In article <[log in to unmask]>, Ted Hancock
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>        I know honeybees are wired differently than humans and do not feel
>pain in the same way. And I realize when you are trying to make a living at
>beekeeping some bee blood must be spilled. However, ripping the legs off
>queens strikes me as unnecessary cruelty.

Me too, of course, hence I have never done this kind of thing......on
purpose...., but we have probably all accidentally harmed a queen whilst
working a colony. Natural damage is commonplace to the legs as well,
particularly if multiple virgins hatch and fight it out, or if there has
been some balling going on. Such queens do not normally continue on to a
ripe old age.

It was just an anecdote about the practices of another person to
illustrate to some extent why we should not get TOO paranoid about queen
damage. Things have a great way of working themselves out and if this
can be turned to our advantage all the better. Some will just have
different ways of doing it, and in his case he deliberately provoked
supercedure.

As I said not for me, but I am not going to say this old guy had it
wrong. It seemed to work for him, and had some logic (albeit a cruel
logic) behind it.


--
Murray McGregor