in Vermont
claims a closed mating area based on a large lake to his east and
mountains on the other three sides.  However he cannot guarantee that
his closed area is not polluted by a local beekeeper who may import
an exotic queen.  Neither is he sure of the feral population (if
there is a feral population left).  Furthermore, if an area is truely
closed then inbreeding becomes a concern.

So, the long answer is that you can expect at best a reprieve.
However, you can take steps to increase chances that your reversion
is towards the gentle side.  Cull your aggressive stock.  The
fewer aggressive drones in your mating area the more likely
gentle genes will prevail.  Encourage your neighboring
beekeepers to do the same (cull aggressive stock, requeen with
gentler stock).  Stack the deck.  If you end up with nasty new
queens, don't tolerate, liquidate!  If you and your neighbors keep
this up, in a decade or so you might have an open mating area where
gentle genes prevail (and even then you'll get an occasional nasty
hive).  If this is too much time and effort, get on a regular program
of requeening with stock from a producer breeder who produces a
quality product (gentle queens).

Aaron Morris - thinking the more I learn about queen breeding the
                          less I mind paying a good price for a good
                          queen.