Allen Dick wrote

> Not sure what you are asking for, since these effects are constantly
> discussed by beekeepers throughout North America, and I assumed, elsewhere
> in the world....

I agree they are discussed but, as I recall, when the person who started
this latest discussion on splits mentioned that he thought the splits
produced inferior queens, he was asked for references.  So shouldn't I ask
for references when the statement was made about shipping etc. affecting
queens?

I am keen to be able to glean as much information as possible about what is
being said about shipping etc.  I know that I cannot produce 100% perfect
queen bees for sale.  As I am dealing with nature I must accept that the
queens I produce will probably fit the bell curve.  I find this with what I
use for myself in our own hives.  There will be above average ones, average
ones and below average ones.

As I said I am dealing with nature so how many below average ones are
realistic?  As an example, take race horses.  How many are breed from the
best genetic stock but end up in pet food cans?

This variability has been around for years.  I know one queen breeder here
in Australia that was looking at single drone insemination to try to get a
more even producing queen but it did not work.

Also, years ago it was a common practice here in Australia to "even up
hives".  Those that were not doing well had brood added to them from hives
that were going exceptionally well.  This is not done very often nowadays
because of brood disease.

So back in the "good old days" there was this variability with hives i.e.
queens.  Can this be bred out?  I doubt it?  Every thing else in nature has
this variability and breeding programes, even for dairy cows, do not produce
every cow giving the same quantity of milk.  There are good, average and
bad.  The bad are culled.

> In the past decade alone, numerous magazine articles and Internet
> discussions have discussed the problems that can arise..

Yes but most are anecdotal.   Anecdotal is not science but it does make the
good basis for a scientific experiment.

From my observations, the discussions always revolves around the queens and
how bad or good they were.  I rarely see any discussion about the hives the
queens are being introduced to or the conditions prevailing at the time of
introduction.  Why is this?  Surely hive and climatic conditions would have
an affect on acceptance and maybe supercedure.

> Of course these effects are not always present, or even very significant
> when they are, and even when they occur, it is hard for a buyer to know
what
> went wrong.  These problems do not necessarily occur in every case

Which is most frustrating.

> Moreover, every commercial beekeeper I know can trot out
> numerous stories about batches of purchased queens that just were no good,
> or which were all superceded in short order.

And every queen bee breeder has a story about queens that they sent to a
commercial beekeeper that they claimed were no good but were they?  Here is
a true story from Australia, one of many that I could tell.  A queen breeder
(Q1) was short one week and rang his mate (queen breeder Q2)) to see if he
had any spare he could buy.  Yes Q1 did have spare.  Q2 asked if he would
bundle up 50 and send to beekeeper X.  Q1 said yes he could and he was also
sending 50 queens to X.  Q2 said to make sure they went in separate lots and
to mark one lot as coming from Q2.  No worries.

Several months later beekeeper X rang Q1 to order some more queens.  He said
in conversation that the queens Q1 had sent previously went well but he had
also got queens from Q2 the same week and they did not perform.

Why is this so?  Same queen breeder, same method of transport, same batch of
queens but two different results.

Don't take it that I am trying to bash the beekeeper.  I know that it is
fashionable to bash the queen bee but I am interested in constructive
comments that may help me produce a better queen.

Trevor Weatherhead
AUSTRALIA

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