Hi Folks,
I want to start off by apologizing.  Last Saturday, a seminar was hosted by
the Lehigh Valley and Bucks County Beekeeping Associations.  It was held in
Southeastern PA , 35 mi north of Philadelphia.  I am apologizing because I
forgot to post it to the list.  I realize that the majority of the members
would not be able to attend, but you should have at least known about the
opportunity.  I am truly sorry because it was a very good seminar.  Guest
speakers included Bob Smith (National Honey Board), Larry Connor, Ph.D.
(Wicwas Press), Robert Roeshman, MD. (practicing apitherapist), and Ibrahim
Cakmak, Ph.D. (Penn State University).  I have no excuse except I forgot.
 
With that said, I would like to touch on one of the topics discussed.  It
was Dr. Cakmak's talk on the queen viability research being done at Penn
State.  I will not go into the details but there are few points I would like
to mention.
 
In recent years there have been problems creeping up with queens.  This
includes poor performance, early supersedure, small size, just to name a
few.  The researchers selected queens from a number of queen breeders and
tested them for overall weight, amount of sperm, weight of ovaries, presence
of tracheal mites, and a few other items.
 
The results were disturbing.  It seemed that most queens tested were
infected with mites, slightly underweight (<210 mg), had smaller ovaries and
a lower than desirable sperm count.  I don't have actual numbers, and
results could change from sampling to sampling, but the overall quality of
the queens was somewhat down.  The numbers were not terrible, just less than
one would expect.  NO BREEDERS NAMES WERE MENTIONED, so please don't ask me
or Penn State.  There was one breeder who consistently had the best overall
performance, but again, we don't know who it was.  (With the price of
quality queens, I wish I did.)  Dr. Cakmak did state that the information
would be shared with the breeders.  He offered a number of suggestions as to
the causes of the problem, but this will have to wait for additional
research.  I think they are on the right track, and Penn State should be
commended for their effort.
 
Please don't take this information as my saying that commercial queens
should not be purchased.  In fact I think the breeders should also be
commended for their participation.  This is the only way we can learn and
improve.
 
Sorry my forgetfulness may have prevented someone from attending.  You know
what they say about the memory being the second thing to go.  We will be
having additional seminars in the future and plan on doing a better job of
publicizing them.
 
Ron Bogansky
Kutztown, PA