I try to just lurk and learn here, but have a quick response to E.T. - 

ET - "But regardless of the graphing, I, like Jeff Pettis, have not seen a 3 or 4-year old queen with my own eyes since 2002.
If anyone else has any, I'm sure we'd all like to hear about it, and so would various R&D teams."

Chuck and I got started only a few years ago. Some of our hives were started as new packages and the others we purchased complete hives from a few different beekeepers who were "getting out of it".  Anyways, one of the hives who was STILL ALIVE until last year had a queen with a BLUE dot.  That means (if coded correctly) she was from 2010 and still alive in 2014.  SHE WAS AN AMAZING BROOD layer, we LOVED her laying pattern.  But one day we went in and she was gone and there was a new queen, so I guess her time was finally up.  She is the only one we have seen that has lasted any length of time and I do not routinely replace my queens every year.  I pick and choose who gets replaced if I am going to pull a queen, it's only if she is showing very poor production, laying pattern, or if the hives appears to have a virus/be continually weak.

Just letting you know, I had one.

Tanya Phillips, Beekeeper
Austin, TX

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