> Right now there is a group in CA who will "grade" your productiuon queens.

Dave Tarpy's lab at NC State is offering the same "for fee" grading service to queen breeders and beekeepers. At EAS, he presented the results from queens he purchased anonymously. He claimed the queens were from all the major producers and the results were interesting but not conclusive. Some breeders producing queens with high sperm viability in spring had much lower counts later in the year and the opposite was also true.  None of the breeders produced queens with viable sperm counts lower that 60% or highier than 90%. He didn't offer a threshold where a queen would be considered substandard except that he thought below 50% may be problematic. Although it seems like I'd want a queen with really high sperm viabilty, does it actually make any difference? 

 https://entomology.ces.ncsu.edu/apiculture/queen-disease-clinic/  

Bill Hesbach
 

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