All the FGMO/varroa thread and this one has got me to thinking
about our observations compared to what is actually happening. We
take the local happenings in our apiary and make them universal
without understanding why.
I get completely opposite results than David. My bees are
gentler, more productive and healthier than when I started and
they are all so called emergency queens. So is my truth stronger
than anothers? No. I have different local circumstances.

I have come to the conclusion that emergency queens are inferior
if raised at any time other than a major honey flow. Nothing new
here. But I have arrived at another conclusion. Emergency queens
are inferior if there are large numbers of feral colonies or
lousy beekeepers in the area. The drone pool in your area has a
everything do with the kind of queens you raise. If you get
queens from away, and some are bad, they will add their drones to
the pool and you will get many more lousy queens as will those in
your area. Keep at it and you never excape the cycle. It is not
regression but normal bee biology. You continue to introduce
outside queens, you continue to intoduce good and bad behavior.

But, by growing my own over the past eight years, especially
through the great varroa killoff when most in my area lost their
hives and never started again, we have a fairly uniform drone
pool, since there are only a couple of beekeepers in the area. If
they have good bees, I will have good bees. When bad bees start
to populate the area, my bees will also pick up the
characteristics.
If they grow their own, we will have a fairly uniform set of bees
until bees become varroa tolerant and feral bees migrate in or
lots of outside queens are introduced.

It is interesting that I was taught from the beginning not to
raise my own queens by the emergency method because of
regression. Maybe we have never been actually seeing regression
but normal bee biology by the introduction of agression or poor
honey gathering by the local feral, lousy beekeeper, or store
bought queen drone pool.

Bill Truesdell