Look at an atlas.  Compare the UK where I live with the USA where most
contributors to the list live.  Its tiny.  The advice on requeening in the UK
is usually to rear queens yourself if at all possible.  If you can't, then get
them locally from beekeepers who operate under similar conditions to you as
bees will adapt themselves closely to the local season and nectar flows and to
the size of hive you use.  Professor Heath in the next county to me keeps bees
near his home which, from his address, must be close to sea level and has an
out apiary in the hills, maybe a few hundred feet higher but not many miles
away.  He has reported that queens moved from one apiary to another don't do
as well for a generation or two.  Across the English Channel, in France, hives
have been moved experimentally from one part of the country to another where
the flows follow a different pattern. The  colonies moved in either direction
don't do as well as the local bees.  I am Chairman of my local association and
Secretary to the County and I don't know anybody who regularly buys queens.
 
Contrast the USA.  Its vast.  I have learnt from reading this list that you
have great differences in weather, temperature, climate, wild flora,
agriculture.  Yet the majority of contributors to this list (who may not be a
representative sample of US beekeepers)  seem to buy queens annually from
Florida where conditions may be ideal for queen rearing but are as different
from typical foraging conditions elsewhere in the US as it is possible to get.
 
I have no doubt in my mind that someone has gone into the economics of this
practice most accurately, down to the last cent.  Perhaps they could explain
them to me and to others who do not have this knowledge.  My impression is
that buying queens is recommended as good practice.  I wonder if it is the
producers of the queens who do the recommending.  Leaving aside any economic
considerations, for the amateur, rearing your own queens and making the best
of the bees that have succeeded locally is FUN.  I am no genius at queen
rearing and have as many failures as successes but it is very satisfying to
have a queen you have known from an egg do well.  The problem is that one can
become too sentimental about her to kill her in due course but you will still
have her daughters and grand daughters to play with.
 
I  look forward to receiving the thoughts of other contributors.  Re reading
what I have written, it seems a little critical.  It is not intended to be.
It is more a thirst for knowledge and a wish to share the enjoyment of playing
with bees.
 
Chris Slade