Hi Barry & All

A few comments...

> Second, mark the queen after hatching

Two problems here, virgins are nervous and often dart about making the
pick-up difficult and running the risk of the beekeeper damaging her.

I do not recommend it as she may be considered "defective" by the mating nuc
bees and be rejected by them (or they may just ignore her).

> so why would the
> workers want to decage her?

She may not emit the full scent of a mated queen but the workers will be
aware of her presence and her exact non mated status.

There is some info about the reintroduction of queens after Instrumental
Insemination on.
 http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/ii_reintro.html
much of what is on that page would apply to introducing virgins after postal
transit.

There is little incentive for a queen rearer to supply virgins as the
resulting queens would only have half the queen breeder's carefully selected
genes. The other half would come from the local drones and no quality
guarantee could then be given, in fact the resulting variability would be a
nuisance as many queens would require culling due to bad temper.

The above comments apply to "european" bees, I have no experiance of
scutellata so cannot offer any reasons specific to that strain.


Regards From:- Dave Cushman, G8MZY
Beekeeping and Bee Breeding, http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman
IBList Archives, http://website.lineone.net/~d.cushman