Hi All

Replying to John Horton

> Some people believe that supercedure queens are best, so this would play
> into possibly reinforcing this.

> Bro. Adams had a firm conviction however that supercedure queens never met
> his standards for quality queens compared to ones he had grafted...he mostly
> attributed this to the fact that a supercedure queen is the offspring of a
> failing queen

The two statements above need qualification...

supersedure queens are best

But I would say only in those races of bees that exhibit supersedure as 
a large part of their normal behaviour, all bees will use supersedure in 
the case of queens failing, but some races make a point of using it to 
produce extra queens that can then reduce the stress on the original 
queen by laying a proportion of the colony's brood, thus allowing 
genetic stability over a longer period than would be the case by other 
queen generating strategies.

In the case of Bro. Adam, his bees had no natural tendency to use 
supersedure to the degree that A. m. mellifera would and so his 
judgement may well be correct for his strain of bee.


Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://melliferabees.net Email: [log in to unmask]
Short FallBack M/c, Build 7.21/2.01
Son of ORAC M/c, Build 5.o1/2.o1

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