>I wonder how much ofthe 'winter' loss is due to poor queens.

And this brings up yet another subject--what do we mean by a "poor queen"?

When I start a bunch of colonies from sister queens in "identical" nucs, I
get a full bell curve of performance from the resulting colonies.  A few
queens will also disappear in the first couple of months.

One can easily blame the problem on the queen--either directly due to her
egglaying, or her pheromonal output.  I do not dispute either.  Or perhaps
she did not get mated to enough of a variety of drones to form a good
"team" of patrilines in the hive.

However, what I find of great interest are the number of colonies that
stage a complete turnaround, without replacing the queen  (I saw yet
another just today).  Perhaps she gets into a pocket of better spermatozoa,
but I suspect that the colony has simply cleared itself of a debilitating
infection of some sort.
-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html