>
> >Furthermore, Tarpy and Delaney are not trying to tell you what is good or
> not. They are trying to show what factors cause queen failure. Give them
> credit for doing the real science.
>

I agree, although I'd change Pete's wording to say that they are trying to
*find* the factors.  They look for correlations between queen performance
and measurable characteristics, and test hypotheses proposed to explain
poor performance.  So far, such research has come up with interesting
results.  Keep in mind that large part of scientific progress involves
refuting attractive hypotheses and chasing down dead ends. And also in
(sometimes serendipitously) discovering things that no one had even thought
of (yes, there are some intriguing as yet unpublished findings).

>I will take the experience of any of the breeders who are picking the best
of the best,  year in year out

The breeders breed for heritable traits, and then try to produce the best
phenotypes (good laying queens).  As Steve Taber used to say, he'd rather
use a well-reared queen of second-rate genetics than a poorly-reared queen
of the best genetics.  In this discussion, we've been talking about queen
rearing, time of caging, and post-shipping performance, not genetics.

Oops, I now see that Dick did bring up genetics.  This is an entirely new
can of worms, since any daughter of the best breeder can only carry half
the genes of the mother queen, plus the genes of only one of the drones
with which her mother mated.  Thus, the performance of the daughter's
colony may be considerably different than that of the colony headed by her
breeder mother.  Such differences can be minimized by, as Pete points out,
breeding for consistency in an operation.

>Even here,  many say a queen lays best her second year

I've heard that a number of times, but hard data tend not to support that
claim.

>...  and different lines lay differently based on outside influences.
 Carnis for example in my experience will not respond until natural pollen
and nectar is avalible....  Russians even more so..

The Carnies and Russians are well known for being more environmentally
responsive to pollen income than are commercial Italian lines.

>
> >Beekeepers are notorious for playing follow the leader, and going on
> "what works for me." Science wants to figure what is really going on under
> the hood. They do not claim to be "expert beekeepers" any more than you
> claim to be a scientist.
>

Very well said, Pete!  The best bee researchers seek out experienced
beekeepers for advice and feedback.

>Someone has compared the sudden checking of the work of a laying queen, with
the shipment of a cow, which is a heavy milker, without drawing her milk
for several days. Neither can be expected to be as good again.

Such a statement is exactly why I question Pellet's opinion on this
subject--he presented a poor analogy.  A cow comes into milk production
upon giving birth, and then temporarily ceases once the calf is weaned.
She can then come back into production after being "freshened" by bearing
her next calf.  This is completely different from a queen bee, who can
easily start and stop laying in response to pollen availability, winter
shutdown, or swarming.  Again, I question Pellet's statement that caging a
queen in full lay in some way damages her, until I see some supportive
evidence, rather than "stories."

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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