Randy:

The downside is that there is also a wide degree of
performance.  All gentle, but a bell curve of buildup and honey production,
as well as mite resistance.


 
 
When I was working for EPA on use of bees as Sentinels to Detect Pollution Impacts, we did extensive work regarding colony to colony variability.  We used mixed colonies, matched colonies with sister queens, and even had colonies with sister queens mated to same drone line.

The results were essentially, it didn't make any difference, the variability was inherent in the metric and actually was often more consistent than we imagined.  The caveat - this research was done before mites.

Not surprisingly, the lowest variability was found for metrics that reflected colony performance - brood areas, pop size; the highest in metrics that depended more on external factors.  The noisiest metrics were honey production and overall colony + weight.  

In the end, we stopped using sister queens, etc.  

Also, we found that colonies established from Instrumentally Inseminated, aka artificial insemination, queens showed more variability, supercedure, queen failure.  Years ago, when USDA had a lab in Wisconsin, their bee manager/breeder said he consider AI queens to be most useful as breeders, not for use for honey producing colonies.

I know Tom Glenn intensely disagrees, and there may have been improvements made in the process (maybe that's why the name changed?), but my experience is that these queens are best used as breeders, don't hold up well.  Common sense says it should be difficult to avoid some form of injury/stress to the queen during the process.

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