> When I worked in Northern California, with a well known queen breeding family, we (the crew) went through and requeened every colony with a fresh queen, which came right off the line, so was representative of what was being sold. 

> I was wondering about this,  and am glad you commented.  One of the things I have also noted is that "crew " mentality.  I make it a point every year to work some queen yards  there is often a huge difference between what the "crew" selects vs what the owners would like.

Well, wrong again. When I decided to go to work for a large scale queen breeder, I was already selling queens. I learned about it from Laidlaw and Eckert and in their books they referred repeatedly to Homer Park's methods. Pretty much everyone said that Homer Park's queens were the best, if you wanted Italians. So I asked Homer (RIP) for a job. He said he didn't need anyone but that one of the family probably did, especially someone with experience. 

The methods were all the same, they learned them from Homer, and they pooled queens and package bees, so the assumption was the quality was uniform throughout, irrespective of the crew that raised them. Everyone did everything. We grafted, worked on the cell builders, put cells out, caged queens, shook bees and moved hives by the hundreds in and out of almonds. The boss was almost always there, working. 

The queens were pulled and sold as soon as they laid eggs. If anyone had a question about the quality, we went right over to boss and asked him. The cells were often put in the same day, so the number of queens produced by the same nuc was maximized. By the way, even though Homer used baby nucs, we used full sized frames. The nucs were usually two frames of bees, in a two sided nuc box, about the size of a normal single story hive. *

By the time the season was winding down, the bees would be on four frames, each side. An excluder would be put on and a super, and the hive was run as a two queen unit as long as possible. Aside from raising only golden bees and the emphasis on rapid buildup of bees to be sold by the pound, I have no criticisms. (well maybe one or two, but keeping those to myself). So the idea that I am somehow biased agains commercial queen breeders is horseshit. 

I may take a dim view of their customers, since they drive the product. More recently I talked with a large scale queen producer from Massachusetts. She told me they tried to get their customers interested in better queens but they all wanted golden italians. If you ask me, it's a long standing prejudice against dark colored bees. One that I do not share.

PLB

* Interesting factoid: the hives were about an inch narrower than the usual 16 1/4 Langstroth. This was to accommodate eight frames with a 3/8 cedar division board. If you pulled the divider, you had an eight frame unit in a 9 frame hive, giving the same spacing as if you run 9 frames in a ten frame hive, which I do. The thing is, all the boxes, bottoms and tops were custom made, nobody sells that size (midway between 8 and 10). Go figure/

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