> As I understand Jeff's pitch, the queens are well-mated, but sperm longevity in the queens is unusually low

Recent work by Juliana Rangel is surprising:

Our study also addresses the question of whether honey
bee workers within a colony replace their queen if she is of
low reproductive quality. Previous studies have suggested
that a queen may get superseded either because she is failing
due to disease (Farrar, 1947; Furgala, 1962), injury (Wedmore,
1942; Cook, 1968), or lower insemination success
(Richard et al., 2007). If queen reproductive quality is
indeed related to the likelihood of supersedure, we would
have expected significantly higher rates of supersedure in
colonies headed by low-quality queens (i.e., those queens
developed from older worker larvae). However, despite its
observed positive effect on some parameters of colony
growth, we did not observe a significant effect of queen
reproductive quality on queen supersedure. Evidently, a
colony headed by a low-quality queen is not more likely to
replace the queen based solely on her reproductive potential.

* * *

Note: we have observed this countless times, where a completely failed queen is NOT superseded, is kept alive by the bees long past her expiration date whereas a brand new queen from a reputable supplier is superseded in months or even weeks. There must be some other factor. Everyone assumes that the bees pick up a cue and supersede or not based upon that cue. When it may be the queen herself that decides whether it's time for her to step aside. So far as I know, nobody has ever looked at it from this point of view.

PLB

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