Dear nikite and anyone else on the listserve,
nikite you respond:
 
> Hi!
>
> > Queens made well locally always blow the doors off shipped queens,
> > if the queen producer knows  how to make queens.
> > Sure its great to use good stock in a breeding program, but a
> poorly made > blue -blood queen is never a match for a well fed, well
> mated local queen. > The optimum queens are made well from good stock!
>
> How does one recognize an "optimum queen"? does one assume, from her
> lineage (and selection programme) that she should be good, or is there
> something one looks for in an emerging queen? what is the definition
> of an "optimum queen"?
> cheerio,
> nikite
 
  The most accurate way to know if you have an optimum queen is to test her
in a production year. If she and her sisters all perform well, then your
line is good.
  Your question of selection in virgins is a good one: in
correspondence with Brother Adam, he mentioned to me that he used to hatch
1000's of cells and select for morphological ideals, throwing out all but
the best 1-2 %. I wanted to know what his selection was based on, but was
unable to get any specifics.
  Assuming * anything* in selection is going to bias your picks and give you
an erroneous conclusion. You may have ideas, as all breeders do, and often
intuition plays out, but testing the queens in question is the only way to
know how "optimum" they are.
 I wonder if anyone out there has a spreadsheet for queen performance
evaluation?
Adam
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