I suspect that process and nutrition does play a significant role here although certainly this bias is one I obtain long long ago when I taught myself queen rearing largely with the assistance of two of Jay Smith's small books.

More recently I have made comments to others in the beekeeping community that although folks talk about loosing old beekeeper (a category to which I very much belong) I would suggest even more critically we have already lost a great number of the old 'queen breeding' crowd that understood the subtle things to look for when they selected stock.

Basically the constant but slow motion consolidation of the beekeeping industry over the past 70 years now has evolved to the point where certain critical skill and resources are now pretty much depleted.  

I would also suggest that some of the stock I have obtained from places like Hawaii and California seem to have a significant selection value placed on the constant availability of a syrup bucket.   

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