> If you see one or more frames with all but a few cells containing sealed
> brood in this half-moon shape, you have a healthy queen.  If 5% or more of
> the cells are empty, the queen should be replaced.

I believe there are some misunderstandings regarding brood pattern. To make it
simple; brood pattern is a measurer of the genetic diversity in the queens
offspring. The closer related queen and drones that mated with here are, the
more of spotty brood. We could call it a sign of inbreeding. It has nothing to
do with age of queen, or lack of semen due to bad mating. When she turns out of
semen she becomes a drone layer, but still produce offspring.

But there could be other reasons for spotty brood. As mentioned, some bees
prefer to store pollen all over the brood frames. There are queens that
systematically work themselves over the combs and produce even nice looking
pattern, and there are those that "run around" and put eggs here and there
rather randomly creating spotty looking combs.

There are different ways to improve the result (more honey). One is to work with
queens fertility in order to produce more bees in the hive. To breed from bees
that has more brood, and to use heterosis effect to increase vigour and brood
viability. More bees will produce more honey.

Another way is to breed for bees that live longer, produce more honey per
individual, need less winter feed, etc. Depending on where we are and the local
conditions/climate there can be different ways to get a better result at the end
of day. I have had hives that produced plenty of bees and a lot of honey. But
those hives will need more room (more boxes) to avoid swarming, and also will
have to be checked more often for crowding and maybe for swarm cells.

On the other hand, my favourite bees are those building up a bit slower taking
care not to run out of feed during spring and needing supplementary feeding.
They need two boxes less (saves me money) and don't get to the point of swarming
before the honey flow comes and make them forget about everything else. In the
end of season they have a good average crop, and haven't caused me much work and
no trouble of swarming or splitting.

I have used both ways when I produced my queens last year. From a larger (around
200) number of Carnica queens mated with Buckfast drones (this was 3 years ago),
I picked one that were better than the rest and produced large amounts of bees.
She became the mother of last years drone producing queens (raised 2 years ago)
at my mating place. This way the drones had her genetic mix. The queens mated to
them last summer were from my line with long living hard working Buckfast.

3 years ago; Carnica/Buckfast cross.
2 years ago; Hybrid queens reared from the best hive.
1 year ago; Hybrid queens produced drones on mating place. Buckfast queens mated
to drones with 50% Carnica heritage.
This summer; Plenty of honey!!..... ;-)

--
Regards

P-O Gustafsson, Sweden
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