So what your saying is that for at least 60 years we have been saying queens don’t last like they used to?  


And that the Canadians cited "poor queen performance" as the issue?

Without facts of data its waste of time to debate.  If you asked 100 beeks why their hives suffered,  a darn lot would cite queens.  But with no measurement or benchmark,  its just noise.   I fully accept the beekeeping seems to be about the noise and not the facts,  so lets change that.

What defines a poor queen?  How does one make that claim (outside a drone layer)   do we have a baseline for frames of brood vs nutritional inputs?  Do we have any sort of standard for rate of buildup for a particular genetic model?   The Petis paper had an interesting line about frames where 1/2 the cells had been removed seem to indicate a failing hive.  

We see comments like this and  calls for research,  and since 1/3 of the food we eat needs bees,  and worldwide bees are in peril,  we need to act now,  you know Einstien says if bees die,  we follow!


Point being if we are to proceed as an industry,  how about we ponder what we say, quit  repeating the assertions of others,  and figure out what we need to fix it?  Anyone in Science should be very aware  "beekeeper cited"  is a long way from a fact. I know,  I do it a lot,  and luckily we have a few here who usually call me on it!

Charles

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