Interesting thoughts and somewhat acurate E.T. as noted there are always some isssues such as a shipping problem or a poor mating week in some areas.
I am somewhat uniquely qualified in this area. I do know and deal with most of the package producers in the US. We discuss things like this on a regular basis. Working a lot with both East coast, west coast and some in TX production.
While some supsercedure rates do inded spike for reasons, the overall avage is not as bad as the blogashere would have you belive. We always hear of the problems, seldom of the success.every year for the last 5 the numbers are solidy in the 500k range, and increasing. At the moment there are no problems of concern in the supply line. No"shortage" looming that will crash the industry. In fact when the candian border closed a while back that "surplus" was the hardest thing to hit the industry. lots of beeks closed it up then.
Right now we are getting close to an issue on the East coast. I am sure it will work itself out, but 3 of the big 4 in GA are at the retirement age or in poor health with no clear succesor in line.(at least not to my eyes) The west coast has a lot of new generation beeks stepping up but with east coast package producers being focused on packages and not honey or pollination that picture is not as clear.
The biggest issue with supercedure is beekeepers. There are 2 issuse, one damge from handeling (temp spikes and everything else included) and 2nd is how to handle it. What do you do when a supercedure cell pops up? you can panick, or just relax. If their is a good brood pattern when it shows, you can wipe them out and leave the original queen and things are usually fine. You can just let nature take its course and hope for enough drones to get the new one mated, or you can panick and order a new queen, and blog about failures.
I am good friends with and talk to regulaly large scale guys who still kill off thier bees, and those who travel as you suggest. Since my model of beekeeping started with a guy who kills off his hives, I am well versed in the math of the operations. I have done it (the math) so many times with different people, I am very confident in my assesment. I can plot out dozens of ways to make money with bees, and many more to lose money. I Have traveled to make honey, and to winter and can show you the numbers.
Moving south to avoid winter sounds like a great idea. The reality is not always as pretty. It takes a lot to make it work out. Not saying at all it doesn't work Just saying you have to be willing to do things most will not. A good friendof mine Lives in MN, and winters bees in TX, he literaly spend 1/2 of the year away from home. for some that is an unacceptable lifestyle.
Ron for example kills of his bees in Oct. He lives in central OH. not the far north. Rons winters are spent relaxing. and every spring he restocks with packages. The model works well for him, and he is pretty relaxed all the time. Lots of options., just pointing out its "not all you need to do is" to run your bees south. Lots of logistics invloved on a huge scale.
Charles
On Thursday, December 31, 2015 5:33 PM, E.t. Ash <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
a Mr Linder snip...
Supercedure is not as common as some would have you believe. We see about
5% and they are usually successful. If you destroy the supercedure cells
the queen is usually just fine, they are trying to supersede her due to a
lack of brood pheromones.
They 3rd option of which you speak is costly and difficult, and was
especially so back when those were written. You need southern yards, food
for the bees, and someone to work them as well as transport fees.
Those who do travel south will tell you, its not as easy and profitatible
as it sounds. Without the huge fees from almonds it would be even rarer
than it is.
my comments...
of course the larger problems now is no northern beekeeper can wait until the time in the springtime when they can count their winter death losses and then order packages and have any hope to get the package + mated queen in any kind of timely fashion. quite simply stated with reduced inventory (from which to make packages) and increased demand (largely from the hobby folks) you simply cannot hope to make this older program work.
as to your first comment.... superscedure like most biology is subject to it own variation (mean and standard deviation) so saying it is not common or that some number represents it total impact may not be fully descriptive for any person that understands biology or statistics.
your explanation of cause is certainly one potential cause (or at least partial cause) but it appears to me that other items will also work into this mix. at the top of the list I would add weather during the mating period and nutrition from the time the queen cell emerged till several weeks (quite likely more) after the new queen has begun laying. I do know (based largely on experiments and data that is quite dated) that superscedure rates from some well known beekeeping queen rearers in some periods has been documented as high as 100% < there was a 'blind' Nebraska test back I THINK??? in the 60's where the superscedure rate were recorded for individual queen rears where the rate varied from 0 to 100%.
finally as to cost then and now.... I think your idea of the 3rd option and relative cost then and now is also quite speculative. MY own long standing HYPOTHESIS > the cost of all of these items would be to some significant degree track along with the price of petro. Labor cost would of course have to include the importation of this basic input from central america + any living expenses for the season... doing this tough job with domestic labor as far as I can tell by what I see is quite rare.
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