> Apparently, everyone sold queens this way back in the day. Another question is when did the industry stop selling this way and why?

Some ads for "tested queens" still appear as late as 1951. The standard practice was to double the price for "testing." The only testing was to see if the bees hatched out the "right color."

As I wrote earlier, the term "tested" actually used to mean much more. The queens were allowed to produce actual colonies and in some cases, queens were raised from their eggs, before they were sold as "tested." 

Of course, none of these measures actually guarantees better queens, so I suspect buyers just gravitated toward the cheapest and the earliest, -- which is what we see today. Just because you pay more, don't mean you get more.

PLB

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