> Am surprised there have been no comments regarding this paper.

I'm sorry - I posted it without comment, as the title alone seemed
sufficient to prompt one to read at least the abstract.

I can confirm that Dave Tarpy, within the last few years, looked at drone
fecundity and sperm viability, and did NOT find it to be a problem in the
ongoing widespread problem of far shorter queen working careers that the
USDA Beltsville Bee Lab and others have been looking at.  He mentioned the
work last summer at a NJ State Beekeepers meeting I attended.  

The last time I brought up the issue of the emergence of a need for more
frequent requeening, I got heckled by the debate team.  
I think that the city is a good study platform for the problem, as every
queen failure or attempted supersedure is easy to detect, as the colony
invariably goes queenless, or becomes a drone-layer.
  
When one keeps bees in an extremely urban environment, hives very rarely
mate a queen, perhaps due to the turbulence created by high buildings, and
the small number of hives within flight range.  The few queens that do mate
locally tend to have very very short laying careers, just long enough to
prompt the beekeeper to announce successful mating, but not long enough to
throw the party, and in some cases, not even long enough to chill some beer.
I have offered very enticing bounties for a locally-mated queen that lays
for more than a few weeks, so at least the local beekeepers have taken an
interest in marking queens.  :)
 

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