a mr Oliver snip..
Many Midwestern beekeepers have experience with California queens, whose
drones are not exposed to neonics.  And some of those same beekeepers also
have experience with locally-raised queens, whose drones would have been
exposed to neonics during their rearing and early feeding.  I was hoping
that some beekeepers with experience with both sorts of queens (having
mated either to drones exposed or not exposed to neonics during their
development) exhibited different rates of failure.

my response...
why would anyone even attempt to rear queens in a habitat dripping with agricultural chemicals?  I guess if you had no choice you might but almost everyone can look about and find a better spot to rear queens. furthermore how could anyone anywhere make the statement that drones in any habitat were not exposed to neonics? < and my guess here is that as a product it is pervasive beyond the corn fields and any may well be more common anywhere you see lot of crops started in a green houses.  even suggesting that this potential problem doesn't exist anywhere there is a massive agricultural monoculture would appear to me to be somewhat naive.   

you do hear a lot of noise from folks that are new to beekeeping and those with a long beekeeping resume give details of circumstance when they experience extensive new queen failure.  most of both of these crowds will never buy from the same supplier again so their own data set to even make a comparison is quite limited.  imho quite often these kinds of failure are more related to poor mating conditions at the site where the queens were rear or mistakes made in shipping.

the skill or talent for selecting drone and queen mother hives also appears to be something that is quite often totally overlooked when it comes to producing quality queens.  you might think that these decisions would be very data driven but imho quite often undocumented and subjective qualities are more heavily weighted than anything associated with hard data.  personally (and being largely self educated in terms of beekeeping) I wish this subject would get more coverage.     

 

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